I'm working on re-implementing tags within the web site this morning. One thing that's important, I think, in blog platforms but is glaringly missing is the notion of story. A story should be told in order. In the past, I've used that with the story of each painting - a reader could click into a story link here on the site and see the blogged progression of each painting - earliest post to most recent. Blogs, by nature, show the most recent post and then walk backward through history from there. I wrote to SixApart (the makers of Typepad) about a year ago and asked why they didn't offer something like this, but in my request I called it a thread. That was too geeky of me - I should have called it what it is: a "story" - and they rejected the idea and said, "That's what tags are for." Which is true, but tags show in typical blog order. And they should. Tags are topical, and not necessarily well-represented when read as a story. But some elements of what's displayed across multiple posts in a blog and tagged should be shown as a story. That just makes more sense. Like someone's weight loss. Or a painting. Fill in the blank for yourself. Know of a blogging platform that allows you to choose the sort order of tagged posts? I'm interested to see how they do it, if you know of one. So here on beatcanvas, I'll have tags, but I'll continue to have stories and they'll be separated. Stories appear in chronological order. Tags appear in reverse chronological order. Another thing I've done here recently is introduce a random quote generator. If you go to the home page, you'll see a random quote pulled from a list of about 600 that I have. Refresh the page and a different quote appears. It's dynamic every time. This morning, one of my favorites popped up: You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
-- Jack London With a club... amen. If you want it, find a way to make it. Don't settle. | 
