Procrastination, a (slightly) redesigned website, and a cow

I'm procrastinating from working on my classes for the fall semester and decided to spiffy up my website a bit with a slightly cleaner look and a home page that has an embedded photo album. I had every intention of working on the website for the seminar I'm teaching, but somehow got sucked into updating this site instead.

The first impression that someone gets upon landing on my page is now a cow.

On blogging

I ran across this cartoon from thedoghousediaries.com and it struck a chord with me. Creating content for a blog is a lot of work; I made a snide comment about my site turning into a tumblr page the other day, and there's some truth to it given that I've been posting a lot of videos that I've run across here (half of this is for me, so I can watch them again). I have created a good deal of content on ScienceOfRelationships.com, and I try to post my photos when I can, but my hats off to those who can generate regular interesting and cohesive content for the interwebs.

Why (and why now)?

I've gone and done it. Created a blog. But why does Ben need a blog, and why now? Some thoughts:

• For the last year and a half or so, I've been interested in photography. They always say that the best way to become a good photographer is to take more pictures ("Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst" -- Henri Cartier-Bresson). Committing to post a "photo of the week" is my attempt to motivate myself to keep shooting, even when things are busy or I'm not actively taking a photography class.
• In about a month my dad and I will be embarking on a guitar building course at the Vermont Instruments School of Lutherie. I've been wanting to do a course like this for years, and my goal is to do periodic posts about our progress through the class.
• Last week my colleagues and I launched a new site called ScienceOfRelationships.com, and doing those posts have been fun. This gives me the freedom to write about stuff other than relationship research.
• I'm currently on sabbatical, so I've got the time to try new stuff.
• It's probably good for me (e.g., Jamie Pennebaker's research on the effect of writing on psychological and physical well-being).