Chris Nicholson's Writing Weblog
October 29, 2004 • Friday
My favorite (relatively) new website: FactCheck.org. The site monitors political elections (at the moment, mostly the presidential one), reviewing speeches and ads, checking the boasts and accusations, and then reporting their unbiased findings to the public. Bravo.
The lesson from FactCheck.org so far: We can't trust either candidate.
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October 27, 2004 • Wednesday
This news is nearly a week old, but I started this blog just yesterday, so bear with me, okay?
Dave Barry, very arguably the most popular humor writer in America, is taking a year off from writing his syndicated humor column. My first thought was how much I would miss reading his column every week. But then I realized that I've read his column only once in about the last six years.
Barry is my favorite humor writer (well, perhaps that's really Steve Martin, but Martin isn't nearly as prolific), but I don't get a newspaper anymore since this crazy concept of the Internet brings me my news for free. Plus, I've fallen into the clearly lazy habit of just waiting for Barry's column compilations to hit bookstores, and then I just read those.
Still, Barry's time off and potential retirement are noteworthy events in my world. I've been reading Barry's writing since high school, when my local metro newspaper ran an excerpt of Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States. (That's still one of my favorite Barry books, along with Dave Barry Does Japan and Dave Barry Turns 40). So his doing anything that suggests he won't be around forever strikes a chord of nostalgia in me.
I tried to find an official story about the sabbatical to link to, but the link from Barry's own website is to the Miami Herald article about the subject, which you need a membership to read.
On another note: Happy birthday to my mom, Cathy. Today she turns h$$-&86** g.... Oops, s0mth1ng mst beee wr0n wth myyyyy k3yb0ard....
(That last line is a hat-tip to Barry.)
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October 26, 2004 • Tuesday
Anyone who's been to cnicholson.com before today will notice that the website has completely changed. It has a new look and mostly different content. Plus, it has this nifty new blog.
The redesign is a reflection of my effort to attract more writing and editing work now that I've left magazine publishing to pursue a freelance career.
The change was a little hard to make. The original cnicholson.com was the first website I ever built. I put a lot of time into it, working through a huge learning curve to get it together without having to pay for help. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't at least a little nostalgic about deleting all those files from the server.
Alas, we move on. To bigger and better things. From the world of corporate publishing to — as my friend, photographer Dean Batchelder, said — being self-unemployed.
Anyway, here's the new site. Have a look around and (hopefully) enjoy.
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