I’ve always been a bit wary of revealing too much information about myself online. Given some past incidents with (admittedly indeterminate) potential for danger to my person, it’s been clear that there is no anonymity online. That said, I’ve taken some solace in the fact that my name is common. So common, in fact, that I don’t even mind stating online that I live in Minneapolis, because last time I checked, there were a column and a half of Scott Andersons in the Minneapolis phone book, and I’m not even one of them!

But I’ve always kind of had this idea that I’m “the” Scott Anderson of the Internet. I figured that I’m so immersed in this stuff and have been for so long (having created my first website in 1994), and I’ve encountered so few other Scott Andersons online that I must, therefore, have the greatest online presence of any of the world’s (approximately) hundred megabazillion Scott Andersons.

A quick Google search taught me how wrong I was.

It’s not just that there are a lot of other Scott Andersons online; they all seem like they’re more me than me: musicians, writers, photographers, all manner of creative activities. And I (the real Scott Anderson) didn’t even show up until page 5 of the results!

So now it’s clear to me that I need to become a little less anonymous! Either I need to plaster my name all over everything I do, or I need a less common name. Given my inherent laziness, I’m inclined to go with the latter. I wonder if Griddlecake K. Catafalque is taken.

Spending as much time as I do online, I often forget that most people do not, and that the distribution of political opinions of other members of the general “online community” does not necessarily correspond to those of the much broader “real world.”

In particular, I’ve observed the disproportionate number of libertarians (and Libertarians) online. There are many ways in which I agree with libertarian views, especially to the extent of individual freedoms, inasmuch as if what you’re doing doesn’t hurt anyone else, the government shouldn’t be telling you not to do it. (However, I think the libertarian view often struggles with looking beyond the end of one’s nose regarding the impact of individual actions.)

And so, in this election year, we come to Ron Paul. Read more »

The new WordPress 2.1-based version of room34.com is here! I’ve been tinkering with this for about a month now so I’m very excited to finally have it online. And I think WordPress has really taken a major leap forward with version 2. (My loyal reader may recall that I had previously moved to an earlier version of WordPress, only to abandon it a short time later. Frankly, looking back I’m just amazed that I actually used it for 8 months; it seems like it was much less than that, but maybe that’s just because I’m thinking about how I only had Drupal running for about three days.)

There are still a few things left to do: some pages have missing content or broken links; I’m still working on a top navigation bar with dropdown menus (for now the navigation is buried below the fold in the right sidebar… look for Points of Interest and the various links that follow); and there are a plethora of WordPress plug-ins I’m eager to implement.

I’m also moving the photo albums of the kids over into Gallery 2. There’s a lot of work left to do on that, so I apologize to family and friends who are looking for photos. They’ll be back online soon, I promise! (I mean, “I hope!”)

And finally… in the time that I’ve been working on this, I’ve written a few other new blog entries (six, to be precise), which I never bothered to post on the old site. But they’re here, below, so read on!

At long last, the Room 34 Online Store is open for business!

The main featured product is my CD of original music recorded from January to October 2003. I also have some t-shirts featuring the CD’s artwork, and some other random stuff you may find interesting… or not. But you’ll never know for sure unless you check it out!