Minutiae

To all future visitors:

Hi. Thanks for coming. I used to write here, but don't so much anymore. Now, I write at http://moviehawk.net. Go check it out there...or if you're an LJ-only person, add http://syndicated.livejournal.com/moviehawk to your friends list...or leave a message at the beep.

...beep.

There will be significant changes to Minutiae coming in the somewhat-near future; namely, another move away from LiveJournal, for personal and professional reasons. The professional: the commenting system here is rough, and I want to try to encourage more comments, expand my readership, and hopefully eventually parlay this whole reviewing gig into a freelancing opportunity somewhere. What does that mean for you? The same content, with some new additions, including a possible podcast.

What I need before I move again is help in choosing a domain name. The following names are taken:

• minutiae.com
• jeffmartin.com
• jeffreymartin.com

I don't want to deal with putting numerals in my domain name (no more minutiae31.com or sjuhawk31.com, for my own sake). I don't know that minutiaeblog, theminutiaeblog, or minutiaetheblog are good names; you can help me decide that. What other ideas? You know what I write, who I am, and so on. The tone of the site isn't going to change much; hopefully it will get a bit funnier, but I'm not going for iaimtomisbehave.com (taken from a line in Serenity), so try to keep that in mind. Who has suggestions?

It's a lazy Tuesday, and, while I could write about Sunday's awesome West Wing episode, or the new Superman Returns trailer that, oh my god, you have to watch right now. But, because I wrote about West Wing last week, and the trailer leaves me without words to describe it, I decided to update the links section of the sidebar instead.

Added to the "Top Blogs" section, you'll see Chasing Adventure, a blog not unlike Minutiae, from a high school acquaintance of mine who, get this, got to write reviews and get paid. Un. Fair. Also, Gizmodo, the Gawker technology blog, and My Boring Ass Life, writer/director/vulgarity expert Kevin Smith's personal musings. The last, but certainly not least, addition to the "Top Blogs" section is [sic], from Matt S., who I've known nearly a decade and is a damn fine writer. Once he figures out what he's gonna write about in the blogosphere, he'll be a force to be reckoned with.

Also new to the sidebar is the "Distractions" section, a list of the sites that I visit so many times each day that I have to hit refresh on the ol' Firefox because the cache is so overloaded with old pages. If you're as much of a geek as me about movies and whatnot, you'll enjoy Ain't It Cool News, home to many a flame war over whether the new Spider-man teaser is real or Photoshopped. Cracked is a new one for me, but pretty effectively skewers the pop culture that I adore here. Homestar Runner, well, if you don't know Homestar, and you read this site, well...that doesn't make sense. iLounge is all sorts of news about iPods, because, even though I can't afford any peripherals, I do worship my iPod, and like reading about what neat things I can add to it. And we come at last to perhaps the greatest site of all, Television Without Pity. Again, if you read this site and aren't familiar with TWoP...no sense.

So go, check out the sites on the sidebar, and learn what it's like to surf the web with me. Try not to get too bored.

I made a new icon. If you're not in my family, and you know what this is from, I admire you. And pity you.

...sounds like a Pearl Jam song title, doesn't it? But no, it's the first line of a They Might Be Giants song, "Experimental Film." I first discovered the song on Homestar Runner, through a nifty little cartoon music video, then got fully exposed to the Giants through my friend Mary. I was watching the video today and decided to make a few user icons out of it. Enjoy. The first one is attached to the title of this entry.

Strong Bad, Homestar, and Strong Mad singing "Yeah."

This will most likely become the default image I use for movie reviews. The neat part about this is, if you "open" the image when the chorus starts, it synchs perfectly. I spent way too much time trying to make that work.

I was told a few months ago by a stranger that, while they liked the stuff I was writing, the background colors here were too dark and made the text hard to read.

I just finally got around to changing the color scheme. Now the banner looks out of place, but I'll soon fix that.

Thoughts on the new colors?

And I just realized this: no, the coloring in the icon attached to this post did not inspire the new colors. Even though Kaylee is inspiring.

It seems that this switch to LiveJournal has worked pretty smoothly. I went to the stats monitor on the TypePad blog earlier today and had only picked up four hits in the past seven days, and I'm pretty sure they were all from me. So thank you all for following me to the new digs. I hope you're liking what you're reading, because this is now the only place that you can read my blogging.

That's right, as of a few minutes ago, I deleted my TypePad account and cut off the service for the minutiae31 name (don't go, there's nothing there). It's almost strange how I had almost no qualms deleting something like nine months of my writing. But for those of you who've only followed me on LiveJournal, it's like this: imagine a friend of yours who's kind of chubby, wears glasses, and listens to terrible music. You don't see him for nine months, and all of a sudden he's chiseled, got Lasik, and is the lead singer of a kickin' underground band. I'm hoping that the nine months I spent at TypePad helped my blogging transform into something resembling must-read.

And hey, maybe I just stumbled upon a goal for the next nine months. Anyone know a personal trainer, a cheap Lasik doctor, or can play guitar? I have some interesting opportunities I'd like to discuss.

One of the few pitfalls of LiveJournal is their exclusionary commenting system: to be identified as yourself in a comment, you technically need to be signed in. In a weblog such as Minutiae, where comments are welcome/solicited/downright begged for, this proves to be a significant stumbling block. To help get the comment mojo flowing, then, I thought I'd lay down a few guidelines:

• Feel free to comment on any entry. Feel free to link to your own site, letting me and the readers know you wrote something similar. It's the social aspect of blogging that makes it so fun, so let's indulge ourselves.
• Go ahead and start a flame war if you want but please, no trolling. Make educated jokes and/or arguments.
• Comment early and often. I try to write four to five entries a week, so they leave the main page rather quickly.
• Most importantly, if you aren't a LiveJournal member, that doesn't mean you can't comment. Type out your comment, using a little bit of HTML if you want to spice it up, and sign the comment with your name and/or a link to your site. How can I find out what's good out there if people are commenting and not telling me who they are? I want to read your website just as much as you want to read mine.

So there you have it. I love my readers, I love my LiveJournal. Now they can peacefully coexist.