Decloak!

A few small announcements...

First, I'll be posting under my common name now [Update 18 April 2013] as soon as I finish wrangling my Google accounts into proper condition, which is proving more annoying than expected. I posted under "Cog" for a long time out of shyness. I assumed people I met would, from time to time, search for my name on the web, and I didn't want this blog to be the first thing they saw.* Now that I'm older, I care less. Blame aging-related disinhibition, or a more secure social and economic position (I'm in a committed relationship; I'm not so worried about prospective employers turning me down anymore); or maybe I'm just more at peace with myself, who knows.

Second, and perhaps relatedly, I recently left Google, so the various complicated disclaimers that I used to apply to technology-related writing will no longer apply. On the other hand, I still have some unsold Google stock left over from my tenure there, so you can continue to consider me a bought-and-paid-for mouthpiece if you like.

Third, as the link in the previous paragraph demonstrates, I occasionally post on Plus when something doesn't seem substantial enough to be here. (Actually, I'm decloaking here partly because I want to write longer pieces under my name and crosspost the link there.) If you follow this blog, you may find that feed worthwhile as well. I don't love Plus, but I think the most plausible path to ending the unipolar Facebook-controlled social web is for people to contribute to the growth of Facebook's competitors. Google's not quite the champion of the open web that it once was, but hoping for a permanent champion from capitalism is a dubious prospect. The alignment of any particular organization with the path of righteousness is a temporary condition. Look around at the forces at play in the world, and ally yourself with those that seem, at the moment, to offer the best hope for movement in the right direction.

Finally, in the interest of full disclosure, I've gone through the archives and deleted or lightly edited a few posts. Mostly I've been deleting linkrot — this blog started out as a way to clean out my bookmarks file, and thus many of my old posts consisted of a now-broken link and some cryptic text — but I've also taken the liberty of deleting some stuff that simply seemed, in my judgment, like a waste of time for any conceivable future reader. Yes, this is a bit of a blogging faux pas, but I honestly believe that the archives are more useful now that there's somewhat less chaff. If you really care to see the full unvarnished past, you can of course consult archive.org, although I warn you that you'll never get those moments of your limited lifespan back.

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*Note that I've always used the hapax legomenon "char bootred cataphora" to allow anyone to find me in the other direction, going from this blog to my common identity.