[ neoblogical ]

I’m typing this post on my new MacBook with Intel Core Duo 2.0 GHz processor, 80 gig HD, super drive, and 1 gig of ram. I’ve been thinking about this purchase for a long time and for a lot of reasons, but two of the main ones are the new ability to dual boot Windows XP and the application DevonThink. I’ve been doing a lot of reading online about varous tools for research for writers and tried a whole bunch of the ones for Windows XP and none were what I was looking for. The tool I need, or least one of the tools I need, from all the reviews and individual testimonies I have read, is DevonThink, and it is only available for the Mac.

Also, I do a good deal of web development and graphics work using mostly Adobe apps. Earlier this year during my teaching internship helping Dr. Ann Richards with her graduate Document Design class, I spent a lot of time in a Mac lab and was amazed at how much smoother and faster the apps worked on the Macs. And those weren’t even the Intel core duo machines. So I made up my mind when I heard about the new machines that my next PC was not going to be a PC after all.

So here I am, a new Mac user trying to find my way into this new world. I brought my MacBook home today from the Apple store, fired it up, and all has been pretty swell since. I have had Firefox crash on me twice and don’t know why, but I’m not worried about it yet, at least not until I get more oriented. I did use Macs a good bit between 1988 and 1992 for various publishing work, like when I helped with an independent newspaper for a while, and I’ve played around on a few since, but basically I’m having to unlearn a lot of ingrained behavior. For instance, I have memorized keystrokes from Windows 2.x that are no longer documented but which still work that allow me to cut and paste with one-handed keystroke combos. I have a LOOONNNGGG way to go to get up to speed as the power Mac user I intend to be. So anyone with suggestions, feel free to post them and help a fella out.

Technorati Tags: Mac, MacBook, Online Life

In other words, a LOT has happened since my initial couple of posts. I finally got that $%&*@ thesis finished. It was a real bear. But it went over pretty well with my committee and I’m pretty happy with it, too. I’m sure it would benefit from additional editing and finishing. That’s been the problem with my academic career thus far… I’m so busy with family and earning a living that I seldom get to write more than a couple or three drafts. Well, I’m not starting off as a very prolific writer, so I’m going to keep it short just to get some meat on the bones of this blog.

By the way, my thesis turned out not to get around to talking about Frontlne Milblogging after all. The problem was that I couldn’t talk about a subgenre of blogging because I came to the conclusion, as I was working out the theory of blogging as genre, that blogging is not a genre after all: blogging is a new medium, combining users, technology, audience, culture, and content in new ways, but it is not a genre. The technology/medium of blogging supports numerous genres, as does the technology/medium of the book. This led me to disagree with prominent rhetoricians Carolyn Miller and Dawn Shepherd. For a graduate student to disagree with academics on the level of Dr. Miller is very risky and intimidating, but I believe that I ended up on firm ground, and I did so through a loophole in Miller and Shepherd’s own paper on blogging as genre. I’ll come back to all that and post some more thoughts, and my thesis itself, soon.

So, I received my M.A. in Professional Writing a few weeks ago from Kennesaw State University. Then, after a two week “break” (ha!), I started my Ph.D. in English with concentration in Rhetoric, Composition, and Professional and Technical Writing at Georgia State University. I’ll be including you all in my new journey as we go, so stay tuned.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Digital Culture, Doctoral Studies, Genre Studies, Online Life, PhD Studies, RhetComp, Rhetoric