This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera cellphone (which I bought in 2004). This blog is one of the transitions for the new year. I've started it This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera cellphone (which I bought in 2004). This blog is one This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004

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Think of a Squid

1:23 PM Friday, April 22, 2005

[Then think of another squid]

Back in the mists of the Twentieth Century I registered the domain name doublesquids.com. The dot-com boom had not yet hit its peak, and I wanted to get in on it, at least symbolically. A teuthophile (squid-freak) since childhood, I thought the domain name evoked joy and intrigue, suckers and beaks. (Double Squids is actually a Chinese menu item, a mixture of fresh and rehydrated dried squid.)

When I later heard of San Francisco's web hosting service, laughingsquid.net, I signed up, entrusting my precious HTML and images to a fellow teuthophile, instead of the faceless corporate bureaucracy I was using. The rest is history, and the history was updated last night.

Laughing Squid started a blog early this year, and a cool blog it is. Last night, Scott Beale, who bears the title Primary Tentacle, hosted a party at a former brewery in San Francisco. By a series of exquisite coincidences (the gods don't exist, right?) , Scott had just read an old message I had sent him, started a customer blog links page on the Laughing Squid site, my "affogato" post had been picked up by the legendary Jonas Luster of Wordpress, and I suddenly found myself gaining altitude rapidly in the blogosphere. Scott invited me to the party, which, like all good parties, took place in a three-story castle and had naked technonymphs (a few male technosatyrs as well) cavorting in an underground pool of artesian well water. It was a cyberschmoozer's paradise, because I met many illustrious bloggers, including Jonas Luster himself, Technorati's Niall Kennedy, The Ryan King, Brandon Hanvey and Courtney. I heard tales of coffee whose quality far exceeded my Berkeley fantasies, and bone-chilling coffee horror stories (like the sacks of coffeebeans stored next to the men's toilet at one place). Clearly coffee is the nectar of the blogger gods.

But, since I am dropping names and links, I would like to include Elin Sjursen and Mark Bernstein of Eastgate, hypertext pundits, who at this moment, are meeting in Paris with fans of their great product, Tinderbox, with which I write this blog. Elin and Mark were instrumental in launching this blog beyond the East Bay around March 8 of this year, and giving me an international readership, by posting a link in Tinderbox News. (Take a look at the archives of Elin's Bloggerdydoc; she is currently on a well-earned sabbatical from blogging.)—JDL

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