ben.atwood.com.au

Well, I’m back.

It’s been a while. First, there was Bangladesh (which, if I haven’t told you about it already, then you probably didn’t even know I went). Then there was going back to work, including a couple of days at court. Then I wanted to redesign this place, but that didn’t really happen. And, finally, there was the Affair. There was Facebook.

I resisted for a long time. Really, I did. You don’t know how many e-mails were popping up in my inbox, inviting me to join up so I could see friends in the virtual world who I already see in the real world. But then, dear weblog, I caved. I gave in and signed up, and I got caught up in applications and superlatives and questions and traveller’s IQ (which is oddly addictive, though I keep forgetting where tiny islands are). And I forgot you.

People were asking what happened to us, you know. They said, “Ben, what happened to blogging? Is it over? Have you run off with that hussey Facebook?”

That hussey confuses me somewhat. I really only signed up so I could find some old school friends, but then all these other people started finding me, and suddenly there’s zombies and vampires biting me and people sending me imaginary pot plants. Brother Sam had a talk about this last night, and he says that Facebook is a way of people trying to condense identity out of the vapour of groups and networks on-line. You define yourself on Facebook via membership to cliques (though it is a lot less complicated than I remember it being for real), the applications you install, and (occasionally) the number of friends you have.

I don’t know what I think yet. The allure, for me, is finding all those people I haven’t seen in years – once that novelty runs out, I think I might just get bored with it. But part of me balks at the apparent ease with which some people on Facebook are putting their private lives on a very public forum.

Anyway, what’s past is past. Maybe I will redesign before 2008 rolls around. At any rate, this place is now interfaced with my Facebook page through Flog Blog, so you won’t miss out either way.

This is the kind of entry which should be filed under the category, ‘Things only I care about’. Or maybe, ‘Geekery’. Or even, ‘The kinds of posts which will look silly a year later’. But here it is, regardless.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard version 5.0 of tu quoque, and version 1.0 of ben.atwood.com.au, the website which caters for all sorts of silly nonsense and frippery. Please note that the location of this weblog has changed to http://ben.atwood.com.au – the management respectfully requests that all bookmarks, hyperlinks, permalinks, trackbacks, and blogrolls be adjusted to reflect this new change. RSS eaters can find the link to my .xml feed at the bottom of the page.

There have been lots of changes, and because this is a soft launch (of sorts), some things may still be a bit broken and there’s still a lot of dummy content hanging around. Feel free to leave me some (constructive) criticism. Any dodginess you find is probably due to my inexperience with the new content management system, which has been helped along greatly by Dad and Simon, both of whom are much more into this hand-coding-your-own-website bizzo. Thanks, guys!

So, here’s a list of some of the new things for you to explore:

• tu quoque is now just one section of this website – now, you can go to my gallery, read some articles and essays that I will write in the future, browse my Bangla language notes, or flick through the archives (which are still a bit messy). You can also send me secret messages through the online contact form.
• Everything looks shinier and newer, thanks to a complete overhaul. I’m using someone else’s template (this one is called leaf) with extra bits. There are all sorts of nice things about this template, including little icons about the place and an awesome live search plugin.
• I’ve made the move from Movable Type to Textpattern, which seems to be en vogue with my fellow bloggers from church. Textpattern is heaps more flexible and powerful than Movable Type, in some ways, but has the tradeoff of being made by geeks. That means it is, at times, incomprehensible to this web neophyte. However, it does make lots of things easier – for example, I can use forms to simplify and replicate HTML where I need to, and Textpatterns proprietry tag system means I don’t have to handcode everything over and over again. Perhaps I am on my way to receiving my Bachelor of Geekdom (Textpattern).
• Comments are inline now. While I like popup comments, it wasn’t really practical with Textpattern, so after discovering them four versions ago, I’ve relinquished them again. I’m getting used to it. One day, there’s going to be Gravatar(Globally Recognised Avatar) support in there, so you can have your own pictures instead of the speech bubble. And, you can use Textile instead of HTML in your comments if you like. Please note that when you want to leave a comment, Textpattern forces you to preview it first – make sure you click ‘Submit’, or your comment won’t be recorded.

In other news, a lot has happened since we last spoke. As mentioned on the old weblog, I got into Morling College, so I will be a part-time bum for this year and next. College looks like it will be as hard or harder than uni in terms of content, but more relevant to future employment and more encouraging for me as a Christian. Not much on the employment front, for the moment, except some extremely frustrating antics with Middlenexus. I’ve seen Narnia again and loved it much more than when I saw it the first time. I’ve developed a taste for Sufjan Stevens. And I’ve learned how to name objects in Bangla.

I’ve been thinking about the future of my web site since the latest redesign, which was in February 2005. It seems that tu quoque (I never know how to write my weblog name without hyperlinks…it always looks indistinct unless I add some kind of text styling) has grown and evolved since its nervous, tentative beginnings on Upsaid, then on Movable Type. Through the three main redesigns, tq has always remained as a weblog only – it has grown appendages (such as my gallery and the obligatory ‘about me’ page), but it has never really expanded beyond its role as a repository for various observations, thoughts, statements, and the occasional insight.

I was introduced to content management systems a few years ago, when I began contributing to the church website; I then discovered Textpattern, purely by chance, when I was looking for alternative weblog engines for Lorien. At the time, I disregarded it, because I was happy with Movable Type and didn’t really have any ambitions to create bigger and better things. But that was when Dad really latched onto Textpattern – it’s become the content management system he’s used for everything from his own weblog to ministry-related sites to his coffee stash page. Other Sydney bloggers use Textpattern, too, including Simon, Pete, and Danny.

So, since I used Textpattern for a paid web design job, I’ve been thinking about uprooting tq and turning it into a Textpattern-based weblog, which will then be but a ‘module’ (albeit a significant one) in the grander scheme of ben.atwood.com.au. This restructuring has two primary advantages:

• I can create new ‘modules’ for content that wouldn’t ordinarily fit into my weblog, e.g. articles, essays, photographs, etc. The weblog will probably act as the unifier of all these disparate elements, though


• Content will be managed more easily

Of course, using Textpattern means doing a fairly hard-core redesign, both aesthetically and structurally. This is the part I don’t know if I’m up for (particularly since there’s just over two months before the the thesis is due). Still, all these wonderful new site features keep popping into my head, including incorporating photographs into the site style (I like Simon’s use of ‘the spice shot’ from his holiday in Egypt…I’d like to try something similar with a photograph from Bangladesh), use of flavicons, a more original layout, syndicated comments, etc. Gives me something to look forward to.