I recently traveled down to San Diego and completed my first venture into Southern California culture. It was truly everything I expected: palm trees, beaches, freeways, massive malls, and plenty of bleached blonde hair.
I have to admit, though, despite the many prominent building achievements by master architects within the area and a smattering of historical spanish colonial, I still found the look (and corresponding vibe) of the city and its suburbs to be very bland, particularly downtown. Never in my wanderings have I felt so completely emmersed in the physical environment of Anytown, America, for so much of the time. The few remnants of natural beauty within the area were much more enticing, and I spent the majority of my time straining to see that sole identifying factor of the area. A sighting of a single desert tree against the hazy skyline truly was spectacular, if a little sad in its rarity.

The freeways, on the other hand, quickly proved themselves to be the star of my trip. The complexity of the system that serves the city was incredible- 10-lane highways, constant merging and switching lanes, exits that serve a multitude of city streets and other freeways, bridges over bridges, all for miles on end. I don’t think I have ever missed as many turns or been as confused as a driver. Each exit dropped you in a different area on town, and it was often easier to get back on the freeway than to drive down the city grid the mile or so to the next destination. The inbetween was typically uninteresting strip sprawl anyway. The system, and the spot destination style of life it creates, was indeed impressive- the full embodiment of the American car-driven lifestyle. Fascinating (and exhilerating) even if bad for the environment.

Urban design theory in the 21st century shuns the lifestyle of the personal car, but it does little for discussing how to take thriving places such as San Diego and truly transforming it into a city where cars aren’t needed. Instead, the theory is only really applied to new construction, often located off the exits of the freeway systems. Even if mass transportation measures are considered and implemented in existing cities, they can be more hassle, and more expensive, than driving. Unless mass transportation is coupled with, I hate to say it, making cities less drivable and parkable, Americans will never abandon their cars. And despite how beautfully impressive freeways systems such as San Diego’s can be, they still do little for us in the long run compared to walkable cities with lower pollution.

Recently I was perusing the online blog world and I came across a feature that I plan to install on this site. It’s called FeedBurner. This free online service allows people to subscribe to my blog via email. It also provides me with information such as how many subscribers I have, where they come from, and what they are looking at on my site. All sorts of information that will help me make this site something great and wonderful, hopefully. It also it will help my readers keep up with my thoughts in an incredibly easy way. By subscribing (see box on right), you will receive an email whenever I post a new entry. It’s just that easy.

I plan to post about once a week, on the subjects you see listed to your right. If you do subscribe, please remember to come back and comment. I want this blog to partly be about discussion, so comments are important!

Being a Blogger is much more difficult than I imagined it would be. Particularly when you are trying to go at it in an in-depth level such as what I have attempted this summer, and actually write the code and customize a site to my particular desires. I am learning that although code may be English-based, I still have essentially learned three new languages this summer(html, css, php). And as all my initiatives have been self-taught and motivated, I have to add that this course has kept my room the cleanest it has been in years, and my body in the best shape of my life. I highly recommend both outlets as fantastic frustration-relievers/ procrastination initiatives.

So I’ve finally got this part of the site up and running, after an entire summer of mainly sifting through code manuals and running into many, many dead ends. For those wondering, I ended up running this blog off of Wordpress, an online software program that came free with the new web domain registration (hence why my site moved). I learned php coding and created my own Weblog template in which I am currently still ironing out a few kinks. This is not at all what I would have imagined myself doing with this website originally, but it has been an intriguing journey nonetheless. Despite all this work, I still feel as if I am an amatuer grasping at the edges of a entire world of knowledge. I do plan to continue to tweak and practice my new coding languages upon this blog, but it is time to switch directions and focus on my next step, the portfolio aspect of this site. I will be learning yet another code language for this one, Flash (aka fancy moving graphics). Also, I will still be writing one blog entry per week, so please continue to check back for those, and continue to give me feedback and suggestions on everything.

Thankyou for being supportive!

the admin.