I recently posted about moving to Dreamhost for my longer blogging. At the same time, I have to be honest and say that a lot of my current "community" interaction occurs on Facebook and Twitter, if only because that's the easiest to update when you're a parent reading microblogs on an iPhone while you breastfeed a toddler in the dark. Go figure.

I'm very aware that I haven't been updating any of my blogs (Gluten Savvy, Modern Mama, Rosanne's Lounge, this journal) in part due to time, in part due to mechanism (the iPhone text input is unwieldy for long form; the iPad blogging tools I've found so far are counter-intuitive and difficult). There's another issue: I've been loading my video onto vimeo and my photos onto Facebook, rather than into my own space where I'd ideally like them. Why? Again, it's interface. Vimeo embeds with a click. My own video doesn't. The Facebook Exporter for iPhoto automatically resizing my images and gives me a tagging mechanism, instead of requiring me to export all those images to the correct size, then upload and place, then tag.

And then there's connection. My own blogs have lagged to some extent where Facebook and Dreamhost have succeeded because of interaction and commentary. There is a community here, a following, an audience that has, if not expectations of me, then at least appreciation. I am very challenged by the privacy implications of most of these services and always have been. Even when I was just on LJ, I hosted the images myself and embedded them from my own server. 

I also like the degree of control Dreamhost/LJ and Facebook give me in terms of reader access. WordPress blogs (which is the platform for my other blogs) have privacy plugins which I use to password protect some posts, but I haven't really had the opportunity to experiment with setting read privileges by group because I don't have the audience — and because while people are automatically members of Dreamhost/LJ/Facebook/Twitter, they are less likely to subscribe to a standalone journal in order to read protected entries unless they are very close friends with a high motivation or your content is extremely desirable — as all the large media organisations have discovered. And I still want to protect at least some of my content, due to stalkers, my daughter's privacy, or boring stuff like bitching about my life to which only my nearest and dearest should be subjected. 

I'm really waiting for Diaspora, to be honest, but it's not here yet.

So, having said all that... you can read how the trip went elsewhere; the photos are on Facebook; the videos are on Vimeo; and I'm working on writing up the restaurant reviews for Gluten Savvy and the Modern Mama post about Harper's hearing...

The question I have for you all is this: what is your current blogging/microblogging balance and what are your key concerns about it? 
I prefer to support open software, so this post originally appeared as a post on my Dreamwidth blog. I'd love for you to come and comment over there. So far, there are comments over there.

We're hosting a pumpkin carving at Doug's sister's place in Cupertino on Saturday from around 2pm till around 7pm (may go later, depends on toddler). We are hoping to have at least three toddlers (Harper, Annika and Laurel) but more children would be welcome and of course, adults are most welcome too. 

 

Then we're trick or treating with Annika, Lars and Natasha...

 

I'd rather not post the address here, so please email me on mordwen@gmail.com if you'd like to join us on Saturday and I'll send it to you.

 

Love to see you! 

I prefer to support open software, so this post originally appeared as a post on my Dreamwidth blog. I'd love for you to come and comment over there. So far, there are comments over there.

I realise I have made a public post for a while and last night's partay at joedecker's made me realise I need to change that. If you're one of the people I gave my LJ name to, hi, welcome... and uh... I mostly post via Dreamwidth now, although I always mirror to LJ and until today I allowed comments here.

I'm changing that today because my paid account at LJ is about to expire and I don't want to give them money or watch their ads, for a variety of long and involved reasons.

I'll keep cross-posting because I recognise that content is part of what makes community and a lot of my community is still over on LJ.

Not that I have time to write posts much. I've been on "holidays" for three weeks and haven't written a thing here, even locked. I have written four-line updates on my phone while breastfeeding in the dark and posted them to Facebook... 

I also still have another DW account that I might friend some select people with. You'll know it's me from the same icon.

As for the trip... well, maybe that's another post, actually. A friends-locked one, because, sadly, the days when I could write personal public posts are long gone. 
I prefer to support open software, so this post originally appeared as a post on my Dreamwidth blog. I'd love for you to come and comment over there. So far, there are comments over there.

Well, here we are, back in Cali. We're here until Monday next week and we have a few free days.

Here's what I know:

Party at joedecker 's today
Fresno on Friday to see Cassie
Picnic somewhere on Saturday next week
Halloween Sunday night

Comment here or mail mordwen@gmail.com if you wanna make a time to see us!!

For those who haven't heard yet, Australia has its first female Prime Minister. I'm not a biological determinist, so I don't believe that being a woman will magically make her a more compassionate politician or anything (cf. Margaret Thatcher). But I do think that gender equity is a valuable goal for the simple reason that it's important not to discriminate against an entire group of people on the basis of a single attribute or perceived attribute and the minuscule number of women in power worldwide is a tragic example of that. So, more women in positions of power is a good thing: better for girls growing up to see that not only could a woman theoretically be Prime Minister, but a woman actually *is* Prime Minister.

Even better, she was sworn in by a female Governor-General, who is representing a female head of state, the Queen. None of this fixes the issues with the system of representative democracy (see below) or the fact we're still a constitutional monarchy. And so far, none of this speaks to Gillard's actual politics, the fact that she originally came from the Left faction of the Labor party but the power brokers who engineered her coup this morning were from the Labor Right faction, or the fact that she failed to mention her plans for asylum seekers at any point during her acceptance speech.

Talking about the 'coup', can we get over the idea that she "wasn't elected"? We don't directly elect a President in this country. We elect a party and whoever is the leader of that party is the Prime Minister. The caucus decided to change the leader. The system sucks but so do most forms of representative democracy. This is why I am glad to be involved with helping to create a form of participatory democracy in my work at the moment — my frustration is how hard it is to encourage the public to be involved at the local level...

The other news of the day seems to be that Lindsay Tanner has decided not to contest the next election. That's sad in some ways -- he was one of the good Labor guys -- but in other ways fundamentally shifts the way the seat will fall. It was already marginal -- it only needed one in ten of the people who voted Labor last time to vote Green to flip it -- but now it's almost definitely gone to the Greens. That will be the first Green MP in the lower house, which is significant even if that person doesn't hold the balance of power in any way.

So, a significant day. I'm excited about Gillard. I'm happy that Harper's first memory of the Prime Minister might be of a woman in that role. And now I want Gillard to honour the excitement I had that day in Texas when we ousted Howard. I want her to welcome refugees into this country and treat them with dignity. I want her to pursue an environmental policy that makes sense. I want her to be a peacemonger. I want her to ditch this ridiculously unworkable internet filter idea. I want her to make us proud.

Yesterday morning we went out for New Year's Day brunch and the fancy café brought us the most stylish high chair I've ever seen. I've added it to Harper's wishlist for her birthday (hint, hint). Have a look: HandySitt chair. Maybe this can be your replacement chair, Beth?

There are many things I want to be writing about (the disgusting pro-rape culture at one of Sydney University's colleges, how Twitter and journalism intersect — specifically, the Trafigura case and the shootings at Fort Hood) but I don't have time. You go read. In the meantime, I bring you our adorable daughter, standing (bracing herself against my calves) and bashing blocks together.

If you don't already know the password for these videos, comment with your email address and I'll send it to you if you're not a crazy stalker. (I'll screen comments, then, shall I? Goodo.)

Harper playing with blocks from mordwen on Vimeo.

Doug has asked me to post a quick note about the labyrinth. He went down there with Harper today and noticed it was very overgrown. Someone had also dumped some dirt near/on it and there was a sign promoting a working bee to clear the spring growth and tidy it up for the coming season. (You can't even see the labyrinth stones under the weeds in the pic he took — see below).

We plan to have a small brunch at our place and then head down. Who would like to meet us at the labyrinth at middayish to help with the working bee?