Note: If you can't access my stuff from the Web Toolbox on the right, and you want to, and you think you know me well enough you should be able to, send me a comment or an e-mail and I'll change my privacy settings to let you in. Like anything on the web, there's going to be a bit of awkwardness during the initial construction until things get streamlined.
Welcome to The Eyrea. That's pronounced "area", and if you're wondering why I picked such a punny name, from a nineteenth-century novel I somehow dodged even during my English degree... you'll have to wait, although I'm sure I'll blog about it sooner or later. Let's start with the basics for now. Here's a little FAQ for you:
What is this place?
This is my own space, where I have gathered all the social and sharing tools I want to use, how I want to use them. I got a bit (okay, more than a bit) frustrated with the "social networking" sites out there -- social pigeon-holing, more like. This organisation, once I get it going, will let the people whom I want looking at my info see it easily. Everybody else is out of luck. If you're here, please consider it a compliment.
So you're going to post here all the time?
I don't know about "all the time", but when I do post, it will be here. You can contact me, keep track of me, play Scrabulous with me, and see my photos, all from here. If you want, you can even use Bloglines so you don't have to check here unless there's an update. (Thanks to the ever-fabulous Lisa for recommending Bloglines. It rocks.) The uber-cool-yet-approachable Carla recommended Google Reader for the same job. Isn't it great to be out on the interweb where you can choose and customise?
Think you're special?
Hey, everything here is the same as some, ah, other social networking sites. But now it's my way. If you want, you can just as easily set up something similar to be your way (some of you already have). It's all about taking back control.
Why don't you just update your F------- profile?
Because I never liked that site. It's ugly, it's limited, it's inconsistent in its interface, and even though there are privacy controls, they're confusing and it's hard to tell who can see what. With this setup I know what's going on, and even the default template is prettier than the other option.
What's up for the future?
You can use any of the links in the toolbox to RSS or check up on that particular aspect. I promise to always tag my posts, so that those of you only interested in knitting or fiction-writing or whatever will know what to read and what to skip. Eventually, I would like the main blog part to be mostly public (some posts will be exclusive to vous), while the links will have varying degrees of privacy on them. So, for instance, some of my photo galleries may be public, but not all of them.
Hope you stick around for the experiment. Comments will always be on so that I can get feedback on the new mousetrap!