Sniffing beagles

A coworker sent me a few links to websites he thought were well designed. Or better said, he liked the design of these few websites. One of those sites was planetBeagle, a compilation of notes and facts concerning the Beagle project (the Beagle project is software for sniffing out information).

Planet Beagle, on its home page, is basically a blog of various contributors: these contributors being largely college students in Boston. In evaluating the asthetics of the site, I was drawn to read the actual blog.

An hour later, I emailed my coworker and told him that I now wish I was back in college, in Boston. I suck.

I also pointed out to him a particular entry about usability testing the Beagle group had conducted.

If you get the feeling that the writers are geeks, you are right. But if you think the site is full of techno-speak, think again. Well, okay, I’m talking about the blog on the home page…. this is where the real people who are the programmers tell about their real people lives. It has geek spin to it which, even to another geek, is quite entertaining.

I also read a great opinion about how blogging has evolved from some kind of open diary (sic) to true communication. How anyone who actually sticks to blogging has developed a sense of audience, and ultimately writes to that audience — albeit in a public forum.

The author likened it to any other artistic process: a painter for example, paints in a style and with a message intended to be received by a particular audience, however as the art hangs in the gallery it is open to observation and response from the greater public, for good or for ill.

I found this to be an astute observation, and it caused me to give pause to how I’ve been maintaining my journal here. A while back, I journalled about the need to change the title of my journal. This commentary on blogging has really helped crystalize my thinking on the subject.

Not that its FULLY crystalized, and not that crystals are necessarily all that useful…

Also of note, one of the blog entries referred to a Time Traveller Convention. The idea being to have one and only one time traveller convention, one that is well publicized, and time travellers from throughout time could meet in one location, even from multiple times!

It was a marginal success as a college keg party; they even had a DeLorean . There is a picture from one attendee, standing in the rain laughing, holding a sign that reads, “Thanks for warning us about the weather, you time travelling JERKS!”

For the past couple of years, I have thought about creating the “Traveller Project” (copyright 2001, me), a loose association of people not affiliated with government who act as docents of time travel technology and ambassadors to travellers. The idea being you “buy” your way into the Traveller project by depositing information or devices of time traveller nature. You may then reclaim these items at another time, perhaps a time of need.

These beagle geeks stole my idea. Damn.