The Blank Slate Network

It’s funny how the stuff you write years ago can become so embarrassing. I’ve been going through Blank Slate, sweeping the dust under the (lush oriental) rug, tidying the front hallway so it doesn’t look like the shambles it’s become, and it’s almost painful to read what I wrote way back then. So…cheesy. ~sigh~ Quite embarrassing, really. Yet another reason why I really need to revamp the whole site, and soon. I’d planned on doing it over this break, but I’ve ended up spending most of my free time reading (and it’s been wonderful!), so it’ll either have to wait till midterms :) or till I graduate in April. Considering that it’s been nine months since I did much of anything with the site, April might not be such a long ways away after all.

Upon further inspection, I see that I put a link to my resume (er, résumé) on the front page, which resume happens to have my phone number and address. Maybe that’s not such a good idea… (But so far only one person has contacted me because of it, and he was trying to offer me a job. No stalkers yet. And don’t even think about it.) I wish ours was a world in which we didn’t have to worry about identity theft and all that, but it is. (Speaking of which, I have a fairly, um, extensive online presence. Someone could do a masterful job at pretending to be me, based on the online Ben corpus. But I should stop giving people ideas. ~sigh~)

Anyway, I’m going to try to pull my(web)self together and figure out what my (too many) websites’ roles should be. Here’s kind of what I have so far:

Blank Slate. My first website (since July 2000), and my only one till about two years ago. Right now it’s a hodge-podge assortment of my writing, my art, my music, my etexts, and links, all of it several years old at best. I still call it my personal website, but since I rarely update it, Top of the Mountains is the one I give out instead. Option A would be to really make it my personal website, making Top of the Mountains an LDS/Mormon-themed blog instead of my catch-all. It would then become a blog. The art will move to BenjaminCrowder.com no matter what; the writing and music would probably stay. The etexts would move to Riverglen Press. Option B would be to make this a creativity blog, turning Top of the Mountains into my real personal website (and moving the writing and music and such over there). I don’t care so much about the links anymore — especially since most of them are no doubt stale by now — and so they could go.

Top of the Mountains. My main blog. Thus far it’s been about everything except art/design, genealogy, and coding. See above for possible changes.

BenjaminCrowder.com. My art/graphic design blog. I need to move my gallery over from Blank Slate (and include my latest work).

Riverglen Press. My bookmaking venture. It’ll stay, of course, but I’ll probably move my etexts from Blank Slate to here, since it’s more fitting. Any of my graphic design work that ends up as PDF will go here as well, though I’ll probably include images in the BenjaminCrowder.com gallery.

Beyond. My genealogy software R&D blog. It’s staying the way it is.

Footprints from the Past. My own genealogy research. I see it as more of a family site, but considering that a number of other people are stumbling across it, it’s a good way to collaborate on genealogy. (Not ideal, but still good.)

Outside the Box. Considering how often I (don’t) write about coding, this blog is getting close to the guillotine. I have too many sites as it is; one more only makes things more hectic. This one will probably disappear. But I do plan on starting a library-themed blog when I start library school. Will this blogmaking never end?!? ;)

As a whole, I’ve been working on a logo for the five main sites — Top of the Mountains, BenjaminCrowder.com, Blank Slate, Riverglen Press, and Beyond — that unifies them somewhat. (Footprints from the Past is more peripheral.) I’m using hacker emblem, which is a glider from Conway’s Game of Life. (Which, incidentally, was a favorite pastime of mine when I was younger.) Here’s the general idea, with only two of the individual site logos in place (though I reserve the right to change them at will :)):

It still needs a lot of work, though.

Anyway, don’t feel bad if most of this post is tremendously boring. :)

Upon further inspection, I see that I put a link to my resume (er, résumé) on the front page, which resume happens to have my phone number and address. … So far only one person has contacted me because of it, and he was trying to offer me a job.

I spoke too soon. Within an hour of posting this, I got a call from some girl about a local web designer position. So bump that up to “two” and change “person has” to “people have” and “he was” to “they were.” :)