Divergence

I'm going to start posting to my old weblog again. I just ran a script that copied all my "public"-security LJ posts since October to my own database, and now I'm picking through them to make sure that they all meet that blog's acid test (the assumption that everyone I know reads it -- not true, but keeps me out of trouble).

I originally made my LJ account at the invitation of a friend so that I could be her LJ_friend as well, and thought it would be a nice place for blogging posts that didn't quite meet the acid test. I started posting here when my server went away for a couple of weeks, but never got around to returning to my old ways.

But now, with P&X about to launch, I feel I should polish up my public face a bit. That means that if my website says "Here is my online journal", the link should actually take you to an online journal, and not a dusty diary that stopped breathing the year before.

So, I choose this route, rather than embedding my LJ in my site. I want to control all my own data! My future weblog projects would be significantly hampered if all the text I played with lived on a different server, which I could only access through LJ's spidery communication protocol. And don't even get me started on how I feel when I have something ingenious to share, and livejournal.com is choking on something! No, I need them all in a neat SQL table on my end, if for no other reason than I can blame myself when things break. So there it is.

I have to admit some hesitancy, since my social life has gotten a lot more active since I started actively LJing, but I think this is coincidence. I started LJing at around the same time I got laid off, and then moved to Cambridge with my friends' help. I did become closer friends with some people, people who are also among my LJ_friends, but I do not think that is the reason.

Hum. I originally thought this would mean I'd post less frequently here, but I am not so sure now how I will divide my attention between these two journals. Last night I was thinking that I might post a long, daily entry to the main one a la James Lileks, and post more manic stuff here, but now I think maybe I'll continue using LJ as my main blog and write a daily-running scron script that stuffs selected LJ posts into my own database. Yes, I'm liking this idea more, even as I describe it. Most interesting.

Foodies

I was going to link to a Slashdot thread about vat-grown meat, which sparked a discussion about vegan diet/philosophy that started interesting but quickly grew too snotty to share. Slashdot is magic, like this.

On a related tangent, I am likely to be living with two or more vegetarians soon, which will undoubtedly lead me further down the path of vague vegetarianism. (Currently I lean towards putting veggies & friends on my plate when I have a choice, but if meat's the easiest thing to get, I don't cry. And, very rarely, i want that steak burrito.)

I really do need to cook more. I've cooked a couple of dishes for my housemates since moving to Chez Chestnut, and it was a lot of fun. I want a "Cooking for Hackers" reference, though. How and why to cook, for curious, creative, and impatient people.