I remember a phase of tealart where it seemed like I was writing more entries about what new things that we'd developed (for the site) and what kinds of often parrellel developments ooccurred in my life. I can't imagine that TealArt made a particularly interesting website to read at that point. I think of it as our "young idealistic schemes." Since then, due to a lot of things, I think we've found some more interesting things to talk about, I've settled down with regards to my (academic) interests and become a more reflexive knitter, and most importantly I've found a mindset for TealArt writing that works for me. Having said that, there have been some rather important changes to the site and my first mini-series on productivity has basically come to a conclusion. And thus, I've begun to think that sometimes, a good old fashioned update post is necessary, and given that I'm on break this week; now seems like the perfect time.
We've done a little bit of reorganization and redesign around the new "tumble log" or "tumblog" or whatever you want to call it, the page is located here and mirrored on the right hand sidebar of most pages of the TealArt site. What this does is look at a host of other sites/services that we post things and then, pulling RSS feeds in from those sites, creates a running (tumblling) log of our activities. I was listening or reading something that said that tumblogs worked the best when you had a small group and a lot of randomness. That sounded the world like TealArt, and thankfully I was able to pull together all the parts pretty well, and there it is. While I don't think a week or so is enough time to make a jujudgment about how well a TealArt project is going to work, I remain hopeful. If you like the tumblog idea check out
The other thing to note in this update is the formating idea of "series" which is of course a revival of the "column" idea that I labored (albiet falsely) for another web-venture. The productivity series, which ran for five or so episodes. Soon I'll post a summative post for the series, because I think asside from future random musings is completed. I enjoyed engauging with these ideas, as productivity particularly in the digital age is something that I'm really interested in working towrds perfecting; however, more than that I really enjoyed having a "column" or some such due almost every week. It got me writing in a way that I think is particularly helthy and useful for me.
So while I'm on break this week, in addition to reading a rather lot about Death (for a project on psychotherapy and berevement, don't ask. really.), I'm going to begin planning and working on the next series of TealArt articles. To replace the productivity series, I'm going to be putting forth articles about Hypertext and "new" digital (textual) media, in terms of both consumption--reanding--and production--writing. I've been reading Theodor Holm Nelson's Literary Machines, and in combination with a renewed personal interest in fiction and in "Wikis," I think there's a lot to talk and think about there and I hope you'll be interested in this... Please, also, contribute to the conversation either via email or in the comments section.
For the record, I'd like to point out that my "new" writing projects (productivity, and hypertext), mirror my old interests (mobile technology, and eBoook technology.) Just saying.
For the remainder of the semester, that is until the begining of May, I'm also going to have a series of essays related to knitting and design at TealArt. I'll talk about what defines my current design work, challenges I'm facing as I attempt to teach knitting, and musings on "traditional knitting." I frequently think about TealArt as a knitting blog, but I'm realizing that I don't post knitting content to the site nearly enough. I hope this will help remedy the situation. These writings, are incedently a contributing to a project that I'm working on for school, which I might talk more about at some point, but I hope you will enjoy them as well. Also, I remain hopeful regarding forthcoming pictures of my knitting.
In terms of a publishing schedule, I'd look for knitting posts (with luck) early in the week, I'm thinking Tuesday, but my scheduele on Tuesdays is hellish, and hypertext posts on Friday or Saturday. That's tentative. While I do expect to do a great deal of writing and planning durring this break, I'll make no promises about what material gets posted this week. Stay tuned!
I look forward to talking with you all more in the near future.
Cheers, tycho(ish)