Public Service Announcement

I've added a new link to the list, Frank Cagle. I first ran into his writings at Tax Free Tennessee and liked them. I've since discovered his website, where all of his articles and essays are archived. He's presently the communications director for Van Hilleary's campaign, but he's also been the editor of the Knoxville News-Sentinel and a deputy mayor of Knoxville. Pretty good resume! And a good writer, go check him out.

Speaking of archives, the Half-Bakered archives appear to have been hosed. I can only find the first and last week's archives. Everything in between, almost two months, is missing and presumed lost. I'm going to change the way I do archiving, moving them to the website adjunct as separate pages. Sorry to have lost so much good and entertaining reading.

I've reached another decision regarding the focus and breadth of Half-Bakered. It's still a large workload and cutting into my other life activities pretty harshly. When I started, I had visions of doing something very like Bill Hobbs, but with Instapundit volume, where he does a lot of links and a lot of posts all day. Well, there's a reason he can do that--most of his posts are only a link and a short sentence! Mine tend toward many paragraphs of analysis. I can't do his pace with my large-size posts.

So, I'm going to narrow the focus even tighter. I'll only do columnist commentary when called for and analysis of stories that really strike me as egregious (for all the papers, radio and TV). I'll throw in some political commentary as I get moved. I'll probably add the Tennessean to this, on an occasional basis. So, while there most likely will be fewer posts per day, I hope the quality will increase along with the depth of analysis. I'd like to average three to six good posts a day, with maybe two of those really meaty analysis. Please let me know your thoughts and suggestions on this.

An aside on methods, if I may. I do these posts on the fly. That is, I read the papers during the day, or when I get home, and let things stew in my head. I might mark the stories up with marker to highlight things I want to remember. Then I'll sit down to the computer and call up the online pages I'll need. The posts are written straight into Blogger, right from my head, with only minimal editing (as the typos attest, I'm sure.) Sometimes, I'll realize later that I left out a point, or that my arguments are missing important things I wanted to say that might make things clearer, or that the whole thing could have been better organized. But too late, as I'm out of time! Hopefully, tightening up will help with this. You be my judges.

And I've decided to take Saturdays off, unless something demands my attention. I need time for me and my home life. Studying traffic volume, I've discovered that Saturday is the lowest traffic day of all--sometimes only a few hits! It seems that for Half-Bakered, as with so many other blogs, I get read mostly by folks at work. Shame on y'all!

And speaking of traffic, Half-Bakered now averages around 30-40 visits a day. The peak was the day when Instapundit quoted a letter I wrote to him--almost 100 hits! It's levelled back off. I'm proud to be getting all y'all readers and I hope I provide worthwhile reading. I'm working on improving my analytical skills along with my writing, so I can build traffic even higher and reach an even larger audience. Anything y'all can do to help with traffic, I'd appreciate. Like any other writer and commentator, I'd like to be read. But I also want to raise standards, and keep raising them. Any suggestions on that count, I'd also like to hear.

Y'all have made starting this blog a very joyous experience for me. Thank you, most humbly. See you on Sunday.

Until next time,
Your Working Boy