Party of One / Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

Blank space graphic used for formatting.

Party of One / Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

Everything's back to normal.

Party of One / Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

Flickr to the rescue ...

Party of One / Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

The latest mystery on Vox is resolved.

Party of One / Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

Is it here?

Party of One / Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

It's not here

Party of One / Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

My blog at Vox, as it appeared immediately after I uploaded a few screenshots mentioned here on Vox and in a mirrored copy of the post on Mostly Evil.

Party of One / Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

Located in Chicago, near the Newberry Library

bvides posted a photo:

Outside in the snow (looking extra pathetic) waiting for somebody to come play!

Lilly Hunter posted a photo:

The interior of this cafe and all of the furnishings were designed by the famous Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh. A forest of chairbacks...

cheungnick posted a photo:

[camera : nikon fm2 / carl zeiss 2/50 / kodak portra 400NC]

rwchicago posted a photo:

Autopsea posted a photo:

on my hand :) Lepadogaster lepadogaster

dolce gerhard posted a photo:

Party of One / Joseph Dunphy posted a new topic:

Useful, but difficult to click onto, so I thought I'd better include a link to that graphic.

Party of One / Joseph Dunphy posted a new topic:

I go to places, usually in Chicago, but sometimes on vacation. I write about the experience over on Yelp, and also on Vox for reasons to be discussed later. I would like to give my readers some of the experience of walking into these places I've been, so, if I may, I'll sometimes take photos - maybe even a lot of photos, once I know what I'm doing with my digital - and create a sequence, like stills out of a movie.



I'll then post them here, and blog some of them over on Vox and elsewhere, where I'll expand on what I've seen to an extent that would be a gross imposition on my fellow Yelpers, were I to do it all in a review on that site. You'll come by, see what brilliant images I've posted, and favorite my images, leading me to amass a vast fan club and win fame, fortune, and eventually a full time job from all of that awesome networking. Tenure track, of course, or at least something with a corner window office on the top floor.



It could happen. Why are you looking at me like that?

Seeing how a photo looks when embedded into a blog, using an image from my Flickr photostream

       

What you are on is something I call a “comment blog”, on which I discuss some of the discussions in which I’ve taken part, and some of the blog posts I’ve read that were written about subjects that I’ve written about myself on the main blog associated with this side blog. Think of this as being part of the footnote section for my main blog. Anybody else who has been to graduate school knows that this is no insult to my host - footnotes can be really important. They are what connect one’s own work to the work of others.

In the case of this blog, such seriousness of purpose might seem a little exaggerated. Most of what I write on the main blog, at least at first, will just be reviews of places I’ve visited in the real world, offline, usually in Chicago, and the sharing of a few brief stories about my visits. Not the lack of self-confidence as I refrain from using the word “anecdote”, with its promise that the story will be an amusing one. No, just journaling, something that doesn’t sound very scholarly, or like something in need of much footnoting. Still, experiences are good to share, because one’s own might be non-representative of those a place has to offer, and I will let the discussion wander. The reviews are just the beginning.

Wander onto what? Looking at a listing of groups I moderate at Flickr, one can see a few possibilities. One might notice that I’m acquiring an interest in handicrafts, including the making of soap, a subject that I mistakenly considered to be a trivial one, until a past girlfriend introduced me to a sort of luxury that I wouldn’t have imagined existed. Yes, there is some virtue to trying a product that Dial did not make. It’s actually an art form, a very ephemeral sort of art, that one experiences through touch as well as smell and sight. A form that can great harm to its audience if its practitioners don’t know what they’re doing, because soap is made by the action of a caustic agent (lye) on fat. I was surprised, not altogether unpleasantly, to find that, as an absolute beginner, I had inherited a soap making group of my own, but not altogether pleasantly, either. The truth is, somebody could post a very dangerous recipe right now, and I wouldn’t know. I have a great deal to learn, and advertise my lack of knowledge on the group, as I am ethically obliged to do, so that visitors will know that recipes posted there should not be assumed to be safe. They’ll have to do as I do, and do their reading, some of which will be about chemistry. Hence, a little footnoting and a slightly more academic tone, albeit that of a student, not of a professor - think of my posting on this topic as class papers, posted with no confidence on my part that I’ll be earning an A.

The world in which I dwell is an impoverished sort of place that’s only getting poorer, with no real hope of better times ahead, which for the most part is a very bad thing, indeed, but it does offer one small consolation. The notion is returning that the things we enjoy in life, that aren’t as spiritual or personal, aren’t just things we buy, but sometimes things we create for ourselves. Pay what the market will bear or do without are not the only options. So, whenever one looks at something that one might buy, given the cash and denied the free time, one is presented with a whole wealth of possible topics to explore, as one considers the possibility of doing it, oneself, and that’s some of what my blog is going to be about. In the case of the soap, as a poor man, I can’t really keep going to the store to buy $5.00 bars of soap everyday, but making my own might be an option. Making my own electronics is something I can definitely start spending more time doing, and that’s something that I can talk about on a much more sophisticated level, and so on.

Footnotes will definitely be useful, and needed in a number of cases. I know that I will take the safety of my readers very, very seriously and do my homework as well as I can, which personal history would suggest will be reasonably well, but you don’t know me, so you don’t know that. Some of what I hope to be finding and linking to will be recognized authorities in the relevant fields, which I am not, so that when I make a claim that I’ve read something, the need to take than on faith will vanish swiftly, with click on one’s mouse. Whether the sources I need can be found online is not clear at the moment, but I will be looking.

Is it really 1:52 am, my time? I need to get to bed. More, later.

All Chicago - Activities, Restaurants and Businesses Prev | Hub | Sites | Join | Next

Internet People Webring Prev | Hub | Sites | Join | Next