Changes coming to the weblog...

[dduane]

We interrupt this morning’s business (draining the fishpond to give it a much-needed cleaning and tend to the aquatic plants, and repeatedly going out to use the slingshot to scare off the starlings that are trying to nest under the roof above the window near my desk…) for an announcement about things that are going to start happening around here on the online end of things. Particularly this:  now that DianeDuane.com is starting to look like something, I’m going to begin moving numerous other online bits and pieces over there…the main one being the weblog.

“Out of Ambit” is going to be reincarnated as a WordPress blog over at http://www.dianeduane.com/outofambit/. The present Blogger version will remain where it is at outofambit.blogspot.com for some time, probably several months, until I can get all the old posts imported over there and start feeling comfortable with the way the WordPress edition works. Then the Blogger address will probably be frozen, with a final forwarding post. The new OOA will have a lot less of the sidebar stuff that’s crept in over time (and which has  made it slow to load): those frills and furbelows will mostly be moved into other locations at DianeDuane.com, where they won’t get so much in people’s way.

Meanwhile, the “Word Salad” blogs at dduane.livejournal.com and www.journalfen.net/users/diane_duane/ will stay right where they are, and “Out of Ambit” will link to them.  And links to the other websites I care for (such as European Cuisines) will be added to all the weblogs. As Peter would probably say had he not been up all night writing, “Interconnectivity rules OK.”

None of this is going to happen overnight. I just thought it would be smart to give people a heads-up so that they won’t be unduly concerned when things start vanishing and turning up in strange new places.

Now back to the fishpond, where I will shortly be ankle-deep in mulm. (Isn’t that a great word? It’s used among fish-keeping people to describe the horrible glop that collects at the bottom of the aquarium. “Organic materials”, says one fishkeepers’ guide with an airy wave of its hand…but that definition covers a whole lot of ground. In an outdoor pond, it means rotted leaves, decaying water plants, infallen dirt, and, you guessed it, fish poop. Fortunately it doesn’t smell really bad, but it’s icky.  In an aquarium you usually get rid of it by siphoning. In an outdoor pond, you drain the thing, and then bail or scoop out whatever remains…then scrub with a stiff brush, and rinse down, and bail again… What a lovely day I have ahead of me.  Euuuuuuu.)