I originally planned to implement this blog using Webby, an ASCII Alchemist, a runt content management system. Yeah what the heck does that mean? Webby is a collection of Ruby programs that make building a simple web site easier. It’s not smart enough to run an airline reservation system, but it’s just right for a simple blog like the scan artist. For a nice fake-real-world introduction see Mike Clark’s article Building Static Websites with Webby.
When I started this blog a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t want to get bogged down in the process so I just started typing HTML. I knew that approach wouldn’t last long, but it was a good decision. This week Merlin Mann shared the audio for his recent talk at MaxFunCon, plus a companion article about starting something creative. Not focusing on the process, or a better font, or a million other ways of Not Starting. That’s great advice for me right now.
Fake Rocks, Salami Commanders, and Just Enough to Start
and With All Due Respect to the Seduction Community
After reading my first blog entry, What is a scan artist?, a friend objected to the negative way I cast myself as a scam artist, a fraud. I didn’t mean it negatively. I was trying to capture one aspect of the creative process. Merlin expressed it much better about 17 minutes into his MaxFunCon talk.
Anybody you know who does great work, like people in this room who you admire, sit and sweat it, and you know what they say to themselves? I’ll tell you. They say “I am a fraud. I am never going to do anything good again, and I’m gonna to die alone with shit in my pants, watching cable. Because I don’t know how I’ve skated for this long on my very modest amount of skills and good looks; that’s going away.” And everybody thinks that. But you know what? The way you get good at it is you power through it and you keep going.
This week’s Thing is the installation and setup of Webby. It’s not finished, but it’s published so it counts as a Thing, and it has already made the blog easier to manage. For a future Thing I’ll work on the layout and formatting of the site, but I kind of like the simple look.
The Morganthall family reunion is held on the second Saturday in July at Hagerstown City Park in Hagerstown Maryland.