Moving On Up

Take a look at my Daily Photo



A couple of weeks ago I complained about being stuck using the free Blogger service for my blog. Submitting posts is often slow, changing sidebar items is tedious, and photo uploading is unnecessarily complicated. The gold standard for blogging now seems to be TypePad. TypePad, unfortunately, is a pay service. In my post I lamented that paying for blogging was not something I could justify right now.

Shortly after that post a very kind Accidental Blogist reader contacted me. It seems that TypePad was offering a Buy One / Get One Free deal to renewing members. This wonderful person offered me their free one-year account. Giving it about, oh, a second of thought, I accepted. I am now the owner of a TypePad Plus account, which comes with three weblogs. The Accidental Blogist, Ipso Photo (my photoblog) and I Have a Headache (the missus’ blog) will all be making the big move.

I cannot express the incredible amount of gratitude I have for the wonderful benefactor who is making all of this possible. As most blog authors (or at least the ones that don’t get 10,000 daily hits) will tell you, some days you wonder, “why bother?” That’s why getting feedback and comments can make a bloggers day. Somebody is out there reading your stuff. I see this gift of TypePad as one person’s belief that my writings and photos have some value. I now feel that it is my job, at least for the next year, to continue to try to improve my writing and my photography, if only to justify this gift I have been given.

New Address, New Name

I’m going to use my move to TypePad as an opportunity to change the Accidental Blogist name. While I originally stumbled onto Blogger (and blogging) by accident, I think I’ve kind of outgrown the word accidental. It gives the impression of a bumbling novice. And the word blogist (which isn’t really a word) might be better than “blogger,” but it still was starting to grate on me. So my new blog will be The Long Cut, as in not the short cut, as in taking your time and looking around. The Long Cut is a song off of Uncle Tupelo’s last album, Anodyne and my seven-year-old says it describes the routes I take while driving. I also think it describes my writing. As the song says, If you wanna take the long cut, We'll get there eventually.

So please follow me over to TypePad and bookmark the new site. Ipso Photo will remain on Blogger a little longer until I get it to look how I want it to look, but The Long Cut is ready to go. It’s not perfect, but as I learn more of the TypePad way of doing things I hope to continue improving the site.

See you there!