Monthly Archive for October, 2003

Green Library

Published on October 26, 2003 in Uncategorized. 4 Comments
Tonight, for the first time in my 3.2-yr college career, I studied in a library. This may sound strange and obviously or necessarily false, but it is most assuredly true. Perhaps the most interesting part, however, is that I really can’t think of any reasons why it is true. Somewhere along the line, I guess, I realized, “Hey, I’ve never gone to the library to study like all my friends do.” This must have been the end of freshman or sophomore year.

From there, all you connoisseurs of that tangled and irreverent personality that is Jonathan Lipps should be able to surmise the progression. The just-noted, and highly irrelevant, difference between myself and those around me turned into a matter of equally irrelevant pride. And, since this is the only kind of pride I can really have in the circles I run in, without getting a lecturing-to, I relished it until it grew and took form of its own accord, becoming the odd fact it is (or was, I should say) today.

You see, it made me so damn interesting. Someone I knew (or didn’t know: picture a first conversation with a pretty Stanford girl, perhaps) would be talking about how she “has to go the library to study,” or might be asking me a question about Green, Stanford’s main library. “Do you know where Special Collections is?” let’s say. And I could throw back, in a delightfully offhanded tone, “Oh, I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been there.” To which there would be the usual shrieks (“Shit! You’re a senior!”), proving that I, the quintessential I’m-not-a-part-of-this-stupid-culture-er, am truly not a part of this stupid culture.

I imagine that this strategy has in some ways backfired, forestalling all the intimate “study” dates I might have had at the library. But I like to think that the newfound respect I accrue after conversations like the above is worth something more in the long run.

Anyway, it’s hard to keep up a tribute of my not-going-to-the-library-ness after I’ve just given up on it (or given in, as it were), but I thought, by way of eulogy, that it behooved me to report it before it grew dim, hidden in the reaches of time. So, here’s goodbye, unimportant habit #2,058!

Criticism As Inspiration

Published on October 18, 2003 in Uncategorized. 10 Comments
Welcome to my new home! Please feel free to have a look around and check out the changes I’ve made to the site. Also, feel free to leave some comments with impressions about the design or anything else. Finally, sit back as I relate the answer to your deepest, most burning question: “Why does that silly Jonathan Lipps need a new blog design every few months?”

Well, the short of it is, after a year and a half with Blogger, I decided that our relationship really wasn’t working out anymore. Now enter Movable Type, with whom I flirted earlier this summer in helping Jason to re-make his weblog. Since then, I’ve been dreaming of switching over myself, and have just been waiting for the perfect opportunity.

Now enter said perfect opportunity in the form of schoolwork. One (you, for example), wouldn’t think that schoolwork could be an opportunity for web design, since they both generally compete for my time. However, I have found that it is really only when I have serious work to do that my procrastination takes the form of a useful endeavor. If I had no schoolwork, I would “procrastinate” by playing video games or climbing or running or playing guitar. If I were to state the principle more broadly, it might be this: the more serious the workload, the higher the utility of my procrastination. All in all, I’m sort of a fan of this way of life because it makes me more productive when I am supposedly “loaded down” with work. Backwards, I know.

But there, you’ve got a bit of the story behind this particular design change. As for the chronic nature of my re-design tendencies, I don’t have a particularly good answer. I do, however, have a chronicle of these chronic itches [that was some kind of literary device I used there: "chronicle"/"chronic" right together like that] located in the ABOUT section of this website. Check it out!

So much for that. Anyway, I hope you’re happy with the new interface and I hope you use it well. Unfortunately, all your comments from my old blog have been completely lost. The upside to this is that, the way I had them before (using YACCS), they would all be lost eventually anyway. Now your comments will be stored with each entry forever, and never archived or made invisible. So comment away!

Lastly, I do apologize for not having written in such a long time. My life is interesting right now and I know you’re all dying to live vicariously through me ["dying to live" -- that's another literary device there]. I am just hoping that the sweet awesomeness of this new site will make up somewhat for that lack. Cheers!