There’s a problem with long-running serial texts: where do you begin when you’re a new reader? If you’re writing comics, self-contained story arcs with constant reference to explain why things as they are might be one way (as well as, of course, introducing characters slowly and having a large cast to choose from but only featuring several at a time).

Peter Lindberg decided the way to do this with his weblog was in a summary page. The interesting (but when you think about it entirely obvious) thing about this is that it’s written entirely by hand; no automatically-generated-by-Moveable-Type here. Lindberg has sat down and gone over his posts and links. It’s in part interesting because of what Lindberg himself seems to be discovering about his writing/thoughtprocesses and the way they emerge over long periods of time (as opposed to the shot space of the individual blog post). It may be a time-consuming process for the weblogger, but it’s the most effective and certainly the most literary way of generating context I can think of for a text-based medium.

Normal service will be resumed shortly. Been a bit out of the loop recently – a busy, full weekend, preparation for said weekend, trying to get various things sorted with things on and off line, deal with ideas, learn some CSS, look for employment. Should have time to blog and post something interesting (or at least an interesting photo) from Monday. On Tuesday I should be all broadbanded-up, and then webtweaking gets a lot easier.

Still, I have got some new content for you – just go and check out the new Omnivore; it’s a light little number, and it’s by yours truly.

It may be a brief entry, but it deserved attention:

Singer-songwriter Elliot Smith has died at 34, apparently of suicide. A wonderful recording artist, he’ll be sorely missed in all manner of places. Including over here. If you haven’t heard his work, go and start with Either/Or and work either way from it.

Shameless plugging it may be, but I’ve got to get some publicity somehow:

Omnivore, a weekly-updated creative writing site on the theme of taste has gone live today. So check it out, and do bookmark it for future reference… as time goes on, more features should be added, like an RSS feed for them that wants it. But please go and read. It’s worth your time, trust me.

For dinner tonight, parents have acquired this marvellous vegetable, its surface a little fractal landscape. I just had to take a picture:

(sorry no image borders – working on that today…)

Great post from Lance Arthur on experiences of therapy and learning to connect again. Sometimes I really feel I need to connect back to the world; I mean, I’ll talk to anyone given half a chance, but I need to hunt them down and I always speak first. Sometimes I get worried people get pissed off with me calling or IMing them all the time.

But I feel so much better than I did three years ago. I’m connected in so many more ways (though not in the ADSL sense of the word…). And every day, in this living-at-home-limbo, I go for a stroll, or a walk; some kind of perambulatory fresh air. It helps. Every little bit helps.

I’m going through adolescence all over again, but this time I’m paying someone $130 an hour to help me through it. It does sound a lot like adolescence. I always joke I went through it all at the wrong time – I arrived at University at around 14, and am now about 17. I think I’ve got over that idea, but a year and a half ago, it seemed right. You need to go through it once, though a lot of the time it doesn’t happen when you’re 16. Hell, I didn’t have time for it to happen at sixteen. It was all a delayed reaction to the world.

But it pays off, you know. Because I get to play catch up. And boy, is that fun…