We interrupt this blog for a word from our author

I'd been thinking the appearance of the blog was kinda garish. So I tried to change it.

Being no whiz at html, I used another standard template, found it wiped out my links, comments and counter, tried to fix that, made it worse - I still don't know what I did wrong - but I managed to undo it all and start all over again.

And finally I wound up with this which I think is an improvement. I hope so. And I also hope to find a way to make my pitiful traffic pick up some. Hey, if any of you actually like this thing, let other folks know, wudja?

Okay, I'm going to be self-indulgent here - leaving aside for the moment the fact that just having a blog really is pretty self-indulgent for the vast majority of us. I've said it many times but it bears repeating: There's no point to doing this if no one reads it. And right now I'm feeling a little discouraged at my seeming inability to keep returning traffic, especially since my goals on that account aren't all that lofty.

When I started this - it's actually only been about two months that I've been at it, so maybe I'm being a little harsh on myself - I wanted to avoid what I saw as the shortcomings of some other blogs, particularly the tendency of some to have posts that consisted entirely of "Hey look at this!" with the word "this" being a link to some news article, or of some comment which was totally cryptic until after you looked at the link. I figured that people should have enough information in my post to understand what I was talking about and they could follow the link for a fuller source if they wanted it (or if they just wanted to confirm I wasn't making it up).

It was also my intent to focus on analysis and commentary rather than just quoting news items and to pay particular attention to those bits of news that got less notice elsewhere. In fact, I initially imagined that I might post only once a day or even less, blogging, if you will, more like a columnist/analyst than any kind of reporter. Something closer to, using my links on the right here as examples, Orcinus or Billmon (The Whiskey Bar) than to Atrios.

Well, it obviously hasn't worked out that way; in fact, I suppose that I've fallen down some on all three scores. For one thing, I've been posting, on average, about five times a day. This despite the fact that there're so many lefty bloggers out there that it's hard to imagine that there's anything that doesn't get mentioned and massaged by a bunch of folks before I even hear about it. Dialup has definite disadvantages on such scores - but it's what the budget allows. (That does explain, however, why I haven't had many posts about the bombings, battles, and bloodshed in Iraq: That is information so readily available, so already discussed, that it seemed pointless to add my tiny voice. It also explains why there have been so few references to the Democratic primaries and none - I'm pleased to say - to daily tracking polls in Iowa and New Hampshire.)

But while that shortcoming may be driven more by limitations of time and technology, the other can't. So I'm going to try to focus a little more on what events mean rather than simply what they are, because that's what I think I can offer to make this thing worth reading. We'll see how well I do.

Comments, feedback, links, tips on interesting items, word-passing, all of it is welcome.