Newton Poetry

Since you all were nice enough to share a little bit about yourselves last week, it’s my turn.

My name is Dave Lawrence. I’m a 27-year-old communications specialist for a local credit union in my hometown of Jackson, MI – a smallish city along the I-94 corridor about an hour and a half west of Detroit.

I graduated with a degree in English/journalism from Adrian College and came back home to find my job.

While I worked with Macs at the campus newspaper, I didn’t get serious about them until the winter of 2005, when I bought my first computer – and first Mac: an iBook G4. Since then, I haven’t looked back. My collection has grown to include an iBook G3 clamshell, an iMac G3, two Mac SEs, a PowerMac G4, an iMac G4, and – most recently – a PowerMac G3.

My first Newton came in December 2006, and was more or less something to mess around with. I felt you can’t have a truly righteous Apple collection without a Newton, so I bought a MessagePad 110. Later, in the fall of 2007, I launched Newton Poetry. I also have an eMate.

Besides Macs and Newtons, I love to travel, read, watch “The Office,” head out on the town with friends, and get involved in my community. I’m in a local Rotary club, am on the board for a recycling non-profit, and get involved in politics whenever I can.

I’ve made several life-changing trips in the past few years, including driving down Route 66 from Chicago to Santa Monica, taking the northern route from Michigan to Seattle, and exploring Revolutionary War sites in New England. This summer, my big trip will include a cross-Canada drive to Vancouver for the Worldwide Newton Conference.

I do Newton Poetry because the Newton community fascinates me, and the device is so much fun to use. There’s still an audience out there who craves information about the Newton – how to make it work, how to connect it with modern Macs, where the Newton ideal will take us in the years ahead.

Also, I love to fiddle with computers and projects, and Newton Poetry gives me an outlet to write about those projects. What I found was that people who, say, want to install an Airport card in their iBook, like to have help as they do it. As a result, that post is one of my most popular.

There’s tons more about me, of course, so feel free to browse my personal blog, follow me on Twitter, or hang on and see where else Newton Poetry takes us.

I like to go back and read famous Mac-oriented bloggers’ first posts. Maybe it’s a glimpse back into how things used to be, before they got all famous on us, but it’s neat to see the earliest thoughts and ideas of people I read everyday.

While reading John Gruber’s early work on Daring Fireball, I noticed his earliest posts referred to “The Daring Fireball” as a blog, as a self-referential moniker, and as a body of people (“we here at Daring Fireball”). I’ve done the same thing.

So which is it? Do you call your blog by the multi-person “we,” even though – in the case of both Daring Fireball and Newton Poetry – only one person is responsible for all the content?

[And that’s another thing: Maybe it’s my journalism background, and its obsession with style guides, but what is the proper style for mentioning blogs? Do you italicize them, like magazines? Or do you leave them in standard text? Direct links every time you mention them? What say you, reader?]

Since I’m the only one developing copy for Newton Poetry (and yes, I’ve asked for help before), it only makes sense to refer to the blog and myself separately. If I do or discover something, I’ll call it “me.” When something is featured on Newton Poetry, I’ll mention the blog. No more, “We here at Newton Poetry” nonsense. It’s just me. “I found this,” or “A few months ago, Newton Poetry featured…”

Even referring to the blog seems distant and cold – like I’m referencing myself and my work from far away. It’s hard for an abstraction to be paired with a verb (“Newton Poetry did this” is like saying “The number seven ate nine”), especially when it really is me doing all the doing.

John Gruber eventually fell away from “The” and “we,” and now everyone knows it’s his show. That’s what makes it so good: his personality comes across. The “me” is dominant.

Good, one-person blogs are acts of ownership and passion, and I guess I feel there’s no need to step around who’s doing the doing. It isn’t the blog. It’s me. And it’s you, in the comments section.

Together, we make Newton Poetry.