It Isn't "Jaws"

My New Web Site

I'm building a new home on the Web. It's just started, so don't expect much content. I've chosen a visual theme, organized categories, and added a few paragraphs and a couple of galleries.

After a conversation on Facebook, consulting with my friend Andy the graphic artist/web site maker, reading reviews and customer love/hate discussions, and watching a few videos, I finally decided on Weebly. The test drive was easy and free, and I liked what the site could do (lots of things, but I especially wanted an easy way to build galleries). The one-hour video tutorial was excellent, although I picked up everything I needed to get a good start before watching it just by playing around for awhile. Weebly was so easy, I started adding final content even as I was experimenting. That's why, if you go there today, it's hard to tell what is experiment and what will stay. I threw in the site name, "Tapirgal's World," and I liked it. But then I had a problem. "Tapirgal's World" was the name of my personal blog, so the blog name would have to change. 

Believe it or not, I have just spent two days trying to come up with that new name (as I write this, the name is "Tapirgal's Journey." (I say that for when it changes again.) It is kind of a boring title, but for now it says what I mean. There is a fun book called, Now All We Need Is a Title: Famous Book Titles and How They Got That Way, wherein we learn that choosing the right title can take longer than writing the book. Would Jaws have become an international phenomenon and part of world culture if they had named it, Why A Lot of People were Afraid to Go in the Water One Summer? Apprently the name was finalized in about the last three seconds before the book went to press. Benchley and the editors had been batting around titles that nobody could agree on and basically nobody liked until they finally went with the one that everybody disliked the least, and the meeting-closer understatement was, "It doesn't matter, it will never sell, anyway."

My new title is not "Jaws," but it does say who I am (in a way), and what the blog is about. I guess you would have to read enough posts to know whether the journey is in interior or exterior space, but it's about both at different times, so that's fine. I had "Journal," but it felt wrong. It's amazing how many titles have felt wrong. The title. among other things, needs to remind me to record something now and then. I have not made many posts this year. The year has been overfilled with work due to building the new web store and training two new employees, In addition, these past four-plus years have been about some pretty intense recovery issues from parathyroid disease and the aftereffects of the surgical cure. The endocrine system is pretty interesting as well as having the ability to cause no end of emotional and physical trauma and make way too many doctors say "I don't know" and send a bill anyway. Fortunately, a big chunk of that part of the journey is beind me. Maybe I will write more about it later. One of the side effects of this whole "event" is that typing comes with consequences. Even dictating does.

I wanted to mention "Welcome to America," Lee's first post about his trip across the US with Sergio. I talk with them many times a day and Lee textx photos. I only wish I were well enough to join them. Maybe in another few months or a year I can do that much traveling - I hope! Also, thanks to Lee for helping me think about blog titles. Lee's Daily Adventure is about perfect.

My Web Page: Tapirback.com

(E)merging

Astoria, Oregon ~ November 3, 2011

Eeesh. Photos are so smart now that they have their own orientations. For some reason this eel will not stay upright on Blogger. Being an eel, he probably doesn't mind. But I do. I can't fix it.

I have to think about this. Not the eel, but blogging. One of my goals for the new year was to consolidate at least some of my scattered projects. Another was to come out from behind the curtain of my online store store and the Tapir Fund. I felt like I needed to repackage both into who I really am instead of maintaining them as faceless entities outside of myself. The idea is frightening, but the alternative has begun to seem ridiculous, and emerging feels inevitable.

Tonight I attended a writers' online chat, and the author leading the Q&A discussion emphatically said that a writer should combine all of their interests into one blog and market themselves rather than just their projects or products. I like the idea. It fit with my notion that I would feel less scattered and fried if I consolidated. There are a couple of blogs I think I would not want to merge or give up, but I like the idea. I'm going to work with it. She said that all of the strands should come together in one home location. My place of consolidation has been Tapirback, but that is only a top-level web page. It's not dynamic. 

These days, she said, people want to see real. They want to see who you are. They identify with you, they like you, and they want to buy your book or product. You are selling you. That is scary, but I believe it. I don't know that my blog is here to sell books, but for years I've neglected to make it the journal I want it to be. If I talk about my work and someone buys a book, that's great, but this is not "an author platform," it's just me. If they like my art, that's good, too. Pull it together. Here. Not all over the web. This is, hopefully, symbolic of the year.

The timing for tonight's online revelation was uncanny. I had been thinking all day about starting yet another blog for my reworking of All Eight Went into a Kindle book, but the whole idea was disturbing. I could not see this book merged with any of the blogs I already have, nor could I see myself starting blog number ten. So thank god I tuned in. I seem to be paying attention to the signals.

My Web Page: Tapirback.com.

"On the Pavement:" Pulling the Plug

Oxford, England ~ February 18, 2010

Divinity School, Bodleian Library

This is the photo I began with when I started my "On the Pavement" blog. Last week I decided to close it down, and I exported all of the posts (along with their comments) and imported them to Tapirgal's Daily Image. Today I'm actually pulling the plug on the blog and deleting it. In the meantime there had been one post left for anyone visiting:

Come visit Tapirgal's Daily Image.

"On the Pavement" was fun, I still like the concept, and contrary to urban legend, I had not even begun to run out of images of what lies under our feet. I simply did (and still do) have too many blogs. I've imported every post with comments into Tapirgal's Daily Image. For those who visted and left your comments, THANK YOU! You will see "on the pavement" photos fairly often my other blog. I can't help taking them :)

Back in college, in an anthropology class, I learned about lumping and splitting (do you call it a separate species, or lump it with an existing species?). There are people who tend to do one or the other, but I expect that many of us vascillate. I go through distinct periods of lumping and splitting elements of my life. Last spring and summer I split several of my photo categories into individual blogs, and now it seems time to lump several of them back together.

Like any creative project, a blog seems to have a life of its own, a personality. It may be more or less successful both creatively and as something that attracts followers. As I said above, I enjoyed "On the Pavement," but it's time to throw it back into the mix. Today I think I'll begin the same process with "Animal Art Along the Way." These two blogs have been fun for me, but at the moment I don't feel the need to maintain them separately. I had also started a blog last summer of animal photos, but for some reason it was easier to can that one and add it back into "Tapirgal." These other two I have really enjoyed, so the choice was harder.

By the way, the Picasa albums that Google uses to maintain these blogs will remain. You can see the Pavement pictures here.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Dinosaur Bone Puzzle Day and Some Work on the H/J Blog

I'd been waiting for these to fill an order for dinosaur skeleton puzzles (models), so I was very happy to see them arrive - but I also thought I was going to have a helper here to sort out the six different dinosaur types (Pteranodon, Stegosaurus, Velociraptor, Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, and - oh, yes - that famous dinosaur, Woolly Mammoth). It's great when you get to do this stuff and call it "work." Anyway, as it turned out, I was able to get them sorted and re-boxed myself, although it took most of what I had to put into it today. The re-boxing is because I am only shipping out part of what came in, and they need to be specific quantities of each dino. It seemed like a lot more stuff than you see here, and actually several packed boxes are already outside the photo area. I didn't exactly need the fan today, as it poured for most of 12 hours or so.

The inflatable dinosaur (which is not part of this project) stayed around to help keep an eye on the process.

This is not quite as exciting an image, but it was also a lot of fun, and -YES! - I begin to feel like I'm accomplishing something on this new direction of the Hudson/Joy project. I spent a lot of time last week organizing the blog better, and tonight I spent a lot of time transferring journal entries and scans and also figuring out how to work with the 1800s dates in blog format so that it doesn't take forever to put the posts together. With the exception of one love letter and marriage proposal (which is truly amazing and romantic), most of the entries are not that much fun to read yet. Some aren't bad, but I had to start somewhere, and that was really hard to decide.

After posting some material from 1856 when Hudson was already in Iowa, I decided to go back and make my starting point the marriage proposal linked above. After that, without an answer, Hudson goes west to Iowa, and the history begins to get interesting, because the state was really just getting settled, and then also on the home front, his letters with Helen start heating up. This is a good place to begin a long stretch of the historic and romantic material, but I also love the earlier years. I really had to think about it, but there is a certain momentum that tells a story beginning in 1855. Eventually I'll go back and fill in, but much of that is already in the chapters I've had printed. After a certain point in 1856, it will all be new.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

About My Blogs, and Fun with Stats

From my Animal Photos blog (now merged)

Both of these pix have appeared on my other blogs, but today I combined two blogs and wanted to mention it. I wasn't enjoying the animal photos blog very much. I'm not sure if it's because 1) I don't have that many good animal photos, or 2) they felt like the needed to be integrated rather than separate, or 3) I was making it too boring and too much like work by feeling responsible for figuring out the species and linking it to good information, or 4) all of the above. Anyway, the animals seemed like they needed to be integrated with Tapirgal's Daily Image, so that's what I did. Blogs should either be fun or part of my job, and the animal one turned out to be neither, exactly.

From my Tapirgal's Daily Image blog

After messing around with individual transfers, I realized I could just export the whole animal pix blog and import it into Tapirgal's Daily. Wow! Too cool! And fast.

So now I have 8 blogs, and I'm considering starting two more. It's really not insane. OK, it is addicting, but not insane. Beyond the "different subjects" reason and the "search engine optimization (SEO) for business" reasons, it's just a fun way to work with photos and the occasional thought.

I don't know if the stats on Blogger are new or if I just found them, but I was astonished at the hits some of my blogs are getting. Here they are, the brief justification for their existence, and the number of hits they each got in August. In no particular order:

. My Personal Journal in Pictures: (The one you're reading.) A lot of pix, but not that personal. Although the name keeps changing, it's the same blog I started with: my first, and I consider it my "basic" blog. It's a long chronology and fun, but is never up to date, and never will be as long as I keep taking photos and have things to do besides sitting a the computer (868 hits in August, which is not bad considering I haven't worked on it lately, but it does have a lot of subjects).

. Tapirgal's Daily Image: A random image each day from my archives. Very satisfying for some reason (561 hits in August).

. On the Pavement: I realized I was taking a lot of photos of things we walk on every day. It turns out, it's fun to see them in one place (254 hits in August, pretty good for a new blog without much PR and an esoteric topic).

. Animal Art Along the Way: Fun, and long overdue. I realized I take pictures of animal art everywhere I go without really thinking about it (386 hits in August, still pretty new; many more than I expected from the few Facebook fans it has).

. Astoria, Oregon, Daily Photo: Just what it says. Part of the City Daily Photo family (4,253 hits in August, quite a surprise; even though there are 880 fans on Facebook as of today, this number was beyond expectations).

. Tapir and Friends Animal Store: The offical blog for the Tapir Preservation Fund's animal-themed online store (4,588 hits in August, another big surprise; this blog lies fallow a lot of the time, but Lee has been helping with daily posts lately, showing real animals and not just the toys and replicas I usually blog about).

. Tapir Preservation Fund (TPF): The official blog of the Tapir Preservation Fund (491 hits in August; this surprised me as being on the low side, but I have not done much with the blog in any consistent way; I intend to fix that now that I feel like I have more time and focus for it, and some other things have become organized).

. Hudson and Joy: A History in Letters: This is specifically for posting letters, documents and information found in an attic and a basement. I haven't done much besides setting up the format and posting a few letters. This will become a really interesting resource as time permits - hopefully soon (82 hits in August; actually, more than I expected).

And what are the two upcoming new blogs? Stay tuned :) One is about rainforest conservation and one is a fun thing about tapirs and travel.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Fort Clatsop before it burned down

In going through my photos, I've been doing a lot of backdated blog posts. The other day I put a series of pictures online that I took at Fort Clatsop near Astoria before the fort burned down a couple of years ago. In fact, the photos are from 2001. You can see them here with descriptions. I especially like the photo above. I assume the boat is still there, but it will be interesting to go back and see how much has changed. The boat is at the end of a path on the fort grounds. The part of the fort that burned was the actual compound replica near the museum. It's been rebuilt, and I haven't gone back to see it yet. The day I took the pix in 2001 was a pleasant, gentle afternoon, and the pictures reflect that. I was new here then, and just discovering Oregon. It was cool to find this so close to home.

Bike ride in the sunset, work on the web

It hasn't rained for the past two days, and I took my bike out just before sundown and rode the River Walk past Safeway to the East Mooring Basin and onto the paved jetty, a great place to get some extra distance. The River Walk is beautiful, but seems so short on a bike. In the next couple of years, so I've heard, the city will extend it to Tongue Point. I hope so. There were six or seven ships just lolling about on the river today. They don't usually move much on Sundays. Here is one silhouhetted against the Astoria-Megler bridge, our 4-mile connection to Washington state.

I spent most of the day working on my web site - on the parts I don't have time for during the week, when web work is really about work. I added the rest of my blog links to the Tapirback main page, and I tried to address the sea lion issue in my photo section. I've had the page up since last October, but I could never find the pix on Google's image search. I thought, "Well, there are just that many sea lion pictures online (and there are), but exact quotes didn't bring up the page, so I checked and it wasn't indexed, I don't know why. I took out some code that may have been a problem on two of my non-indexed pages, but that same code didn't appear on a third non-indexed page. I don't know what the deal is, since the site has about 1,400 indexed pages, or if taking out that code will make a difference. Other pages in the same section are in Google's index. Besides the sea lions, the other two that weren't were pictures of the Arc de Triomphe and a page called Paris, Here and There. I redesigned the tops of the pages and made better navigation. Now time and the Googlebot will tell if it helped. I have so many pictures I want to put up that every bit I do on the basic structure will make it easier to be productive in the future. I started the section in about 1996, and several incarnations of the format and structure are still apparent. I guess that's the nature of an organic web site. Building one (and rebuilding and rebuilding it) is interesting (and fun), not the least of the reasons being the organizational challenge. I took a few minutes to dramatize the lead-in page from the Journey of Wandering Paths, which was pale and boring. Originally this section was supposed to be huge, but it fizzled out at 48 pages and now many of them look outdated to me. I still love the idea of combining art (mainly collage) and words into a bigger digital collage all linked together like a snarl of wires. Each page became a design project back in the 1990s, and it was fun. Maybe someday I'll get back to it. One of the next rehabs has got to be The Tapir Gallery (online since March 15, 1996, partly revised and partly original). And, I'll continue working on the photo section of the site. It's one of my dreams to expand the photo segment to HUGE. On a daily basis, Tapir and Friends Wildlife World Gift Shop gets a lot of attention, but it, too, can use some design and clean-up. Lee has been a tremendous help on the gift shop site the past six months.

Posts and plugs

A couple of days ago I started a blog about my father. It started with a post on the Tapir Preservation Fund blog about the sad and untimely death of Nico van Strien. You can read the post. While writing it, I began thinking of my father. My dad's birthday was a couple of weeks ago, and the anniversary of his death is coming soon. The one post led into the other thought, and then I wanted to make a blog in honor of my father. After his death, I intended to collect some material about his life and put it into notebooks for some of the family. I bought the notebooks, collected a couple of things, and got sidetracked. Then I moved. At the moment, I can't find the original collection of things. They aren't gone, they just haven't been found yet.

It's been a busy couple of years. It's time to find my other creative side again (the more personal art, writing, and synthesizing) and play with some of the less-work-related projects I enjoy. I can't really say non-work related, because for the past 11 years tapirs have been my work. They are still a passion and part of my fun, but I need to approach them again from another angle. Ideas are beginning to flow again. That's good.

Oh, and here are the plugs. One of the things I was thinking about was using CafePress for some of my art ideas (and for the tapirs). This came about after a discussion of using that site to sell tapir items for World Tapir Day. Anthony from Australia and Kendra from the US brought up the idea, I checked it out and liked what I saw - for myself as well as for the tapirs. So I was talking with my brother (Gary Todd), who was also needing to find an outlet in something besides work, and he put up a couple of products while I was still noodling around with research and thinking. I especially love his "Corporate Helpers" slogan. It's subtle. One of the jokes is, he IS from Corporate and he has been travelling to the satellite companies. But he gets it. He's got a few more, too, and I hope they sell. That would be fun. [Edited March 2, 2008: Another favorite is Buzzword Bingo. Follow the same link to his store.]

Kate . . .

Sheryl says, "Somewhere between blogging and scrapbooking and learning about Cascading Style Sheets, there must be a common denominator about organization and expression."

Kate says, "I wish there were a Quote of the Day board I could post this on, because it contains a key to life. I'm sure of it."

Sheryl says, "T. katii, do you want me to set up a blog for you? I know how now :-p"