Minor Wisdom

The new photo

Visitors to this blog will see that I've uploaded a new photo of myself. I think I'll keep this one for a while; it's a big improvement over the one I had before.

I had a hard time finding a decent photo. As I barrel into middle age, I find myself changing physically, as quickly and as dramatically as any time since adolescence. More gray hairs, more lines on my face, and (most significantly) more weight. In my prime running days (mid to late 1980s), I weighed around 140 to 145 pounds. Law school and, later, my legal career impinged on my running, and my weight gradually climbed through the 1990s, to around 160 to 165. In 2000, an episode of depression killed my appetite and dropped me back down to 140. Anti-depressants have helped me gain the weight back; the only trouble is the weight gain didn't stop at 160. Today I'm at a lifetime high of 175, and seem to be holding steady there.

All of which is to say that any picture taken more than two years ago (like the one at left, taken May 2003) doesn't look like me anymore. I wanted something that looks like I look today. And (unlike my prior photo on this blog), one where I actually have a pleasant look on my face.

The picture at the top of the left sidebar was taken almost exactly one year ago, after my mother's funeral (a week after she died), in front of her house. It was part of the group photo at left. Those are my sisters Gabrielle and Patricia and my brother, Mike — the first time we'd all been together in years. Now, every time I look at this blog and see that picture, I'll remember when, where, and why it was taken.

Expanded blogroll and other del.icio.us applications

With a bit of time on my hands this weekend (first time that's happened since the hurricane), I started playing around with del.icio.us, a web tool for collecting and organizing links. For my first trick, I created a slightly expanded blogroll—go to the bottom of the blogroll in the sidebar and you'll see a link. And if you go to my main del.icio.us page, at right you'll see a collection of legal-writing links.

Yard work on my blogroll

I've updated my blogroll¹ to add some good blogs and to make it a little more user-friendly. When your mouse pointer is stationary and hovering over a blog name, its tag line² should appear as a tool tip. The idea is to give you some feel for the blog's contents and its author's personality, to help you decide whether you'd like to visit.

Some blogs' tag lines were too long to display as tool tips. For those, there are two ways to read the entire tag line. The easiest way is simply to click on the blog title and pay it a visit. The second-easiest way (at least for Windows users) is to right-click on the blog title, select Properties from the menu that appears, and read the tag line under Miscellaneous Properties. (You may have to expand the Properties box by clicking and dragging on an edge or corner.)

If you're interested in doing the same thing on your blogroll, read below the fold.

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¹ Evan Schaeffer defines blogroll as: "(1) n. A list of favorite weblogs, typically found in a column on another weblog; (2) v. To add a weblog to a blogroll."
² If a blog didn't have a tag line, I made up a short description for it.

Another 1-year anniversary

One year ago today, after four months of blogging on Earthlink, I opened for business on TypePad. For anyone thinking about a similar move, the result for me was a four-fold increase in readers.

New tag line

After reading this post by Jeremy Richey, I figured it was about time I got myself a decent tag line.¹ Of course it's not original, but it captures what I try to do, both in blogging and in everyday living.

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¹In blogging, the tag line is the line of text under the blog title. In this case, it's the quotation by Yogi Berra.

Site Meter installed

You may have noticed a new addition at left—the damned near omnipresent Site Meter logo, added earlier this evening. TypePad has been giving me numbers, which assures me that there are some readers out there. But I don't know what TypePad's numbers really mean. I hope that Site Meter gives me a better idea of the traffic level.

New format (again)

I'm trying out yet another new format. If you're actually reading the blog, you've probably already noticed. If you're reading this via an RSS feed, come take a look.

I like the two-column look, but I felt compelled to return to a three-column format because the sidebar was getting too long. The choice was to drop some links from the sidebar or move some links to the left side.

One year of blogging

One year ago today, I entered my first post on the original Rain Man blog. Rain Man begat Rain Man 2, which is now Minor Wisdom. It's been more fun and more fulfilling than I'd imagined.

To mark the occasion, I wish I could have found this song in downloadable MP3 format; we'll have to settle for the lyrics.

New layout

Having been inspired by the clean look of Rob Hyndman's blog and (more recently) Between Lawyers, I decided to remodel a bit. Actually this isn't an entirely new layout; it's just the old layout with a few changes:

• I got rid of the side borders, and changed the width of the text column from a fixed number of pixels to fluid. This means the blog will adapt its width to any reasonably sized window.
• I changed the colors of the text to black (for most text) and shades of blue. Links are underlined and in a lighter shade of blue; they turn red when you move your pointer over them.
• I added a gold line between the banner and the body. Blue and gold make a nice combination.

I'm No. 9, er, No. 4

An alert reader sent me an email informing me that I've lost my # 1 Google ranking for "bad legal writing." He said I'd dropped to # 9, although a Google search 30 seconds ago ranked me at # 4.

What can I do to regain my # 1 ranking? Maybe I can tack "in this regard" on the end of every other sentence. E.g. "What can I do to regain my # 1 ranking in this regard?"