My old website has an elegant domain name

The clunky old address came for free with my ISP, and they have since changed from ntlworld to Virgin, without changing their URLs, and all that. But http://tobyphilpott.tk/ will find me.

I decided to take a free domain name from Dot.tk - this remains free so long as you have (I think it is) 25 visits per month or something. Anyway, I used it, and eventually decided to upgrade to the paid domain name, because it seems like a good cause to help people whose island just might disappear if the oceans keep rising, for instance. And, anyway, I love that each country got its own little part of the Internet.

TK = Tokelau.

According to that Wiki piece "Tokelau has added more than 10% to its GDP through registrations of domain names under its top-level domain, .tk"

Mind mapping

With some enthusiasm, I adopted the Personal Brain mind mapping software. I had tried it in the past, and quite liked the look and feel of it, but as with any new system, you have to import quite a lot of data (the hard way) before it starts to flourish.

And I actually let it drift, and rarely open it, as it feels like a half-finished project. The even bigger aspect of sharing brains, etc - with Web Brain - has also faltered, just like so many 'sharing' models, like wikis, Shelfari, etc.

Here's one I made for the Maybe study group.

You can find the dynamic version of this at WebBrain, although it doesn't give you a complete idea about the flexibility and power of the software.  You'll be able to see a little bit of how the map can rearrange itself.
I also put a smaller one on the OM website (all experiments).

On my own blog, you can find some posts about Mind Mapping, here in April 2011, and then back in December 2010.  I had started by mapping my online presence on a board, with Post-It notes, but it grew and grew...

I think not...

I love the internet. I work in a library. So much of the internet relates to information gathering, and to story-telling.

In over a decade online, and with a job that involved assessing online tools, I have tried all kinds of optional gizmos and methods.

I invented blogs for sub-personalities. I contributed to Wikis (and started a couple of my own). I used MySpace a bit, Facebook a lot, Twitter rather diffidently.

I have studied online, and have taught online.

So it seems a bit silly, perhaps, to start another blog - but I have several Gmail accounts, and each one offers a blog and website option - so the temptation remains.

I find it hard to let things go. Especially now I am working on writing. Anything I have put online might prove useful raw material. But so many of us have put our lives online that sorting through it all, or retrieving anything, has become difficult.

I suspect I will simply use this as a kind of index of material already published.