I’ve also finally gotten around to ditching GoDaddy.com as the host of my website and the harpojaeger.com domain name.  I’ve never particularly liked their backend and other user tools, and they have some rather sexist and objectifying advertisements that I objected to.  A while back, my dad came across a blog post regarding similar issues, which he passed on to me.  I read it at the time (3/9/09 [and it's been in my Gmail Starred items since then]) and decided to switch, and it’s now done.  I also moved renaissanceboy.org over from directNIC, for simplicity’s sake (it redirects here).  I’ve opted to use BlueHost, which is completely awesome so far.  The backend is way better than GoDaddy’s (none of that ASP-and-glitzy-web-2.0 junk) and as an added benefit they don’t rely on sex to sell their products (there’s much more where that one came from).  It’s also a completely reasonable price – slightly more than what I was paying before, but totally worth it so far.

Another project I’m hoping to take on this summer is a total redesign of this site.  I’m thinking of writing my own WordPress theme from the ground up, which should be a pretty interesting project.

If this doesn’t make any sense to you, that’s okay.  The upshot of it for an end user is that the page is way more user-friendly, has some sizzling-hot visual effects (yes, Mr. Spinning-Gear-Progress-Indicator, and Ms. Snazzy-Awesome-Slide-Up-and-Slide-Down-to-Respectively-Hide-and-Show-Content, I’m talking about you), tracks when a poem was begun, not just when it was ended, and is just generally slicker.  Enjoy!

I’ve tested the page pretty thoroughly, and I don’t anticipate any problems.  However, if you do run across something, please let me know using the contact form.

Keep up the good work!  This project has been pretty incredible, and I hope that people will continue to contribute to it.

Activity on the page has been pretty steady recently, which is great.  I’m really pleased with how that project is going.  Please share it with your friends – it’s really becoming something pretty awesome.  Keep up the good work!

So I think the site needs a name.  Rather than just being “harpojaeger.com”, I want to come up with something to call the blog that makes sense, that communicates the sort of things it might be about.  College, politics, religion, culture, and so on.

If you notice the site has weird names in the near future, it may just be because I’m trying things out to see how I like them.  I could imagine myself changing the name (and probably adding a subtitle) and letting it sit for a few days to see what it looks like.  I’d appreciate feedback if you have ideas or thoughts.

Stay tuned for more…

I’ve gone through a lot of different phases with this blog.  I began by using it as sort of a journal of my actions and thoughts.  Coupled with the WordPress client for iPhone, I did a fair amount of spontaneous and short blogging, expressing ideas I had, things I saw, and so forth.  As school began, I started becoming more introverted, focusing on the way I felt (usually being under a lot of stress, as it was senior year).  In January, my iPhone was stolen, and I lost the ability to blog at anytime.  I started blogging almost compulsively when I got home every day, almost as a way to let out my feelings.  Because of everything that was going on at school, it felt good to have a place to write about what I thought it all mean.  Sometimes it’s hard to articulate that sort of stuff when you’re still in it.  You need to take a step back.  Blogging has definitely helped me do that, in other areas of my life as well.

When I got a new iPhone in early July, I started using Twitter for uses other than just tracking this blog, and shortly thereafter joined Facebook.  Now I use those as two methods of communication (they’re closely integrated), and have begun to regard this blog as more of a place for contemplative, well though-out concepts or arguments.  A lot of my writing has been inspired by the increasing amount of other blogs I’ve been reading, including Paul Krugman‘s The Conscience of a Liberal, Jewschool, CAP, and Climate Progress, to name a few.  In a lot of cases, doing this writing has helped me solidify my own thoughts on subjects, and opened my mind to new points of view.

In the future, I want to blog more regularly than I have been recently; at least a couple times a week.  Interestingly, it was easier for me to blog regularly during the school year than it has been now.  I’m planning to blog a couple times next week from the NHC Summer Institute about the program and some issues that I will be considering during my time there.  There’s a plan for facilitation of a dialogue about the continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict (although I don’t really like calling it that), so I’m expecting to get some interesting stuff out of that.

As I begin school, I will almost definitely be undergoing some serious life changes in terms of how I spend my time and what I work on.  I intend to keep this blog an important component of my work and thoughts, and I hope to attract a wider audience as I meet new people and discover new ideas.

It’s been an incredibly rewarding year in many ways.  I look forward to many more.

I’ve made a monumental shift in my desktop computing setup.  For many many years, I have been using Namely as an application launcher.  I’ve tried LaunchBar and Quicksilver, but neither was as fast or responsive as Namely.  I have now, for the first time, found a better application.  Google Quick Search Box for Mac can launch applications with the speed of Namely (which the other two apps couldn’t), and it has more functionality as well (similar to the other apps).  It can search files on the computer, all sorts of application data, the internet (because it’s Google), and my Google account, including Gmail, Docs, Photos, Wikipedia, Google Finance, and more.  It’s incredibly useful.  It also has a somewhat under-documented and, as far as I can tell, under-utilized feature; Twitter updates.  This alone could persuade me to start Twittering, which I’ve been holding off on.  We’ll see.  Either way, QSB (for that is what they are calling it in the inter-tubes) is going to be great.

I am SO behind on the Sonnet of the Week.  I need to write two every week for FIVE weeks.

Current events things I am thinking about and may write about soon: Sonia Sotomayor, Dick Cheney, the Northampton bike trails projects, environmentalism (as always), and food ethics.

This summer, I am planning to start blogging about current events much more regularly.  I am going to have to do some serious thinking about what I want this blog to be like next year.

That’s all for now.  More to follow.

I suppose this is a rather simple concept, but somehow I’ve never run across it before.  I am PSYCHED!  There is so much I can do with this!  I will probably start implementing it very soon on this site.  I will have to think about cool content to put there to keep people looking.