Sorry I’ve been so quiet lately. Part of it is that life is oddly quiet right now. Oh, with three kids, and lots of family visiting this past weekend, it’s been busy and noisy. I mean “quiet” in the sense that there isn’t much motion — no significant thoughts or actions worth writing about.

The other part of it is that I’ve been occupied on the computer. Sometimes I become obsessive about a particular project, and recently that project was ProgTest, a computer program to help programmers program better. Having wrapped up version 1.0, I have moved on to cleaning up old 8mm family movies that were transferred to DVD — stuff from before I was born, and there’s footage of me as a baby and a toddler. But the quality is terrible, so I’m using Adobe After Effects to try to adjust the color, reduce the noise, and patch over great blotches.

I’ll write again once life has motion.

Sorry I’ve been so silent lately, but I had to come out of hiding today. It is my one-year blogiversary!

I think the first blog I wandered into by accident was Jordon Cooper‘s. I remember thinking, “I don’t get it. It looks like random thoughts from one person. What is the appeal?” My gut told me there was something to it that I just wasn’t seeing. So as I wrote in my very first entry, “I’m really here because I want to learn what blogging is about, and like anything else, how can you learn without doing?”

What I learned was astonishing: that in a computer-based world of networks and hyperlinks, here was a system that depended on people. We, the readers, are the linking agents. I started wandering around, and found various interesting conversations. And some wonderful people found me.

So whether you are a close friend (old or new), a regular visitor, or just happen to be passing through, thank you. Leave a comment! (And for my homeys who say, “I don’t know how to leave a comment,” it’s easy. See the link that says Comments? Click it, and fill in the form.)

I’ve been pretty busy lately, so my posts have been few. But there have been good comments lately, check them out. You can get to them easily in the “recent comments” section in the right margin. I moved the section up to make it more noticeable. (TypePad makes it sooo easy…)

Hanson and any others: If you are interested in moving to a new blog provider, check out TypePad‘s features and pricing and see what you think. I’ve been beta-testing it and haven’t been able to share any details. But now they’ve taken the gloves off the testers, so if you have any questions, ask away!

Cool: Every time someone posts a comment, I immediately get an email. So I don’t have to continually check for new comments.

Cooler still: I can give a 20% discount to up to 20 friends.

I’m still getting settled in, so pardon any dust. I’m testing TypePad, and for me, this is a big step up. For some time, I have envied the rich features of Movable Type blogs (such as integrated comments, full syndication support, and that TrackBack thing that mysteriously reports who is linking to a certain posting); now you get to try them out on my site!
Moving all my old postings over was quite easy. But I also moved the comments, copying and pasting each one. (Anal? Me?)