I’ve decided to reboot an old venture.

A couple of years ago, I started a site called Copyhacker with the intent of exposing awful web copy. (I posted it here as well, and I still have the badge in my sidebar.) It didn’t go far — perhaps because I emailed each target I found, and then decided that was a really annoying sales tactic.

The idea stuck with me, though, and today the Copyhacker is back. No silly sales tactics, just a place to post crappy copy and practice on it with my red pen. If you have a suggestion, email hackme at copyhacker dot com. Better yet, follow copyhacker on Twitter, and @reply with potential targets. Because who hasn’t seen garbage like this on a site somewhere?

Once again, many thanks to Bryan for the terrific styling and WordPress hackery.

Ford Motor Sells Land Rover, Jaguar to India’s Tata
(from Bloomberg)

An icon of British imperialism, sold by one former British colony to another.

(I’m a former owner of both brands, and the son of a Ford devotee — so this is sad news to me.)

I swore I would quit writing “I’m a big slacker” posts. I haven’t posted in seven months, so I guess I’ve stuck to that pledge.

There have been a few changes around here. I have a new daughter and a new job. My already-scarce free time has vanished. Yes, I still want to write. More than I want to fly, or play Ultimate, or ski, or any of those other hobbies that come and go. I’m not going to try to make a career of it, though. I’d rather do this out of desire than obligation.

When I was a kid, I wanted a career in music. I mentioned this to a teacher, and he took me aside and told me that I could always enjoy playing or singing, without the pressure of having to make a living out of it. I’m sure that was his way of saying I didn’t have the talent, but that’s ok. I have a feeling I’d enjoy music less if it were my job.

So you won’t be reading much here about writing for profit from now on. I’d rather write because, and when, I want to — about whatever I want to write about. You might see more technology-related material. I don’t have the urge to write anything too technical, so there won’t be much code if any. I’m most motivated to write when it’s an escape from the day job. I want to make myself do more creative writing, and that may be easier if I’m not trying to build a copywriter’s portfolio.

You’ll probably catch a whiff of sour grapes in these words, but that’s ok too. I could try to edit it out, but this post has been sitting on my desktop unfinished for over a month and sticking out its tongue at me.

I think for awhile I was making this a blog about writing, which was a mistake. It shouldn’t be about writing, or Ruby, or culture, or gadgets, or my kids, or anything. From now on, it’s a blog for writing.

Thanks for reading. That is all.

WordPress 2.0, that is. Brilliant webmaster that I am, I decided to upgrade in the middle of a Monday. Apologies to anyone who walked in in the middle of the rehab. I think it’s good to go now.

Please let me know by comment or email (jv at starkravingcalm dot com) if you see anything fishy.

If you’re reading this, it means that this site has successfully moved to DreamHost. I mentioned in a previous post that I had setup a hosting account at an amazingly low price so I could do some development work on the side. One thing led to another, the end of the month was almost upon us, and so Bryan and I migrated about twenty sites in less than two days. Not bad, if I say so myself.

If you notice anything funny with the site, please let me know. While I’m on a roll, on to the next step: upgrading to WordPress 2.0.

I thought I’d spring for a new look up top. I’ve seen the old subway graphic on a lot of blogs — it’s part of Patricia Muller’s tasty Connections theme that comes with WordPress — and this place deserves uniqueness.

Major thanks to Bryan for coming up with the new graphic in about ten seconds.

So what do you guys think?

It’s high times here at SRC Inc. Over the last week or two I’ve noticed an increase in traffic — due in large part to my tablet series being picked up — and the inevitable comment spam that goes along with it. So today, I’m disgusted to announce that I’ve had to turn on comment moderation. If you’ve never commented here before, your first comment will have to be approved before it posts. After that first time, it should be business as usual.

I hope this does the trick — I hate those spamcatchers that make you type in a string of warped characters to prove you’re a human. I know a lot of you use those, but that sort of thing isn’t my bag, baby.

We here at SRC, Inc. like to be fully buzzword-compliant. With that in mind, we are pleased to announce the following:

• Categories are out.
• Tags are in.

Thanks to the super-cool Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin, posts now belong to tags instead of categories. Explore the tag cloud on the sidebar to browse posts by tag. In the post header, click on the » symbol next to each tag, and get a treat!

The plugin features lots of other gimmicks — viewing related posts, combinations of tags, suggested tags, and more. I’ll add more as I get braver about hacking up my template.

It bothers me that I’m not posting frequently. It’s not that I don’t want to — I’ve just been treating posts like polished essays, and spending upwards of an hour on every one. Well, some of the more popular bloggers out there don’t even bother with titles, and just spit out a sentence or two every couple of hours. While following my daily train of thought is not the purpose of this blog, there’s something to be said for keeping the gears lubed. With that in mind, I’m going to do my best to throw out at least one post a day. This one’s already taken too long to write. See you tomorrow morning at the latest.

Today you can feel it. The first teasings of autumn. It’s close to 90 degrees out here, but that’s down a good dozen from the peak of summer. The sky is blue. Not the deep crisp blue of fall, but not the steel haze of the dog days, either. You can make out details across the river. Clouds are small and friendly — not the gloomy giants we were seeing overhead just last week. Overnight temperatures are flirting with the 60s.

The breeze is the real giveaway, though. It’s dry, refreshing. I can sit down in the shade and write and feel almost comfortable for the first time in months.

We’re not quite done with the 90s, afternoon squalls, or humidity that seems to suck the sweat right out of you and then leave it on your skin. The end is in sight, though. One day, not long now, I’ll step outside in the morning and feel that snap in the air. The sky will be a little bluer still. It’s all downhill from here.