VIRB

Bigger and better things, gentle readers, bigger and better things.

Here's my thought process:

• I want to stop using Typepad.  It's good, as far as little template-based blogging platforms go, but for the monthly fee, there is an inexcusable restriction on back-end accessibility.  Wired Magazine this month issued a Geekipedia which included the entry 'Free'.  It reads:

"If you built it -- and it's cool -- they will come.  The business model to support it will come later.  That's the new economics of the free lunch: Giving away a product or service builds the kind of customer attention and loyalty that rack up earnings.  Take a look at Firefox, MySpace, Ubuntu, YouTube, and countless other new-breed products and service that don't cost a penny to use.  As scarcity becomes obsolete and bandwidth, storage, and processing grow ever cheaper, old-fashioned vendors will face increasing skeptical customers asking, what are we paying for?"

And here is where I find myself: Typepad, where do you get off charging the monthly fee you do for what little you offer?  I'll answer for you: you don't.  Typepad has a limited time left on planet Earth unless they start offering either competitive goodies or drop their monthly fee down to $2 or less. 

Additionally, after I subscribed to Typepad they changed their user interface.  For the worse.  It became visually cluttered and added pages to click through in order to get to your own blog's dashboard.  Instead of clicking a member sign-in button and being at my destination, I was clicking through three pages of "community information" and ads.  I wrote an email to Typepad expressing my dislike and was sent back a terse instructional on how to use bookmarks. Oh, really?  How do I clean butt after I go potty, also?  I wrote back the obvious: what if I'm not at my own goddamn computer?  This time the email response can be summarized as: Everyone else likes the new interface.  Well, everyone else are compliant bitches who roll over when you raise your voice.

• I want to start a web-writing project with Halcyon.  Hal is a sharp-witted, blisteringly creative writer who I am certain I will regret writing along-side when he starts making me look bad.  Still, I'm a glutton for punishment (and pie!) and I'm looking forward to our project.  Keep on an eye here on The Bean Mines and I will soon have a link for you.

• I'm tired of the contradiction of writing about myself and not taking credit for it.  The anonymous blogging thing was cute when I was pretending it would protect me from being fired from my coffeeshop job, but now it feels like a trap.  Since then I've shown photos of myself and made increasingly lazy references to exactly where I worked,  but coming out and sharing the details of my life feels wrong.  Here, at least.  The idea that I might be known for this is becoming uncomfortably close to being known as this week's YouTube star: it's fun while it's happening, but do you hear that?   That's the sound of the world boring of you.

I've also fully succumbed to having a smug dislike of blogs.  There are very few that are popular for no thematic or understandable reason at all (coughdoocecough), and the rest have very strong personalities.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoy reading blogs and still imagine myself having something similar, but the aimlessness of it all has become entirely unappealing to me.  The reality is that I enjoy writing, I want to write, but writing about being an unemployed writer is starting to take a toll on my creativity level.  Time for some fresh blood.

So there it is, the disjointed and over-explained reason for my quitting.  In case you didn't read well, here's a summary: don't worry, I'm starting a new website.  I just feel done with this one.  I hope you'll join me in our new metaspace, just as soon as I get a pretty face on it.  And by "I" I mean my friend Leesa.  Hey Leesa!  How's the coding?  Is it still fun being my friend?  Don't answer that.

So!  Keep an RSS feed going here and gimme a week or three and we'll get right back on that internet racetrack, toot sweet!

love love love,
your pilot,
Subspace

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