I’ve been posting and thinking about what conventions and styles separate TealArt and tychoish over on tychoish, and I think this post will likely be the culmination of those thoughts. This has been on my mind of late because, I’ve felt this week that running both sites more or less on my own on a daily basis (which I want to do, don’t get me wrong,) is more than I can handle in the current format. So I’ve been giving more thought to this, and I think that describing the differences between the sites and what I hope to accomplish on both sites.

TealArt

TealArt is (ideally) a collaborative “blog,” that posts slightly longer “essays” or “articles” in contrast to many blogs that tend toward exclusively biographical pieces (journals), short moment-to-moment reflections, or various kinds of punditry (political blogging, technology blogging, etc.), although, at some points in its past TealArt has fit into various aspects of these typical blog categories.

TA posts tend to be in the 500-700 word range, that is slightly longer than the typical blog entry, and are posted 5 days a week. Though there are certainly stand-alone posts, many fit into ongoing series' on loosely organized topics. Thus, in some respects TealArt mixes the maga(zine) and blog metaphors, although it would be incorrect to take this too far. Our posts are often off the cuff opinion-pieces, that aren’t throughly polished. TA posts are experimental, though perhaps this is more from the writers' perspective than from the readers: we’re here trying ideas and concepts out on TealArt, to see how they sound outside of our heads.

Topically, TealArt has a history of being all over the map. These days, TA tries to focus on technology, science fiction, and various aspects of hyper/digital text, with occasional dabbles into the realm of knitting. In terms of technology, we’ve tended to think about how we use computers and how technology interacts with culture and individuals. We’ve approached science fiction, through the Station Keeping and commentaries on the genre like this. Though I tend to conceptualize it in reverse, digital/hyper-text discussions on TealArt as been a place for me to think about how we consume and produce text in digital environments. And the knitting content is fairly straightforward, though unlike most knitting blogs, TealArt Knitting content, is more commentary on the craft and often less focused on what I’m actually knitting.

~/tychoish

In contrast to TealArt, tychoish is just me, and I often think of it as a kind of “failed tumble log,” Tumble Logs, like Anarchaia are quick and dirty blogs that collect various kinds of input from around ones travels on the internet, not much commentary, and no commenting. Mine is failed, mostly because I don’t seem to surf the internet in a way that is productive for tumbleloging, and I tend to be a little more verbose, and I thought it would good to have comments. So in the end, I sort of have blogging circa 1999 when I first got into it (but could never get my ass together to do right.)

Initially, the idea for this site was to have something that is basically a reflection of the kind of note taking that I tend to do in my paper/bound notebook, and It’s grown to be something of a reflection of my internal monologue, with various records of things. I post todo lists, brief ideas for writing things, thoughts that are a bit too long for twitter, and other bits of miscellany. Where I aim to have a new TealArt post every day, depending on what I’m doing in real life, I probably post anywhere from 1 on a light day to about 3-6 posts on a heavier a day. The posts are even less though out, and tend to be in the sub-250 word range.

Moving Forward

I really like how things are set up at the moment, and I like the model that both sites are working in, so they’ll likely stay the way they are. I’m not sure how things will work out in the future, and I’ve posted a quick list things todo for TealArt in the future to help figure out a better way to manage this project. I may have someone lined up to be a more serious co-editor in 2008, but that’s a ways off, and I have a lot on my plate between now and then, but I’m still looking a little more seriously for folk who might be a good fit here. I think also, if there were someone writing two regular posts a week, I’d have a lot more time and energy to work on behind the scenes stuff here, like: promotion and design, and other cool projects that need to happen. For the moment, however, nothing’s changing.

I’ll see you next week.

Cheers, tycho