Here we go again
Apr. 21st, 2009 11:52 amThe first public post of a new Dreamwidth journal! How exciting! I must make sure it's something really inspiring...
Almost seven years ago, I started what proved to be the sort of LiveJournal which contained sporadic outbursts of wit and wisdom and meant that I met a special someone with whom to spend the rest of my life. I met plenty of other delightful and fascinating people along the way, too, and look forward to keeping in touch with them all. I also look forward to making many new friends over here on Dreamwidth; first up, many thanks to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lindra for the invitation code.
I'm known as![[info]](https://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
jiggery_pokery at LiveJournal and responsible for comments arising from the associated OpenID profile. You may still see references to that username over time. While Dreamwidth won't be to everyone's taste, particularly while we're shaking the bugs out in beta testing, I really love the ethos behind Dreamwidth. Nothing lasts forever online - 6¾ years at LiveJournal is a pretty good run - but there are so many brilliant minds and there is so much momentum and obvious love behind the Dreamwidth project that the whole place just oozes cool and it's a joy to leech the reflected cool from it. Ahem, be associated with it.
It seems a pretty Dreamwidth-y thing to do to make the first public post be something of an autobiography, not that many posts won't be. I'm Chris, 33 years old and live near Stockton-on-Tees, a town of 150,000 people about fifteen miles from the coast in the north-east of England. Hello! Currently I work in the energy industry; if you operate energy resources like power stations or natural gas facilities and want the benefits of a 24-hour trading service without the expense of a full team of shift workers and all the support systems that are required to back them up, outsource your trading to the company for whom I work. (Further details on request.)
The wonderfulshewalksonroses is my wife and very much my better half. We have been married for just over two years. We have no kids, but two lovely, silly kittens. My wife comes from the state of Georgia and moved to make a new life in the UK to be with me; it may make sense for both of us to make another new life for ourselves together in the USA at some point.
Culturally, I identify first and foremost as a gamer. I try to take an interest as widely as possible in the world of games, particularly obscure games, crossovers between different media and emerging styles of play. While I tend to prefer to play board and card games, I take particular interests in puzzles and the emerging public game movement. I also adore those elaborately codified, big-scale public displays of play that the world knows as organised sports and TV game shows. Within the field of sports, I am a huge fan of mind sports such as chess and poker; among physical sports, I am a fourth-generation fan of Sunderland Association Football Club, the Redcar Bears motorcycle speedway tam, the Birmingham and Solihull Bees rugby union team (not at all local, but an old friend is its player-coach) and I am currently fascinated by the nascent United Football League in the US.
Politically, I recognise that all philosophies are compromises with attendant drawbacks. I strongly prefer the drawbacks and problems that arise from policies that are towards (but probably not all the way at) the statist and socialist ends of the spectra to the drawbacks and problems that arise from policies that are towards the libertarian and capitalist ends of the spectra. Colour me liberal; heck, colour me pinko. Also colour me internationalist and secular; I am a wishy-washy agnostic who prays, though more as a form of meditation, affirmation and mindfulness than out of any particular belief.
If I'm deliberately going to make a change between the way I used LiveJournal and the way I use Dreamwidth, it's going to be that I don't intend to try as hard at Dreamwidth. At LiveJournal, I tended to make infrequent, long posts, which didn't seem to work as well in practice as it ought to have done in theory. If I can train myself to feel OK with making posts of appropriate length, and recognising that it's OK to make short posts when they're appropriate as well as long ones, that's surely got to be less stressful. I'm going to run this journal instead of letting it run me.
Almost seven years ago, I started what proved to be the sort of LiveJournal which contained sporadic outbursts of wit and wisdom and meant that I met a special someone with whom to spend the rest of my life. I met plenty of other delightful and fascinating people along the way, too, and look forward to keeping in touch with them all. I also look forward to making many new friends over here on Dreamwidth; first up, many thanks to
lindra for the invitation code.I'm known as
jiggery_pokery at LiveJournal and responsible for comments arising from the associated OpenID profile. You may still see references to that username over time. While Dreamwidth won't be to everyone's taste, particularly while we're shaking the bugs out in beta testing, I really love the ethos behind Dreamwidth. Nothing lasts forever online - 6¾ years at LiveJournal is a pretty good run - but there are so many brilliant minds and there is so much momentum and obvious love behind the Dreamwidth project that the whole place just oozes cool and it's a joy to leech the reflected cool from it. Ahem, be associated with it.It seems a pretty Dreamwidth-y thing to do to make the first public post be something of an autobiography, not that many posts won't be. I'm Chris, 33 years old and live near Stockton-on-Tees, a town of 150,000 people about fifteen miles from the coast in the north-east of England. Hello! Currently I work in the energy industry; if you operate energy resources like power stations or natural gas facilities and want the benefits of a 24-hour trading service without the expense of a full team of shift workers and all the support systems that are required to back them up, outsource your trading to the company for whom I work. (Further details on request.)
The wonderful
shewalksonroses is my wife and very much my better half. We have been married for just over two years. We have no kids, but two lovely, silly kittens. My wife comes from the state of Georgia and moved to make a new life in the UK to be with me; it may make sense for both of us to make another new life for ourselves together in the USA at some point.Culturally, I identify first and foremost as a gamer. I try to take an interest as widely as possible in the world of games, particularly obscure games, crossovers between different media and emerging styles of play. While I tend to prefer to play board and card games, I take particular interests in puzzles and the emerging public game movement. I also adore those elaborately codified, big-scale public displays of play that the world knows as organised sports and TV game shows. Within the field of sports, I am a huge fan of mind sports such as chess and poker; among physical sports, I am a fourth-generation fan of Sunderland Association Football Club, the Redcar Bears motorcycle speedway tam, the Birmingham and Solihull Bees rugby union team (not at all local, but an old friend is its player-coach) and I am currently fascinated by the nascent United Football League in the US.
Politically, I recognise that all philosophies are compromises with attendant drawbacks. I strongly prefer the drawbacks and problems that arise from policies that are towards (but probably not all the way at) the statist and socialist ends of the spectra to the drawbacks and problems that arise from policies that are towards the libertarian and capitalist ends of the spectra. Colour me liberal; heck, colour me pinko. Also colour me internationalist and secular; I am a wishy-washy agnostic who prays, though more as a form of meditation, affirmation and mindfulness than out of any particular belief.
If I'm deliberately going to make a change between the way I used LiveJournal and the way I use Dreamwidth, it's going to be that I don't intend to try as hard at Dreamwidth. At LiveJournal, I tended to make infrequent, long posts, which didn't seem to work as well in practice as it ought to have done in theory. If I can train myself to feel OK with making posts of appropriate length, and recognising that it's OK to make short posts when they're appropriate as well as long ones, that's surely got to be less stressful. I'm going to run this journal instead of letting it run me.
