So, I'm somewhat breaking my rule about posting (though I have resisted all temptations brought on by the FISA bill mess and the exciting arrival of a new vegan cookbook!), but I finally decided that I need to know more about what my readers wish I would do before I decide. There are some basic pros and cons about moving, things like accounts, comments, and syndication.

Blurty doesn't seem to have syndication, and it would require people to have accounts to make comments unless I enable anonymous commenting. I might do that, but I eventually had to disable it for this journal, because I was getting spam comments and there's no real system for dealing with them on LJ-clones. It also doesn't have tags to organize my entries. Perish the thought! Tagging is the most useful LJ feature in many, many years.

Blogging services or self-hosted blogs have non-threaded comments (yuck) and either require (easy) registration, or allow anyone to comment. In both cases I may have to run some kind of spam comment plugin because true blogs tend to get flooded with spam comments sometimes. They also have syndication so that people who stay on LJ can read my posts on their friends page using syndication.

There's also the question of whether I might come back to read (if anyone even wants that) or how to keep in touch with anyone who might be interested if it can no longer happen through LiveJournal. So, without further ado, the poll.

Poll #1109323 Where should I/we go?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 13

Will you still read my journal if I move it away from LiveJournal? (I won't be offended if you say no.)

Would you like me to come back to read your journal once I am not posting here?

If not, how would you like to keep in touch?

Where should I go?

Will you also change your journaling/blogging location?

Any other comments? Site suggestions, complaints, your plans, etc.

If you have more to say, please comment, and if you can't fill out the poll but you do read my journal and want to tell me your answers, please send me email with your answers. Please respond as I am very interested in any suggestions.

I'm running some tests for work that require a consistent souce of speech noise, and I picked a podcast at USC by Bruce Sterling that I had on my computer somewhere but had never really listened to. My favorite line from the podcast:

The ideal blogging thing is a blog blog.

I'm going to be using this journal as my primary journal from now on. The content will change very little, if at all. Likely the frequency of posting won't go up much either. I will still not be making friends-only entries. Everyone will still be welcome to friend and read. The main change is that I will be reading my friends list for this journal and using it to post to others' journals and communities.

That is all.

I'm going home tomorrow and will be there until the 14th of January. I am planning not to spend much time on the computer, so I won't be checking or writing in LiveJournal and will probably be available by e-mail only sporadically. If you don't have off-line contact information for me, but do want to get in touch, feel free to e-mail and I'll try to get back to you when I can.

Journal: I am three!
Alexis [patting Journal indulgently on the head]: Yes you are. You're a big journal now.
Journal: I like to be three!
Alexis: Yes, that explains why you wrote this silly entry.

I did a bit of housekeeping with the friends list. Everyone I removed either hadn't added me back, or is on lyspeth's friends list already. It's redundant to add people to both, so I've deicded I won't. This friends list, then, is for people who want to read this journal, and whose entries I want to read, but who don't want to read my other entries.
Anyone can add this journal, but only people fitting those three criteria will be added back here.

langwidere and momentsmusicaux -- if you want to be on lyspeth's friends list and read those entries, let me know; otherwise things are fine as they are!

I'm sorry for the lack of content here since my RSI flared up, and even sorrier that I don't think it'll improve anytime soon. Although I do have the new keyboard in the lab, I'm still limited in typing at home on the laptop keyboard, where I usually am when I'm thinking about writing entries. I'm also in the middle of final projects, and while it's not crazily hectic (mainly because of my smart decision to do 'Standard Mode' (four modules) and the stupid decision to have a bunch of projects due at the start of second term, but that's another rant entirely) it is a lot of work and it's wearing me out. And then I do have a vacation scheduled, and then second term will start kicking my ass...

Anyway, I'll try to be more interesting less occasionally, but I can't promise much. I did find an interesting entry I wrote about a year and a half ago music about language technology. Little did I know that I'd be having whole courses on it...

I'm considering reinstating this journal, but using it just as a way to describe interesting thoughts and events approximately every day or so. Then everyone can read it who wants to, basically. It should be interesting.

This journal may end up belonging to some communities instead of my other journal, ones where it's more useful to not have to preserve anonymity. I'm not sure about adding other friends to it, though of course anyone's welcome to add it to their friends list or bookmarks.

I went grocery shopping today and bought mini wine bottles. They looked interesting. One of the reasons I haven't bought wine as yet was that I can't finish a whole bottle before it goes bad. These should solve that problem, so I decided to buy them. It's also the first time I've bought alcohol since I was 21. I didn't get carded. I don't think Randall's cares very much about that stuff. One time last winter Beth and Lori and I, who all look pretty young, bought wine there, and they didn't card us then either.

Yesterday before the party I found some nasty oily dirt on the back of my sandals, and it seems that some of it is still there, or that I walked through the area where it came from again, because I had to go wash my feet after wearing my sandals again. It took a lot of soap to get it off. It's pretty gross.

I like having a digital camera because I can take stupid pictures of my whiteboard when it has some neat stuff on it (all the well-wishing from when I was sick) and not worry about wasting film. I definitely need to resize and post some of the pictures I've taken on my website, which also means that I need to figure out a better way of presenting them. I have an idea, but I'm not sure how it'll work yet.

On that note, Dave needs to help me fix my computer so I can work on my webpage and on the clarinet page on the MOB website. I also want to work on my opinions section, so that I have a chance to get out some of my feelings about the insane stuff happening at Rice and in the world.