Has your diary ever gotten you in trouble? If so, how? Scenerio: If you were wronged by a person that you know reads your diary, would you bash them anyway? What about family? What about co-workers?
Nothing like that. Like any moderately popular page, it's attracted a
few nasty people who took up temporary hobbies flaming me. That's rare,
though.
If you had to do it over again from the beginning, what
would you change?
Minor things. Start out with a better directory structure and archive
structure from Day One. I'm so loose about my journal, doing it for the
joy of doing it, that I don't see things as right or wrong, but more
as "what I'm currently i the mood to do". So basically, I'd just change
minor housekeeping details so I'd start out more organized for when it
became The Journal Which Ate New York.
Do you have any favorite entries?
A whole list of them, in fact, with blurbs.
Two of my absolute favorites are funny ones: The Package Ritual and
Thou Shalt Not Do Crap Like That.
What do you look for in an online journal, as a reader?
An income in the six figures and a generous nature. Seriously, I'm
happy as long as they're not mean-spirited people who are reading just
to find someone to pick on. But I'm not so
easy to pick on anymore, so it really doesn't matter. I'd most like
readers to read because they enjoy my journal for whatever reason. It's
as simple as that. (And my mailing address is on the contact page
if your income is in the six figures and you're feeling generous.)
Do you use your real name in your diary?
No. Maybe if I was starting all over again now, I would, but I've sort
of become "Ginkgo" (it's like a nickname now), and I rather like
the name. Besides, my
real name is the sort people pick as a net name, so who'd believe it was
really my name? Be kind of ironic.
Do you censor yourself in your diary?
Well, I don't discuss my sex life, violate people's privacy, or curse
like a sailor. Does that count?
Do you ever use fiction techniques such
as imaginary dialogue?
Sort of. My cats don't actually speak English.
Do you ever significantly edit/rewrite
past entries?
No.
Would you describe your diary as
traditional, essay, novel, rant, letter to someone, a theme journal, or
something different?
Different. Eccentric, inconsistant, "just me", "whatever", "photo
journal".... Not good at labeling my projects.
What is "one word" that would
describe your diary's content?
"Me."
As an online diarist do you consider yourself
a Web celebrity, an
exhibitionist, a public figure, a writer, an innovator,
or something
different?
All of the above and none of the above. Honestly, I don't consider what
it makes me, so I dunno. (I like "innovator".)
How do you tackle the mechanics of Web
design and how do you deal with your frustrations when you can't do what
you envision.
With a hammer, and with an AK-47 in the local mall. Seriously, I
hand-code, I fiddle, I get stubborn, I devour manuals when desperate,
and if I fail,
I grit my teeth and get some sleep, hope I'll win later. Planning is
generally daydreaming, sketching, then fiddling between Photoshop and
the HTML file I'm mocking it up in.
Why do you think people are interested
in what you have to say?
I don't know. All the standard reasons of curiosity and human contact
and finding words/ideas one identifies with, I guess.
What compels you to design beautiful
pages and to write from the heart (beyond just the usual question of
"why an online journal")?
To me, there's no point in doing it if I don't do it that way, because
that's what I like, what matters to me. It makes me happy, it means
something to me, it fulfills something in me.
I like beautiful things, and I like words from the heart. Maybe I also
want some kind of immortality, so I pour my heart and dreams into
something substantial. I don't know.