I transitioned from the built-in 1&1 wordpress blog to a standalone upload of the lastest wordpress version, so I can have more control over everything, particularly the look and feel, although the widgest are cool too... :)  For example I can easily include photos from flicker like this:

I added a few tools from freefind.com: a internal search, a what's new page, and a site map.  They come with some minimal advertising, so I might not keep them, but for now they work, and they let me use the Spirit Alchemy template to make them look decent.

Through Scientific American I found a way to offset the carbon footprint of my website.  The company, CO2Stats, provides a free carbon offset counter that automatically counts the carbon footprint caused by visitors to the site, mostly from the energy consumed by the computers used to access and host the site.  What is great...

Just a tiny update: I added a randomized image of some of the products at the Spirit Alchemy CafePress store.  Had to learn a little bit about javascript to do so, but was easily successful.  I hope this isn't too commercial and/or annoying for the front page.

I opened a store at CafePress to offer a variety of products (T-Shirts, Sweatshirts, Bumper Stickers, Mugs, License Plate Frames, Journals, and MORE) that have designs related to the spirit alchemy website. The store is http://www.cafepress.com/spirit_alchemy - (there's an underscore  between the words, as 'spiritalchemy' was already taken, but my stuff is WAY better!)

One of my interests is photography, and periodically I might put a photo here.  Feel free to see some of my other work at http://www.flickr.com/photos/spiritself/ For example, this was taken on a recent hike to Multnomah Falls... just a tiny fern (?) growing from between the cracks of two rocks forming one of the retaining walls. ...

I'll periodically mention here any updates to the Spirit Alchemy website. In this case, today I added a mostly unobtrusive counter to the front page, a link to this blog, and a test page that has dynamically updated news content and a comic. Wheee!

Well here is the inaugural post of a new blog. Does the world need another blog by a random guy?  Of course not.  But then again, what if this blog isn’t for the world?  Maybe it’s a way to see myself through a new lens.  Maybe, like any lens, it works both ways, and I...