Right, I think we are getting there. I started off just trying to integrate more of my “elsewhere” bits into the site and ended up thinking that what I really needed was more “here” stuff.

When Miranda was born three years ago I felt that I didn’t have the time to keep up with a weblog and tried to get this site to carry on without my input as much as possible, just grabbing the content I was creating and putting it here. Mostly this consisted of three bits -

• posts collecting together pictures uploaded to flickr - the photos have kept coming because I made an effort to find somewhere simple to keep them in order so I didn’t end up with a shedload of unorganised baby pictures.

• posts of links I’ve posted to the del.icio.us bookmark service - have been kind of a mini-blogging thing - find a link and just say the minimum about it.

• posts where I keep track of the books I read - the books keep coming because “I read therefore I am” is just the kind of person I am - I started keeping a record of the books I read in 2000 and I like having the historical record.

Recently I’ve seen services like Second Brain, Friend Feed and Profilactic around and have tried them out for size. They try to aggregate all your web presences together. I ended up thinking that this was just what I was trying to do here on nocto though, that trying to do it somewhere else was a bit silly and that I just needed to have a bit of an update here.

So I was trying to update this site using a stack of RSS feeds relating to things I’d done or looked at elsewhere. And it was just turning into a big mess of links.

And the more I messed with it the clearer my ideas became.

I didn’t want my website to be a place that just aggregated other places. That’s a part of it, a part of me, so links from del.icio.us and Google Reader are now over in the sidebar on the right and some other feeds will probably appear too. But I’m reclaiming the main column of this website to be for the things that I create: the things I write whether about books or websites or other things and the photos I take. Things that just catch my fancy are off to the side.

The design isn’t finished; some of the stylesheet is still a mess, everything isn’t quite where I want it yet, the colours aren’t quite right; but it’ll do. I’m working on it.

This site has always been, and will always be, a work in progress. That’s the way I like it. That’s the way I enjoy it.