Darcy Casselman

Haru, The Unwanted Kitty

Ellen and I have been seeing each other for a year now, and I’m very happy about that. I’m not going to talk about that so much, though.

[Haru looking forlorn] [When Haru came to live with me](http://flyingsquirrel.ca/squirrel/archive.php?article=282) two years ago, it was kinda meant to be a temporary thing. I did kinda realize at the time, though, that when a cat comes to live with you, it’s generally not likely to leave.

And honestly, all things being equal, I would have been perfectly okay with that. He’s a minor burden in some ways: I have to get someone to come check up on him if I take off for more than a weekend, for example, but generally, it’s really nice to have someone to greet me at the door when I get home, and he’s gotten much more friendly and cuddly over the years. He needs a bit of attention and play time, but he’s not really that much trouble. If my life had carried on as it was, I don’t think I’d mind one bit having him around for the next ten to fifteen years.

But, as is often the case with these things, my life hasn’t carried on like that. That’s not at all a bad thing.

Ellen’s very allergic to cats. And other things too, of course, but if I ever want any chance of her being able to come in my house, there can’t be any traces of a cat having lived there. The fact that a cat *is* living here means that my house (which I really like, by the way) is totally off limits to her. She’s never been inside.

Now, I very much enjoy all the time I spend at her house, but it would be nice if she could come over and see me once in a while. It’s going to be a lot of work getting the house into a state where she *can* visit (and keeping it there as well), but I think it’s worthwhile to make the attempt. There’s no point in even *starting* any of that work while Haru still lives here.

So I have a problem. My ideal solution would be to find a friend for him to go and live with so I could go and visit him sometimes. I don’t know how likely that is. After that, it’s probably putting up “free to a good home” signs at work or possibly the Humane Society, which I’d prefer not to have to do.

I’ve been procrastinating on this for a while, because really, I’d rather not have to contemplate getting rid of the little guy. I’ve grown somewhat attached. He’s a sweet kitty with his own little personality. He’s affectionate and playful and just wants a little attention from time to time. He deserves a good home, and if I could, I would have liked to be the one to give it to him.

I’m just sorry I can’t.

The Vagaries of PageRank

I was mentioning to Matt very late at Denny’s in Belleville that Google wasn’t giving my blog a whole lot of love. I’d supposed that was probably because nothing actually links to it, but he suggested that I try [Google Webmaster Tools](http://www.google.com/webmasters) and see if there’s a problem with the crawler. (Matt’s generally more up on web stuff than I am these days. My web skills have atrophied a bit).

It turns out there was nothing wrong with the crawler; nothing actually links here.

I figured, though, that I could possibly take advantage of my (considerably depleted) influence on the webs and put up some links.

I finally put up a link from [my homepage](http://darcy.flyingsquirrel.ca/), something I’ve been really reluctant to do. But I figured, what the hell? At the moment, I’m less embarrassed about the blog than I am about the homepage.

I also figured I’d slip in a sly link onto the [Abslom Daak](http://www.dalek-killer.net) site. It was then that I realized that I let the domain name expire. For two months.

Oops.

Fortunately, I was still able to renew it. So that was nice. That’s the only site where I have any pagerank at all (and probably quite a bit less now). *\*sigh\**

Anyway, I think I’m going to make a project out of redoing the homepage sometime in the near future, to make it a bit more professional and a bit less 1996 university student.

Also, I wouldn’t be offended by a link to the blog (or the homepage) if you’ve got a site somewhere. (Also, I know of at least one person who’s linking to my livejournal when he should really be linking to [the blog](http://www.flyingsquirrel.ca/). I’ll probably have to pester him in person, rather than leaving a parenthetical note at the bottom of a blog post…)

Micro-blogging

I’ve found that the two most useful benefits of having this thing are (mostly) that I can start to solidify ideas in my own head, possibly for later reference, and (tangentially) that it can spur conversation with friends, either online or in real life. Both are rather rewarding.

A lot of times, I come across something that I think is worth noting, but I don’t have enough of a grasp on it to dash off 500 or so words. I just want to make note of it, to get it out of my head and somewhere where I know it might do some good.

There are times when I just want to whip off a one-liner (possibly with a link) and send it out to the world. I realized a long time ago, however, that in the context of a blog (or journal or whatever this is), that that could be very annoying. People might get notified by RSS every time I did that and would get very sick of me. Or, at the very least, on this page, one line posts take up way more screen real estate than the one line.

My solution to the nuisance problems of the one-liner was to batch a bunch of them up and post them as [bullet posts](http://flying-squirrel.livejournal.com/tag/bullets%21). It seemed like a nice compromise.

These days, however, there are whole web 2.0 businesses dedicated to getting people to posting one-liners. Notably [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/), but also [Jaiku](http://www.jaiku.com/), [Pownce](http://www.pownce.com/) and others. Kind of instant messenger status messages gone public. With friends lists and crap.

As I hinted with my [Facebook post](http://www.flyingsquirrel.ca/index.php/2007/11/05/dear-facebook-please-try-harder/), the idea of having to set up yet more social networks on yet more sites does not thrill me. I don’t have a problem getting a Twitter or Jaiku account, but I want to use the tools I want to use, not the tools the masses deem the most popular.

I’m kinda particular that way. I’ve been noticing it’s becoming a recurring theme this month.

At some point in the near future, I’m going to figure out a new way to do the Twitterish micro-blogging thing. I’m not going to do it, though, until I have a way to surface the data on my own site, and other places where I’m already spamming people. I kinda want to make it seamless, and I want to store history for it on my own server, so I have it even if the Web 2.0 bubble bursts and all (or even just some of) these ridiculous things go away.

My current plan is to do what I have been doing: bullets! posts. I’d use a micro-blogging service like Twitter, maybe, and have my blog fetch updates over the course of the day and post it as a bulleted list.

And I’d probably wrap the [linkblog](http://del.icio.us/flyingsquirrel/linkblog) into that, because it’s really the same sort of idea.

I’d also want to find a way to propagate the one-liner to any site that has a micro-blogging paradigm and where there are people who might be interested in reading. Like Facebook and its status messages.

Of course, Facebook being Facebook doesn’t make that easy, but it looks like there’s a way to do it…

That’s the plan, anyway. Not sure if I’ll get around to it this month, but I think I’m getting there–conceptually, if nothing else.

Presqu’ile

[Presqu’ile Provincial Park](http://www.ontarioparks.com/English/pres.html) is one of my favourite places.

My mom had me drive out there to Brighton today for an art and craft show and sale. And while I’m not a huge fan of that sort of thing, it was actually a rather nice craft show with reasonably-priced locally hand-made stuff (unlike the usual made in China crap you usually get at craft shows), and the art gallery had the artists there showing they’re stuff (not that I talked to them of course).

The nice thing, though, was walking through the park between the craft show and the art gallery at the old lighthouse. It was a beautiful day, and there are more leaves on the trees here. We saw two different species of woodpecker, one of which was [very large](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pileated_Woodpecker). It was all nice and calm and peaceful and I got to talk to my mom about stuff.

My plan for today was to take the camera and post pictures of Belleville and Presqu’ile and stuff, but I ended up leaving the camera at home. So this is all you get.

Diwali

I’m back in Belleville.

The drive back wasn’t that great. Getting onto Highway 8 was a challenge. I think people have started Christmas shopping or something. Between K-W and Toronto, it was rainy and busy and not very fun at all. So I went up on the 407.

Seeing fireworks going off in the subdivisions along the highway wasn’t as much of a surprise as it might have been. I’d driven that way during [Diwali](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwali) before.

The first time was a surprise. One doesn’t generally expect to see fireworks going off all over the place throughout the suburbs. I made a mental note to figure out what the heck was going on that time, and the Internet provided the answer. The Indian festival of light. Who knew?

I drove straight to Belleville without stopping, listening to Doctor Who audios. [Valhalla](http://www.bigfinish.com/96-doctor-who—valhalla-469-p.asp) was pretty good, with a companion-less 7th Doctor. Personally, I kinda expected more from [Marc Platt](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Platt), but I enjoyed it. Giant, intelligent termites in space. Who doesn’t love that?

I’m not in Belleville for any particular reason. Although, as this post might demonstrate, I could probably use the downtime.