With the weather being very anti-golf , I’ve been writing quite a bit lately although nothing that I would consider publishable. Matt’s recent blog, Poetry is code, really got the juices flowing.   I haven’t decided what kind of writer I want to be although I think I’m leaning towards becoming an essayist. My inspiration towards essays comes from Scott Berkun. The short essay seems to be a good starting medium to practice documenting my opinions, how to do its, and whatever seems to strike my fancy. 

I’ve started about 5 “notes” documents that are centered around  subjects and as I bang in thoughts and other such things, hopefully an essay or two will evolve. In the meantime, I do write every day and I am finding it enjoyable.

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Well – Happy New Year albeit a month late! I guess I’ve procrastinated
enough. I’ve been thinking about what I’d like to do this year and I believe my primary goal is to clear out the clutter of things rattling around in my mind and settle on just a few. This past year I’ve been slightly overwhelming myself with staying up with the rapidly changing web  technology world, practicing web application development for desktop and smart phone devices, practicing and playing golf, a little bit of blogging, reading and trying to keep myself fit by walking more. I’m finding that this is too much stuff and I’m not really doing anything any justice or doing them well. So frustration is happening more than enjoyment. 

I want to take some time this year and see if I can develop a deeper interest in digital photography. I’ve done a little bit but I think I need to give this idea a better focus (pardon the pun). Besides, there are some cool toys you can get to help support a photographer’s habit. My idea is to concentrate on landscape and wildlife (not to mean my grandchildren) as subjects to study. A very good friend of mine is a “birder” and has inspired me and he has a good collection of his photos on Flickr here.

My son David is fond of saying “Write a book.” if you’re bored. While writing a book seemed like a daunting exercise not to speak of the fact I would not know how to start, writing daily might possibly evolve into something more.  One of the “getting started” techniques I’ve seen suggested is to write every day. So, I’ll be practicing my verbosity – if that’s really a word – each day. But writing each day does not necessarily mean publish each day. There’s this idea of re-visiting the work for editing purposes so  I’ll strive to publish about twice a week. Besides, I need to give time to review and digest the literally tens of comments I’m sure my posts will be generating.

I have to get my walking into a consistent habit. Lately, I’ve abandoned the “iron maiden” (my name for the treadmill) in favor of outside walks in the neighboring parks and streets. And, beginning this past fall and into this winter, I walk the golf courses I play. It’s hard to beat a nice day walking with Jimmy Buffet or Dire Straits playing on Pandora. And even if Mark Twain has said that golf is a “good walk spoiled”, you just can’t beat a gorgeous, God-given beautiful day on the golf course. I suppose for those not so nice days I’ll need to fire up the “iron maiden” and take a cruise.

I enjoyed putting this piece together especially selecting the cartoons that related to the thought. There might be something to this writing thing after all!

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I’ve taken a small break from golf to pursue my hobby programming projects. I’m working on a small HTML/CSS/Javascript/jQuery/MySQL/Php project just to get the juices flowing again. I’ve been trolling through some technical video training and was inspired to do a web application using web technologies. Ultimately, I want to get back to developing some iPhone web applications. These are primarily just self-fulfillment activities to keep my mind exercising. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “A mind is a terrible thing to waste”……well, I’m trying to keep mine active. Besides, if I branch out and do some more contracting, it helps to be current. 

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Wondering what that RSS menu item above is for? Well, so was I! It basically shows that you can subscribe to this blog site through an RSS reader and receive new posts to be viewed throughthe reader and not have to use the browser. For example, I use Windows Live Mail 2011 on my laptop and I can set up a feed from my blog by using this URL   http://kendulinsr.com/feed=rss2. The image below shows you what I see:

In my particular case, I can’t directly comment on posts or see other comments without going to the site ( via the “View Online”) option. But if you follow a number of sites, a tool such as this might prove useful.

Anyway, now we know what the RSS menu item is!

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Well, maybe not really. But here it is. It’s only taken 1.5 years to do what wordpress claims can be done in minutes. They don’t count those who play around with technology. I mean I’ve looked at everything! Well almost everything. My first published web site was done some time ago using Apples’ iWeb tool which was pretty cool. I just didn’t follow through with doing anything with it. Well, to be truthful, the weather turned nice and that means I go to the golf course!

So, what can we expect here? I don’t really know. My first impression is this becomes a platform from which I’ll publish whatever comes to mind. Maybe even readers will engage and challenge me. We’ll just have to wait and see.  I’ve got some grand examples in my own family of bloggers (Matt, Anna and Dave) which have inspired me and I’m hoping to develop content worthy of my time to write and your time to read.

So, stay tuned……….

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