I have yet to figure out why, but most weblogs seems to use smaller fonts than non-weblog sites and its too damn small!  I don't mind and actually like small fonts for extraneous features like calendars and bookmarks, but the meet of weblog needs to be reasonably size as well as resizable.  With Radio's default settings, only the headings (h1, h2, …) are resizable.  I am sure Dave has a hack somewhere that gets around this because Scott Loftesness' weblog is resizable (gosh, a payment guru and a Radio hacker).

One of these weekends, I'll write a utility to let me selectively control the font size as well as automatically resizing fonts for my viewing pleasure.

While I respect Ray Ozzie's creativity and intelligence, I disagree with his, hopefully temporal, view that publishing is dead.  This is why:

1. Technology will take at least 40 more years to reach the level of availability and convenience necessary to kill off publishing: 10 years to emerge and mature, another 10 years to be cheap and convenient enough, and 20 years of deathwatch (old habits die hard).  Rising cost of paper will obviously become a major fudge factor.
2. There is no clear business model for weblog-based journalism.  Paying for something you can hold in your hand is a no brainer, paying for a view is more difficult to sell.  Paying for two hours of sharable entertainment via Pay-per-View is also different from paying pennies per weblog articles for casual reading.  Likely only top 1% of commercial weblogs will be profitable, leaving the rest to be simply 'emotionally rewarding'.
3. Technology and the practice of weblogs are still in their infancy.  There are so much yet to be invented particularly in collaboration and security areas.  Most of blogging phenomenon is due to group dynamics and not technology which is actually pretty thin bridge of convenience.

Scott Loftesness was the first to reflect my thoughts on the reflective nature of blogging.  Thanks Scott.  I really enjoy talking with people like Scott and Dave [Winer] because there is a startling lack of 'intellectual resistence' or struggle to explain.  With just a few words and a bit of clarification to sort out alternate interpretations is all one needs.

Blogspace reminds me of the mirror room scene in Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon.  While there are different types of blogging ranging from diary to router styles, one attribute shared by majority of blogs is: reflective.  In other words, blogs reflect thoughts similar to the way mirrors reflect images.  If a blog is a mirror, a world of blog is a world of mirrors, a strange and disorienting world of reflections.

Within minutes of my first blog post, Dave Winer commented on my blog (thanks Dave;) in his blog which serves similar role as Netscape Navigator's default home page: Blogspace Home.  In terms of my mirror world metaphor, Dave's Scripting.com is like the huge mirror on the ceiling.

Lets see which mirror reflects this reflection of my thoughts…

For many years, I have watched the Blog phenomenon unfold with Dave Winer, a friend I have known since his Living Video Text days, in the middle of it.  I have avoided blogging mainly because I instinctively felt that blogging is not only as addictive as smoking, but also changes how one thinks and behaves day by day.  Whether the effects of bloggin is good or not, I cannot stay away any longer.  So off I go into Blogspace.