Jason Clarke

Yes, I did return from my blog vacation just to post a self-referential link!

Seriously though- thanks to Justin Ellis, who wrote a great article introducing the citizen journalism landscape- not just in Maine but nationwide- for the Portland Press Herald a couple weeks back. I get a brief mention, along with a couple of other Maine bloggers including my friend Lance Dutson.

This is the fourth anniversary of this blog! Here’s the first post. I hope to compile some basic stats on this site’s history and share them here soon.

Are you a person? Do you enjoy food? If so, I cordially invite you to visit a new site I’m proud to announce: The Living Well Report.

The Living Well Report is a blog devoted, essentially, to delicious and healthy food. My wife Heidi cooks some awesome things usually with organic and/or natural ingredients and with variety and moderation in mind. Together, we photograph these concoctions and share them on the site along with recipes, product reviews, and other good things.

Please head over and check it out, and be sure to grab The Living Well Report RSS feed. And of course, we welcome your comments or feedback!

If you’re reading this site via RSS, take a second and check out the new header image. It’s a shot I took last spring at the Orono Bog Walk. It replaces the traditional winter/spring image of fireworks over Hong Kong. Flashback: Almost a year ago, the fireworks header was replaced by a shot from a ski lift over Henniker, New Hampshire.

If you follow my Flickr photos, you may have noticed a recent uptick in the amount of food photos we’re posting to our Good Food set. This is all in preparation for a new project I’m working on that I hope to take the lid off over the next couple of weeks. Here’s a preview.

If you visit this site from a compliant mobile device, you’ll now be automatically re-directed to the mobile version of jasonclarke.org. I’m still working out some kinks in my mobile version (permalinks are not mobile-friendly yet), and of course I also need to add auto-redirection for other mobile devices. But overall I’m glad to be taking incrimental steps towards mobile compatibility.

Last fall, I released a mobile version of this very site. At the time, I wanted something quick, so I used a third-party RSS-to-HTML service, FeedDigest, to port my blog’s feed back into a stripped-down HTML page. As I wrote back then, I knew there was a better way. Here’s what I wanted to implement with an upgraded mobile edition of this site:

A simpler URL: My original mobile URL was http://mobile.jasonclarke.org. While this is something (and I stress something) of a standard, I felt the domain was too long too ‘disconnected’ from the brand of my main site. So I chose to go with jasonclarke.org/m (something else of a standard), as I hope it will be easier and quicker to type.

A better back-end: As I said, my initial implementation was lacking. Relying on (even a great) third-party service isn’t entirely optimal, especially with the excellent Wordpress as my blog software. Now, the new version relies on Wordpress’ native custom templates, and a doubling of the Wordpress loop, to create a stripped-down, mobile page that automatically grabs posts directly from my database rather than porting them through a third-party. Even better, I have direct, integrated control of the page via my Wordpress admin area, either via editing the page itself or editing my templates within the Presentation editor. This beats my old system, where I had to get at the separate mobile domain via straight FTP.

In addition to these Wordpress hacks, I also made a variety of modifications to my theme files (header and footer, specifically), to detect via a variable whether or not a particular page is defined as “mobile” (as opposed to standard). This way, I can utilize single headers and footers for both types of sites without having to create nominally different versions of my theme’s headers and footers just for my mobile site.

So if you’re a mobile web user, check out http://jasonclarke.org/m and let me know what you think.

Thanks to MaineToday for adding this site to their list of local Maine blogs!

As you may have noticed, I have a new short story out, and I want to tell you all about it. It’s called “A Hard Word to Pronounce”, and it’s about a young twenty-ish guy on the day of his best friend’s wedding.

Because it’s a short story- and not a novel, or collection- I’m releasing it in e-book format, which basically means that it’s a great quality PDF. When you get it, you can either read it on your computer (or iPod or whatnot), or choose to print it out and take it with you. It’s $2 to own, and you can read an excerpt and purchase it right here:
http://jasonclarke.org/hardword

Whoah…a short story, in PDF download format, for two bucks? That sounds a bit crazy, no? But really, if you think about it, it’s kind of cool- because besides the fact that it gives you the option of saving some trees (and hasn’t it been a while since you had a chance to do that?), it’s also neat because it dramatically lowers the costs of production- savings which are passed directly on to you, dear reader.

Let me tell you just a bit more about this process, because I think it’s a direction that publishing is moving in. In this case, instead of packaging the story into a larger book– and that has to be done, because most printed books have set minimum page counts– you’re getting just one short story, but for much less than you’d pay for a typical book. That’s because it’s being delivered instantly (another benefit), without the interruption of a vast set of fixed costs such as printers, shippers, and even publicists and marketers.

That’s it for now. Even if you don’t care about the future of publishing, or saving a tree or two, please head over to my website, check out the story, and perhaps purchase it for yourself or a loved one. You can find all the info, plus order it, right here:

http://jasonclarke.org/hardword

And please do send me your thoughts and/or comments. I look forward to hearing from you, and I promise to keep you updated.

Xmas lights 2006,
originally uploaded by jgclarke.

The second annual shot of our house on Thanksgiving eve, immediately after the Xmas lighting ceremony for 2006. Unlike last year, it’s not snowing, but we still have much to be thankful for. Here’s to your own traditions, and a Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, wherever you are.