This site is a collection of notes on things that are of interest to me. As such you could and probably should call it a weblog or “blog” (ugh, I hate that word).
I’m an advanced beginner at web design and almost everything I do for that matter, but I love the process of learning and improving so keep plodding on. Hopefully whatever it is I’m doing will be useful and/or enjoyable to you.
Tools
This site is powered by WordPress, an open source content management system. I have a category here called Social Software that among other things, lists some WordPress development issues as I find them.
The templates used on this site are based on Misty Look, a WordPress theme designed by Sadish Balasubramanian and heavily modified by me.
This site should be constructed of valid XHTML and CSS although given my skills, you never know.
This site was built on a Macintosh computer running OS X and yes, I’m a Mac-zealot and post about things Mac often.
If you’d like to track this site with a newsreader you’ll find its two RSS feeds on the sidebar.
Comments
If you comment on an entry, your comment will apear on the sidebar for as long as it takes for others to push you off. The last 10 comments will apear there and will be supplanted by each new comment that comes along. Comment spam is deleted by robot and by human (me) as it is discovered. Off topic or innappropriate comments are deleted as I find them. Some comments get hung up in the spam filter for one reason or another and if they are legit I’ll find them and post them so be patient if this happens to one of yours.
Categories
The category list on the sidebar which is ever changing as I reorganize my sock drawer gives you a snapshot of what’s here. Understand though that I’m into this at many levels and one of the categories of “socks” in the drawer is social software and so, the very software/drawer that holds the socks is a topic of discussion and is constantly being tinkered with.
Header Pictures
All of the header images were taken by me, a variety of things from Japanese katazome prints on handmade paper to aerial images taken from commercial airliners.
Links
After years of sporting a “blogroll” on the sidebar of this site I got rid of that list of external links. But, I find it useful to keep a page of links in a single place and so I’ve added a Links page to this site where I’ll collect useful links relevant to the content here. Not all posts of interesting sites turn into links and not all links are worth blogging about. Think of the links page as a convenience for both you and me.
Flickr
I’ve been interested in virtual communities for quite some time, both the software that allows us to build them and the kinds of social interaction that they enable and I’ve been involved with a few successful ones including flickr where I host most of the photography displayed at this site there.
My Photography
In the next few months I’ll be merging the content of my photography web site, Richard Wanderman Photography with this site but until then, please use that site as a way to see larger versions of my photographs. There is information at that site on how to buy notecards and prints from me.
Advertising and Affiliation
I’ve been experimenting with Google’s Adsense to see if it could generate enough money to offset the visual distraction that it is. The jury is still out on it but I’ve been told that when it works it’s a useful part of this site.
Adsense ads are generated from a pool of ads based on the key word indexing of any particular page. Because of this, ads on individual posts will be more on target than ads in the sidebar. When it works the ads should be relevant to the topic and when it doesn’t you’re likely to see dog food ads on yoga images of the pose “downward facing dog” (not relevant).
I’m both an Amazon “Associate” and a B&H Photo “Affiliate” which means that if you follow various links to those vendors on this site (including these two) and buy things, I get a small referral fee. Buying this way costs you no more and supports this site.
“Associate” and a As I put up more content and as the number of people reading this site increases, my hope is that these small income streams will grow. I consider all of this an experiment. Time will tell if it produces significant income or is a visual distraction and gets in the way.
Our Place
My wife Anne and I live in a traditional saltbox house on five acres of mostly woods with a pond and a stream in a small town called Warren in the northwest hills of Connecticut. From time to time I document some piece of our lives on this site.
If you’ve got questions or general comment or feedback about this site, feel free to send them to me at: rwanderman at gmail dot com.
