Ever since Skud’s 2009 OSCON talk I’ve been meaning to check out DreamWidth, and now I finally am. My account there is kallistixf, and at least for the time being I’ll move some of my more personal posts there and keep Liminal States focused on social networks, diversity, innovation, software engineering, security, and politics. I think that’s enough topics, don’t you?
Here’s some excerpts from my Hiiii (waves)! post there:
The only time I kept a regular journal in the past, it was mostly about personal experiences and reflections, wrestling with philosophy and psychology, personal and professional growth, poetry, and a writers notebook for a work-in-progress. Since then Liminal States has become my non-fiction writers notebook, and also had it’s share of poetry, fiction, and very journalesque posts (for example the Notes from underground series). It’s been great mixing the personal with the professional and the political and integrating the different aspects of my life and writing.At the same time, though, it’s also somewhat problematic. I’ve had to post my recent fiction password-protected; my blog is also the hub of my professional web presence, so it’s not really a place for a love letter veiled as a story or for tentacle porn. I’ve also had to password-protect some posts when we were traveling, since I’d rather not advertise to the world that our house is empty. So, I’ve been looking to explore Dreamwidth for quite a while and this seems like a great opportunity to experiment with a separate journal. The posts about Diaspora are a good template for how things might work out over time: thought piece, (1, 2), and details on Liminal States, summary and presentation on Tales from the Net, and here on Dreamwidth talking about a party and a troll and embarrassing myself with technology….
I haven’t really felt like I had a good discussion place on the internet for several years, ever since tribe.net, free-association, and Seducersworld all had problems. Facebook and Twitter are great but it’s hard to have real conversations there — plus Facebook is creepy and privacy-invasive and bans pictures of breast-feeding and treats its users like product etc. etc. etc.
So I’m hopeful that Dreamwidth will feel that gap, a place to hang out with old friends and meet new ones. Fingers crossed!
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