| Main | Archives | About kitchenMage | My Cookbook | Shop | Connect:
|
I may not make New Year's resolutions but my web sites do. This one is determined to get a Facebook page up and running this year. I made one for it but it is very lonely. Downright sad, in fact.
We can't have that—an idle Facebook page is the Devil's workshop or something—so I posted a question designed to inspire rowdy conversation, which will require you to like my page to discuss. Devious, huh?
Come on over and give me someone to talk to. Pretty please?
Finally rolled out the new design and while I have beaten on it for many, many months I am sure it will have broken bits. If you find any of them, please let me know.
There are a few things not yet done but they will filter out in the next few days. Until then, I'd say more but I really, really need a drink.
Someone said to me recently, "I don't read, can't trust, sites without an 'About' page." (paraphrased and in quotes to annoy the editors) Once I got over sputtering to myself about having a very public real name, not to mention a link to my cookbook right there at the top of every page, I decided I'd use it as a nudge to actually write one.
Then I ran headlong into my inability to write about myself. Painfully. Repeatedly. Ouch!
At one point, I turned to my writer buds on twitter for consolation and discovered that logobiophobia (my new word for fear of writing about your own life) is as common as drinking. (There is a business there, but I am guessing few writers would want to do it.)
Failing to come up with words, well coherent ones anyway, I turned to avoidance doodling illustrations as a way to simplify my explanation of what this site is about.
Good idea. Being a geek, I lean towards the scientific/mathematical representations so I not have a folder full of pie charts, graphs and this: my Venn diagram of kitchenMage.
I found the exercise of making a graphical presentation of the site - not to mention paring it down to three words - helped me sort out some of the noise in my brain about my current/future direction here. Starting with the new design which will be out by next week. The rest? Stay tuned. I'll let you know as I figure it out.
The one thing I know: there will be a real About page. Not because I agree that you can't trust sites without one, but because now I think I can write one that might even be worth reading.
Edited to add: The most common response to this post is a tweet saying, "You stole my Venn!" After a few such, @jeters and I decided that a badge was in order and here it is.
If it fits you, please feel free to snag a copy and post on your site. I'd appreciate if you linked the image back to this post so your readers can get the context. I'll add a list to this post of everyone who lets me now they have joined the Snarky Geeky Foodie cabal.
Download 450px wide image
Download 160px wide image
What would a Venn diagram of your site look like? I would love for you to make one and you might find it interesting. If you do, please come back and share the link with me.
The eternal/infernal site redesign is almost done but it is currently lacking a list of sites I love. I'm not calling it a blogroll for real - only in my SEO-friendly title - because I respect you all more than that. I'd like my list to include something other than the typical ten sites that everyone lists in hopes of some Google juice so I am turning to you to help me make my list interesting and fun.
Do you have a site you think might fit in a list of places I should be reading? Tell me why in a comment and I'll take a look. (I am planning on rotating the sites on my list so comments on this article will stay open forever.)
Here are my basic requirements:
Think your site fits? Please leave a comment with a link and one paragraph (max) telling me why I'd like it. I especially encourage people with new/small sites to jump in.
...and by reason, I mean a thousand - or 1024 - of them.
Reason #27: Because stupid little things like that huge date up there can take an hour to hunt down and even when you have changed every reference to the stupid style it still doesn't work. The truly frustrating part is that I was nowhere near those bits, though maybe the kitten that was on my lap was. You think this innocent baby would do that?
This, of course, on the day I moved around A Year in Bread's DNS and confused the heck out of the sidebars (What do you mean there are images that no longer exist? I thought the Internet was forever!)
This is my kick in the butt to wrap up the redesign. Just as soon as I get this other thing finishes. This thing that is supposed to be real next Monday.
Curious about the other thing? Click on over to twitter and follow @notLikeNormal, which is short for Not Like Normal People, a line that was dropped on someoneElse and I by an oh-so precocious (and precious) nine year-old. Wise beyond her years, that one.
...for a bit.
While reading Dawn's admirable New Year's Resolutions, I was inspired to make a few of my own although, being me, I am going to have to modify the terms a bit. To wit:
First, a year is entirely too long. Maybe I spent one too many afternoons in a meeting at behemothSoft but I want a much shorter cycle on this.
Next, let's examine the whole "resolution" concept — it's so officious sounding — something which I doubt I'd pass as, even at my most corporate. It also sounds like it takes a meeting to get a resolution appproved, or at least an ad hoc committee. Way too much work. Way too much.
Metrics are another issue. New Year's Resolutions are usually assessed on a pass/fail system, while most people operate on an incremental scale. Black and white v. shades of gray — or maybe even actual colors — I vote colors! Well, adults deserve as much of a grading scale as schoolkids, plus style points. Gotta have style points.
Okay so my life is very boring, but I am excited. Sarah Gilbert, another confessed rosemary thief, saw my Saucy article and wrote about it at slashfood!
What I am really curious about is the rosemary thievery--is this a Pacific Northwet phenomenon? Does our greenery grow in such abundance that we feel free to pinch a bit of our neighbor's? I know that anyone who visits me in my fog valley is likely to leave with a box of small plants with which to start their herb garden. And I even have lots of rosemary, one of the apprentices has made it his calling to propagate thousands of them (in one little flower bed at the moment) and an acre or two of amazingly peppery, pungent Greek oregano.
Sarah, if you're reading this, come visit and I'll give you your very own rosemary. Or two.
The Kitchenmage is, by nature, a semi-nocturnal creature, being at her best between dusk and some dark hour that can be counted on one hand. So why, you may ask yourself, is she awake before the dreaded alarm went off today? And more than that, happily restless, like an eleven year old waiting for the latest Harry Potter tome. Well, faithful reader--hmmm, this blog is new enough that the singular may be accurate--it's all for you. Yes, you!
How could this be you ask?
Can I write this, the first, entry in my food blog later? Pretty please with cinnamon-infused whipped cream and long, fragrant curls of lemon zest on top. It's not just that I hate writing about myself--which I do--but I always write the first part of my writing last; Forewords, Introductions, first chapters, they all get put off until the end. It's so much easier to talk about where you're going when you already know where you've been.
Given that, you can only imagine how pleased by the prospect of both writing about who I am and introducing the blog...because the world needs another food blog. Don't get me wrong, I love all the food blogs. Love them far too many hours a day in fact. chuckle. But how to distinguish oneself from Sam, Molly, Biggles, Nic, or Heidi? Or the even more ubiquitous food bloggers, whom I won't mention because everyone else does.
I must have something to do in the kitchen. I have strawberries and chocolate; I am sure I could come up with something to do instead of writing the stupid first post. Maybe it'll write itself while I melt chocolate and dip strawberries.
