07th May 2003
nah gonna do it
During the first Bush administration, Dana Carvey used to do a pretty great impersonation of the president on Saturday Night Live. One of the memorable lines was “nah gonna do it, wouldn’t be prudent at this juncture”.
So there are some things I’m “nah gonna do” on my blog…
The first thing is: not be overwhelmingly serious, technical, dry, boring day after day … I don’t know about you, but I’ve gone to a few so-called executive blogs here and there, and … where’s the human? If you have a blog, and every entry reads like a Technical White Paper or a Position Statement, well.. why call it a blog? I won’t point out any specific examples. Nah gonna do it. Nosiree. What I will say is, I wonder a little about the one-dimensional sites. Maybe they have some blog on the side where they let their hair down.
Or, gosh, maybe they are like that All The Time. You ever wonder about folks like that? Always serious. Always stiff upper lip. Any frivolity will hurt profits. Gotta be on guard 24 hours a day. Perhaps their blog is some sort of Serious Everlasting Legacy; something to be encased in Lucite and put in the New Alexandrian Museum or somesuch. “He was a deep thinker. Deeper than any bird bath in the Tri-State Area. Our archaeologists haven’t uncovered any hint of personality, but hey, this guy knew Everything about the demise of filing cabinets”
Names! Names! Names!
Something else I’m nah gonna do - the 50 links running down the side with no context thing! Visual name-dropping run amuck!
(ok, so right now I am chuckling to myself, so you should know I coming at this in a good-natured, gently chiding sort of way…)
So, 50 links… actually this morning I saw a blog with 65 names running down the side. No descriptions, just 65 names to click on. Sure, I recognize some of the names. I know they weren’t just made up. I must know 100 people! Ok, well, 8 or so…
I want context for my own blog. If I’m going to put 50 links on the side, I want to have a little description by most of them. Somehow the “why this link means something to me” aspect is important. Therein lies the problem; it vexes me. It would take some gawd-awful amount of space!
I want some sort of solution where I can have a layer pop up and offer links with descriptions (JavaScript), or where each link offers some description when the cursor is hovered (CSS). Something that will work on most browsers…
eh, know of anything? A tabbed interface perhaps?
