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Dur, dur, d’�tre chien de geek

Extrait d’une conversation entre A Frog in The Valley et moi hier soir, pendant la r�union des YULbloggers.

Moi: Il a l’air de quoi au juste, ton aggr�gateur de fils RSS?
Frog: Tiens justement, j’ai mon ordinateur portable. Attends, je te montre. (Sort son portable. Le d�marre sous Linux, puis le red�marre sous Windows.)
Moi: (Observe le portable en attendant que Windows d�marre enfin. Remarque que l’appareil n’a plus de touche CTRL.) Elle est o�, ta touche CTRL?
Frog: (Me montre l’emplacement habituel de la touche BACKSPACE, o� se trouve maintenant la touche CTRL.) Elle est ici.
Moi: Pourquoi tu l’as chang�e de place?
Frog: J’ai eu besoin de remplacer la touche BACKSPACE. Elle est tomb�e par terre et mon chien l’a mang�e.

�clat de rire g�n�ral. Je traduis pour B. qui n’a pas compris.

Moi: His BACKSPACE key fell off the laptop unto the floor and his dog ate it.
B: (Laughs 30 seconds after everybody.) This sounds like a great title for a cybernovel.
Frog: … or a web site.
Moi: MydogatemyBACKSPACEkey dot com

Rires.

Moi: Est-ce qu’il fait ce genre de choses l� souvent, ton chien?
Frog: Mon chien? Je n’ai plus ce chien.
Moi: Qu’est-ce qui lui est arriv�?
Frog: (Me regarde, incr�dule.) Qui veut d’un chien qui mange sa touche BACKSPACE?

Was it as good for you as it was for me?

Last year, on February 5th, I created this blog and posted my very first entry. I had looked into Blogger a year before, in 2001, but I didn’t quite get it and put it in my « read more about this » list. It wasn’t until a full year had passed that I was finally able to explore the subject some more. I was doing research for an article about blogging, and I thought that the best way to understand this phenomenon was to create a blog, in order to familiarize myself with the tools available. I didn’t know where I was going with this and had no idea if I would keep it up or not. The idea of maintaining such a personal space on the Web made me a bit nervous, and I was rather naive about the whole scene, technically and socially, even though I was aware (as an ex San Franciscan who worked in high tech) that this was a very hip thing to do, if you did it right (and if you had started publishing your blog in 1999…).

Here I am, a year and many many posts later. Has my life changed since this self-publishing habit? Not fundamentally, but my daily routine has. My Web reading now comprises 75% blogs vs other sites, such as Wired News, Salon, The New York Times, etc. I am familiar with the passions, interests and other follies of a fascinating bunch of men and women from different countries around the world. With their help, I find out about great Web sites, news stories and events I might not have been exposed to otherwise. Their creativity is very contagious. Plus, in an hour or so, I will head out to go to the YULblog get-together in Montr�al and I will meet people who would have not crossed my path otherwise. Hell, I even met my one-of-a-kind beau through one of these meetings, so yes, there have been a few life changes because of blogging!

Even though I already wrote magazine articles for a living (alongside television directing and a few other things), writing on this blog – with its small audience which has been consistently increasing in the last year – has given me a much needed discipline and has helped me warm up those typing muscles. I do not believe it is a total coincidence that I have finally started to work on a novel after promising myself that I would do so for years and years. I am starting to see more clearly want I want to do and where I’m not willing to go, and this means that as a freelancer, I’m getting better at saying no to jobs I don’t truly care for. It’s a newly found focus which I appreciate very much.

In other words, blogging has been very good for me.

Alors joyeux anniversaire, ni vu ni connu !

Montreal, 5pm.

Today we had ice rain, then snow, followed by rain and a heavy, gray sky. The kind of heaviness that affects your mood and makes it hard to get motivated to do anything.

And now this image, taken from my office window. The kind of sky I imagine I’ll get to see in La Havana in a month or so. Oooh, lovely thought.