The DIY mentality

There's no feeling quite like being able to point to something and proudly say "I did that," but in a world of fast food, convenience stores, and every necessity and luxury available at the click of a button, the do-it-yourself mentality seems to have gotten lost in the proverbial woods.

Many people have probably experienced elderly (or even not-so-elderly) relatives talking about working a cheese churn when they were younger. Outside of a museum, I'm not sure I've ever even seen a cheese churn. Canning vegetables and pickling seem to have mostly vanished, whereas a generation ago it was much more common. It's so much easier to stop by the local supermarket and buy whatever you need than it is to take a day or two to do the work yourself.

I'm as lazy and time-constrained as the next person, but I enjoy hobbies that are a bit outside the norm. When I took up homebrewing beer and mead in 2007, I had taken up a do-it-yourself hobby, and it quickly became clear that it was not only fun, but also provided a point of pride at the end. Even if I simply followed someone else's recipe, at the end of the fermentation process, I had a beer that I could proudly say was mine -- and even better, it was something I could share.

The time and energy required was minimal when compared to the sense of accomplishment when I poured that first glass of beer for a curious friend.

If a website falls in the ether, does it make a sound?

Anything is better than nothing.

With my inability to design anything but a very simple, HTML-based website that looks like it just stepped out of 1995, the front page of this site has shown nothing more than an "under construction" page for months.

Unhelpful as that is, I have seen the light and relaunched my blog.

Well, not quite. It's an all-new blog, actually. Out with the old and in with the new, as they say.

Stay tuned for further developments.