blogging

I’ve added back the page with a tag cloud for searching this blog by keyword. I hope this will give people a more detailed overview of our experiences here than they can get just surfing the categories.

For example, posts specifically about the Insadong area of Seoul can be found by clicking the word Insadong in the tag cloud. Also, my love affair with Papa John’s can be found by clicking either the ‘pizza’ or “Papa John’s” tags.

I went a little crazy when I first started tagging posts, so the cloud was pretty overwhelming. I’ve tried to cull things down, eliminating tags that only had one post, for example. I’ll probably do some more trimming, but it’s a start.

In case you are curious, I use the plugins Ultimate Tag Warrior 3 (be sure to get the latest version if you’ve upgraded to Wordpress 2.1) and Simple Tags (really only necessary if you use Technorati.)

Blogger, writer, journalist and photographer Michael Hurt (of Scribblings of the Metropolitician) has launched a new video podcast about Korea.

The first episode is a rather warm and touching look at New Year’s resolutions, captured on the street (near City Hall and Myeongdong?) this New Year’s Eve.

I can’t say enough great things about this. I’ve been hoping someone would do something like it for a long time. I’ve seen video podcasts about expats living in China, some in Europe, but never one about (and for) Korea.

Although he says the first episode is still rough, I think it already does a great job of capturing the flavor of everyday life in Seoul—the warmth and friendliness of most of its residents and what matters to them.

Check out the podcast’s website here, or subscribe to it through iTunes here.

So, I think this is the last template change for awhile. December turned out to the crazy month I developed some sort of Wordpress theme-induced psychosis and started rapid-cycling through designs on a daily (and sometimes minute-ly) basis. There’s just so much out there to choose from.

As another blogger recently said, blogging is really just “narcissism for introverts” and this month, I guess I got it bad. I kept searching for that Holy Grail of coding-inept bloggers—-a template that would be easy enough for someone with next to no design skills to modify, letting me tweak it enough show some personality, but with limits on how much I could screw up.

My first attempt was with the excellent Sandbox theme, which I still think is awesome. But there, as many of you could see, my reach exceeded my grasp. I still have it, and one day, once I have learned a lot more about page design and CSS, maybe I’ll give it another try.

So, adieu, fair Sandbox. (And, cute cousin Simplr). For now, PreBuilt is more my speed. I’ve added a few things already, and it will probably get a more Seoul-ified header over the weekend. But, for now, I promise the page will (probably) stay the same.