You probably couldn’t guess it from the long, lazy lapses that occur between posts here, but this blog actually means a whole bunch to me. I consider my website’s launch last February to be one of my highlights of 2007. Yet for some reason, this pride and joy of mine never manifests itself in an actual commitment to producing regular content (as Michael Kwan recently pointed out). This paralysis is starting to affect many other areas of my life. Lately, I’ve found myself:

• Singing songs at the piano but not recording any of them.
• Adding pictures to my Flickr account but not telling anybody about them.
• Discovering great things on the internet but not sharing them.
• Customizing the look and feel of my blog but not writing anything for it.

I’ve decided that if I am ever to survive in this cold, harsh wilderness called blogging, I think I will simply have to come face-to-face with my fears. Slash through this delicate, unproductive silence like Conan the Librarian.

First off, this piano thing. My mini-studio has been languishing like a forgotten child in the corner of my condo for months. Besides the occasional group singalongs to “Hey Jude” when our friends come over, I never actually do anything useful with my piano and microphone and mixing board trio – for instance, hook up my computer to lay down the tracks. So tonight, being Thursday night, I opened up the lid of my laptop, busted open some recording software, and decided to just RECORD whatever the deuce happened to emerge from my fingers and lips.

The resulting improvisation was a slip-shod cacophony of absurdity; a lyrically inept, musically unlistenable, unforgivably painful ballad that I think I will call “Transportation’s Got Me Down.”

No wonder I never do this. I really have nothing else to say about it, other than “Oh sweet heavens please prepare yourselves for this fearful audio experience.” Let’s move on to the Flickr thing before somebody realizes what they’ve just listened to.

It has taken me a while to get accustomed to the idea of purchasing items that are completely and utterly intangible, but I finally went ahead and purchased a Flickr Pro account. With my newfound bandwidth freedom, I have uploaded over 130 photographs from my family’s photo archives. These are archaic shots from the 50s and 60s that document my mom’s upbringing with her eccentric family in the city of Burnaby, and my dad’s fascinating history being raised with his lettuce-farming, six-sibling’d family in Australia. The pictures demonstrate a bygone, now-foreign era that is bewildering to behold. Click here to check it out.

Somewhere else across the vast divide of internet-dom, there are even more intriguing things to discover. One item which has successfully held the interest of both my wife and I for over a week is the new(ish) Google Image Labeler. It’s a game you can play, and it’s also a way to help the search engine. Like a cross between Pictionary and Taboo, you are shown a picture and have to describe what you see. Up to five words will be “off-limits,” but once you and your randomly assigned partner both type in the same words, you score points. Our best score ever placed us at #12 in the day’s top rankings.

You may have noticed that I have introduced a new attempt to attract advertisers to my website. The green rectangle perched on my sidebar is a weak effort to farm out space on my blog to anybody who would like to pay a mere $5.00 Canadian dollars. However, since nobody seems to think this would be a worthwhile investment, I’ve decided to hold a contest instead.

I invite all readers of this post to leave a comment on my blog, and answer this question: if this ad space was yours for free, what would you advertise? You can tell truths, fictions, confessions or lies. At the end of four days time, I will put all of your names into a hat (or maybe a bowl, or perhaps a basket) and draw out one name. The person whose name emerges will receive an entire month of free advertising: any message you wish to cram into the 250 x 90 space is all yours. You can design the ad yourself if you wish, or work with me to create something pleasing.

Alright, that is certifiably all of the mutterings I can muster for one evening. In an attempt to reduce my carbon footprint and help meet Kyoto protocols for blog emissions by 11:30 pm, I’m signing off. See you in the comments!