It’s a been a few months since I wrote anything significant here. There are a few reasons.
First is my VPN connection, which became crippled by the Great Firewall for over a month and kept me from accessing WordPress. I had to spend a couple of hours letting support staff from the VPN company take over my computer before I could get the thing working again.
Second is publishing articles for Tea Leaf Nation, which has taken over most of the time I had carved out for writing online. I’ve put out a few in the past few months, including some that I think I forgot to publish notices about here.
Here’s one on China’s latest super-city, and another about crazy real estate advertisements that Photoshop housing developments onto the decks of aircraft carriers.
The Tea Leaf Nation pieces are rewarding but really time-consuming to research and write. Data-driven maps are one of the hot trends in journalism now, but are a massive time-drain. Back when I was still fresh, I was staying up until midnight daily gathering data and formatting it to make a proper map. Now I’m thoroughly exhausted and ready to think twice before committing to another one.
Meanwhile I’m trying to think of ways to get this more personal blog updated regularly again. I have one idea which I’ll show in the next post.
Dispatches from the Paradise of Adventurers 