BitterSweetLife

Yesterday morning I woke up with the strange realization that I’d been dreaming about my blog. Specifically, the dream had to do with my successful implementation of a hack that allowed me to add tags to all my posts for seamless filing. Yeah, it was one of those fantasy-type dreams.

Turns out it was premonitory, though.

Very perceptive readers may have noticed a new line of script appearing at the bottom of recent posts. I reads: “Filed under...” As well, in the same line as the timestamp and comments, a small link has appeared. At the moment, the link is “[t],” but it has variously read “tag this” and “bookmark this.”

I’ve been experimenting.

It was shortly after my return from Colorado that I discovered that it’s possible to add categories (tags) to the blogger platform. It was in the days following that I discovered the hack required moderate HTML know-how. As the saying goes, I heard the toll of doom.

But as I write, I’m able to say (with reasonable confidence) that I have double-crossed fate again and BitterSweetLife is now fully tag-worthy.

What does this mean?

If you’re familiar with del.icio.us, you understand instantly the implications of my little code breakthrough. But, since most of my readers fall in the artistic/poetic, non-techie category, I’ll try and explain.

Del.icio.us is a system for compiling links. Think of it as a huge pile of all the links that anyone (and there are millions of users) has found remotely interesting. But this is not chaotic, because every link is sorted with various “tags” (i.e. “KUbasketball,” “C.S._Lewis,” “classic_literature,” “Death_Cab_for_Cutie”) for quick retrieval. So del.icio.us a link library, filled with pages that people have personally labeled and stashed away.

On a larger scale, the information-juggling potential of this “tagging” system is intruiging, and you may want to check out. For this blog, though, the repercussions are fairly straightforward.

1. From here on out, each new post will be filed in one or more del.icio.us categories (“tagged”). As time allows, I’ll also go back and tag the archives.
2. This will make BitterSweetLife uber-accessible; you’ll be able to pull up all posts pertaining to “Heaven” or “BitterSweetness” by clicking that tag. Effortlessly, you can read all my “Poetry” at once (not necessarily advised) or hit up “Lindsay” guest posts.
3. Using the “tag this” or “[t]” link, you can tag and save posts to your own del.icio.us account (free).
4. This blog is becoming fluidly navigable.