{Cheese and Beans}

Today marks both the end of something, and the beginning of something new.

Today marks the beginning of a real, proper blog. The beginning of an effort to regularly expound words of interest to the passing crowd from a platform built of the best virtual boxwood (in reality it’s built on Apache, PHP, MySQL and Wordpress, but that doesn’t have the same ring to it).

With a little luck, and a little effort, “Cheese and Beans” will become a regular literary performance charged with humility, honesty, wit, intelligence, eccentricity, annoyance, aggravation, hilarity, and perhaps an occasional spoon of levity.

I will screw my courage to the sticking place, and set about deconstructing the walls I have built over recent years; walls that conceal the real story. The interesting story. The story never told. The dark thoughts, the idiotic opinions, the damn fool escapades, and the inappropriate situations.

I’m not saying I’ll be leaving to fight in a foreign civil war, contract syphilis in Venice, or wooing statesmen’s wives (as a certain famous literary figure did a few hundred years ago), but I might at least have very pointed things to say about the school run, idiot car drivers, old people, religious zealots, and the remarkably interesting statistical relationship between the size of the hole in the o-zone layer, and the number of Pirates in the world.

I will encourage you, my audience, as you accompany me on this journey of discovery – we will come to know each other, you and I, to laugh, to commiserate, and to share confidences.

It’s going to be fun. It’s also going to be difficult, but mostly fun, on the whole, I think…

I have been playing with Tumblr again (my page lives at jonbeckett.tumblr.com). I know I shouldn’t but I can’t leave it alone. It’s addictive. Imagine Twitter with images, videos, sound, quotes, and full blog posts. Imagine Facebook without family, and no walls – no borders.

Tumblr seems to be filled with creative people – photographers, artists, writers, readers… and supports those who appreciate great content too; allowing the sharing of anything as a central feature.

Rather than comment, you are encouraged to show content on your own page, with your own comment as an additional part of the content – a good analogy might be buying a print of a painting from a gallery to show in your own house.

Tumblr has lots of toys too – an opt-in directory of members, global search, all manner of apps (including a wonderful iPhone app), and integrations with numerous blogging platforms.

The lack of comments is liberating. While we like to encourage others to comment on blog posts, what purpose do they actually serve? How many of the A-List bloggers allow comments any more? There’s something uncomfortably self-absorbed about encouraging comment on the content we produce as bloggers.

Above all, Tumblr wins because everything is open. By default all of your content is available to everybody – member or not. This brings responsibility, but there is no requirement to provide a real identity within the site either.

Oh – one last thing – Tumblr has no censorship. You own your content. Remember what I was saying about responsibility?

I have been meddling with the various places that I hold accounts on the internet this evening – trying to bring the same username into effect everywhere (as much as that might be possible, given the lack of planning that went into the mess I have singlehandedly created). While doing so, I thought it might be a sensible idea to keep an online backup of my entire personal blog – so grabbed http://jonbeckett.wordpress.com. A few minutes later it was populated with my old blog posts – if you would like to know how I did it, feel free to email me.

I spent the greater part of yesterday evening visiting the various blogs I have listed on Google Reader, reading, commenting, and reminding myself what it is to take part in the community.

Perhaps it shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but I really enjoyed it. Submerging ones self into the blogosphere can be a very personal experience – of course it depends on the writing you happen upon, but invariably you find all manner of strangers sharing their thoughts, experiences and emotions with you. Of course they know not who you are, but in many ways that is the attraction – the unknown reader.

In the same way that some people visit a therapist, or a psychiatrist, perhaps those of us who share our thougths online are doing something similar.

While reading, it struck me how a well written blog creates a sense of you being taken into the confidence of the author. Even though you know deep down that you are one of the countless thousands who might wander past, sometimes a voice will call out and capture you.

It could be argued that those of us writing online are fishermen of a sort – casting baited words into the passing crowd.

The photograph is of astronaut Steve Bowen. His expression pretty much sums up my feelings of being back online.

It’s been six months. Six long months since February when a shark internet company called PowerNet stole our telephone line from under us. This evening our line became ours again, new hardware was connected to it (courtesy of British Telecom), and we are connected to the firehose once more.

The earlier part of this evening was taken up with Windows updates, virus updates, Apple updates, and various application updates. We had been surviving via a Vodaphone 3G USB dongle for the last few months, but it was a shocking reminder of how the internet used to be… with connection speeds anywhere between 56K and bytes per second. We took Broadband for granted – our recent experiences brought into focus just how amazing it really is.

It’s quite a novelty to check email as I wander past, to listen to music on Spotify, to watch television programmes on the BBC iPlayer, to surf YouTube and Vimeo (mostly to catch up on the adventures of a few blogger friends), and of course to participate in Twitter, Facebook, and the various instant messaging networks.

It’s great to be back!

In the depths of last night, long after I should really have gone to bed, I took a look at 12 seconds on the internet…

playing with 12seconds on 12seconds.tv

You can use any webcam, and record straight into the site via Flash.

Go try it, and post me the URL. This could get very stupid indeed.

In the spirit of sharing, here is a list of ten personal blogs I like. If you’re not on the list, and you know I read your blog, worry not – I’ll do another one of these lists soon. The selection list wasn’t terrifically scientific either – pretty much a case of waving my finger in the air and saying that one, and that one, and that one… now how many is that?

I have been reading most of these blogs for a very long time – so long in fact, that I am suddenly aware of how long it has been since I went on the search for new people to read. If you’re anything like me, the blogs you read (or rather, the authors) are somehow just as legitimate friends as those in the real world – those you visit regularly.

Chicken and Cheese

Memoir : Things I Carry

Blogapotamus Rex

The 13th Apostol

Sarcomical

Itchy Bits

A Celebration of Mundanity

Adventures of an Urban Cowgirl

Guitritus

Family of Five

I gone done and did it. Again. (and yes, I am quite aware of how many grammar rules the first sentence breaks. I also know this footnote should not have started with “and”).

Henceforth, my personal blog exists here;

www.cheeseandbeans.com

This will be the last time such a move takes place. After something like 8 years of writing a blog of various sorts online, this is the first time I have purchased a domain name specifically for a personal blog. I am also moving my technical blog to it’s own home online, although that’s another subject for another time.

The reasons for this final move are many. When I began picking up freelance work some months ago, I had reduced my online “footprint” significantly – giving some projects away (PluggedOut comes to mind), putting some projects on life support (ThoughtCafe), and closing accounts all over the place (Posterous, Tumblr, MySpace).

I had not considered that the traces I leave on the internet – my words, photos, thoughts, views, and crackpot opinions – would be read by those who might one day hire my services. It therefore became obvious that if I choose to participate in the blogosphere, I need to do it on my own terms. I need to have my own websites which extend the little brand and influence I have beyond the bounds of the work that I do.

If you start to see me taking more care with the words and photographs I am sharing, it’s entirely intentional.

In blogging terms, after eight years I guess I’m finally growing up.

Over the last eight or nine years I have “existed” in many forms on the internet – a member of Compuserve, a contributor to bulletin boards, a sometime usenet evangelist, a personal blogger, a professional blogger, and a member of countless social networks and instant messaging systems.

Throughout my online journey, I never considered the vehicle carrying my thoughts, words and photographs as important.

Perhaps I got it all wrong. Perhaps I should have a domain of my own – a place that becomes known as “the site where that guy writes who knows all that stuff, and somehow finds time for a family too“.

Discovering that people actively follow the thoughts I record and share should perhaps have been a clue. The pure fact that people followed me through changes of web address – from one blog platform to another – should have been an even bigger clue.

I don’t know what to do.

If I invest time and effort into growing my own brand – as well as helping others do the same (through my freelance activities), is it not just shouting “ME TOO!” ?

Footnote – I will neither confirm or deny that I may have purchased the domain and hosting for “www.cheeseandbeans.com” while having a coffee earlier…

It’s coming back, and returning to it’s roots.

In 1994, ThoughtCafe was the first website I ever made. At the time it existed as a single page “concept” for an online magazine, or “e-zine” as they were called at the time. The web was in it’s infancy, dynamic sites didn’t exist, and it remained an “idea”, never realised.

In 2000, ThoughtCafe became a community of aspiring writers, hosting many thousands of daily visitors, a regular newsletter, and bustling forums. It eventually collapsed under the weight of it’s own success in 2003 – amid calls to rescue or revive it. The code was made open source, but efforts to replicate the original community didn’t gain traction. A site has continued to exist in various forms until the present day, but this post effectively marks the end of the line for it.

In eight days time, ThoughtCafe will return to the internet in it’s original form – a web based magazine of the internet community, for the internet community. I am therefore going to be writing my favourite bloggers to find out if they might be able to contribute.

ThoughtCafe was once insanely great. It’s going to be great again.