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Gabe the Information Designer
I am an information designer, of the old school. "Information designer" means that I design ways of communicating information. The "old school" part clarifies that, rather than arranging computer databases or streamlining data presentation, I create visual design, and the information is the subject of the graphics I produce. The phrase "information design" is now sometimes used as a subset of IT work, but originally information design was a sub-category, under the "graphic design" umbrella. So I am a graphic designer. My job doesn't require me to design magazines, websites, posters or brochures (although I have done some of that for other jobs, and freelance). Instead I design legal exhibits, charts, diagrams, time lines, and simple maps. For more than three years I have concerned myself with how best to display complex information such that it can be quickly grasped by anyone unfamiliar with the subject matter. This of course is challenging.

I get satisfaction from my job, in that it allows me to tackle visual problems and solve them like puzzles. Another thing I like about it is that I don't know anyone else who does what I do. I have never met an information designer before; only once or twice have I met a graphic design student interested in information design. Lately I've been googling information design a lot, because I've heard there is an annual information designers' conference, but I have no idea what it's called or who sponsors it.

In the meantime, I am doing information design for a tort lawyer, who deals in accidents. He works only by referral and word of mouth, and is incredibly, almost painfully strict about being honest and accurate. Apparently in this kind of law, you either have to defend your honesty and develop a reputation for it, or you have to take a million small cases and make your money just running people through the system. Because my boss likes the challenge and ethics of being the honest kind, I have had complete liberty to interpret every piece of information I receive as accurately as my meticulous mind can, trying to solve each puzzle.

For most cases I generate the same three or four types of images. The first diagram (or five to ten diagrams, depending on the case) is called my "injury guy." It's a human anatomical model illustration, usually from Netter, with markings to locate the injuries, and explanations of why and how they hurt. These are usually complicated, and I give the files kind of gonzo nicknames, because it's therapeutic. (C.f., "Someone Shoot Me I Stink Like A Burrito.") Diagram number two is typically some kind of time line, either in terms of time spent unconscious or in a hospital, or time spent off work and the resulting lost wages. (C.f., the diagrams on the right: they're wage-loss time lines before and after brainstorming.) Third, occasionally I have to add information (arrows, etc.) to scene photos, to help explain the physics and specifics of an accident, or put little pointers on an MRI to explain the significance of the films. (Yes, I can read MRI and X-ray films. I honestly do it better than the radiologists sometimes.)

I'm A Content Little Xanga-Hobbit
I have been a relatively simple blogger for most of my time on Xanga. From 2005 till this spring, I mostly blogged by whim, sometimes posting repeatedly for several days in a row, other times forgetting I had a Xanga account for weeks at a time. I started with a few real-world friends as my subs, and picked up a few more Xanga friends from time to time. Sometimes one someone would stumble across my blog and take a liking to it, other times I would find an interesting Xangan through a ring or something. I don't remember specifically how I first connected with many of my old faithful types like TearsKeepAFalling and I_eat_my_hair_for_super. But regardless of where they came from, for a while I've had this little ring of "my people." I don't remember why I even blogged before they were around. Most of them don't post very often, and I like to keep track of when they do. I mean, why not? For instance, Wolfe is like my encouraging Xanga mom. Also, scientists have proven conclusively that, if I were a girl, I would actually be the same person as Skittles. (Or, if not, maybe P.A. It's flattering either way.) Anyway, my point is, these people are important, just as important as all of you will be if you keep hanging around and commenting back and forth with me for three years. Sounds like a long time, huh.

The Point
The problem: I have all these old faithful types on Xanga, but now it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to find their posts on the page. The Xanga home page is great, and sneaky too. I mean, I gotta give the Xanga team props. I know the front page hasn't always been there, but I don't remember when it first appeared. It was just there one day, as though it had always been there. The Universal Inbox happened, and it was cool. Even helpful. But therein lies the problem. If universal inbox helps us, who's going to help the universal inbox? Lets' face the facts people, it's not me, or you, who can't keep up with ol' Xanga these days. It's that durned wonderful unibox. A post comes up, but within a half-hour it's swept away into the limbo of "page 2" and beyond by an onslaught of less important items like pulses, etc. Unless I check my Xanga every hour or so, it becomes nearly impossible to keep track of things. And backtracking a week? Forget it.

I Am Not Evil: A Methodical Case for Gabe's Non-Evil-ness
In order for me to make my case here, I have to state that I am not evil. So, keep in mind, I am not an evil Xangan. Till last month, I really was the smallest of the small-fries. And remember, small = harmless. I  think I'm still just an unassuming village-dwelling Xanga-hobbit, even if I am not as small the fry that I once was. Still, I try to mind my own business, be nice to people, and observe the following "Xanga Good-guys (not Bad-guys) Club Guidelines":

	Left to right: "Good" (represented by me, because MlleRobillard couldn't make it) and "Evil" (Drakonskyr). Questions? (Not pictured: CallMeQuell, representing "Awesome")

• Don't recommend a zillion things beyond the unusually recommend-worthy. It's annoys people.
  
• Avoid drama. I only had one quasi-romantic entanglement on here (errm, never again, he says. No, she was just too awesome, it didn't work.)
  
• Avoid online arguments. I've only done it once or twice over my Xanga years, which is saying a lot.
  
• Don't proselytize people who don't know and trust you, or preach fire and brimstone
• Don't spam
• Don't insult people often, even DMV
  

I work hard to use my powers for good, or for awesome, but not for evil. I try to keep the drama low and the quality high (why does that line sound so much more hard-core set to east-coast underground rap?) The way I figure, it's best to be agreeable to every extent possible, without compromising your own identity or your content.

Desperately Trying Not To Carry the LOTR Analogy
So what happened? What changed my happy little Xanga into my big, overwhelming, breathless Xanga? Well, I saw this post about a ring of power that... um. I mean about racism... on the front page. I figured anyone on the front page must be a (figuratively) huge Xangan with a lot of subs and all that. Like the rest of you, I wrote a response post, thinking nothing would come of it. Maybe a few of my old peeps would recommend it. Well, they did, but so did theblackspiderman. So I got this huge deluge of comments. I mean, A LOT of comments. And some new subs and friends. That was kind of awesome, and it increased my interest in actually writing on my Xanga.

One thing led to another, and I got a couple more recs from people with long reader lists, including DMV (who has been hanging out with the San Jose people a lot lately) and Spidey again. Well, that was cool, so I just kept blogging. Some people told me I should try to get featured, and besides the fact that I still have no idea how to do that, I just took it as an extremely generous compliment, and ignored it. Little did I know what was about to happen.

So then Coincidentally posted this thing about community college, and I started to write a comment on it. The comment got kinda long. So naturally I posted it on my own blog instead. Next thing I know I have recs from TheTheologiansCafe and tinahawt (how do those people even KNOW I EXIST??) and I was inundated, I thought, by more readers than I could imagine. Again, little did I know. The next day I happily strolled my little browser over to Xanga, and was about to log in when I saw my own avatar on the front page. I nearly pooped my new Levi 514's. I say nearly. I am no vanedave (who is an awesome guy).

One example of an old post of mine. (No, not the book. Just the photo.) But those tabs might come in handy on Xanga's unibox.

Well, I am a friendly guy, and I want to get to know all of you new people who have subbed me, I really do. I am quite serious when I say that, and I know it's impossible, but there is no "but" coming. I am enjoying Xanga more than I have in a long time.

This Paragraph Does not Start with "But"
Due to all the new readers in the last month, I have a lot of new friends and subscriptions of my own, and a few of them are people who recommend a LOT of posts. All the time. And I'm thinking "Rec, rec, rec STOPPIT.." (oops... I meant) "wow there's a lot of quality content to read!" I also have become friends with some of the most active Xangans, who tend to post entries and especially pulses with much rapidity. Well, I am capable of keeping up with all this in about the same way I am able to wash down an Ibuprofen by opening my mouth under the Niagara.

On most days when the gabe logs in, he immediately loses all hope of catching up on the past five pages of people's entries and other lesser stuff. I'm afraid that I have really neglected some of my old-time buddies because my unibox is now an enormous pile of sand in which their single contributions are but precious, sparse, individual grains.

Xanga Needs A Change (Neither a Diaper-change nor Barry Obama)
We have established (a) that I am an information designer, and (b) that I am not evil. Since none of the rest of you appear to be information designers, I guess it's up to me to suggest something. So here's what I think. First of all, I think the visual format of Xanga home should be rearranged just a bit. Let's think about it. The new look should be useful, not clunky like the current homepage interface. You should be able to review recent activity in a glance, and by recent I don't mean the last half hour. I mean the last week or more. You should be able to look once and maybe even clearly know what you have and haven't read or commented, or even recommended. If you can have a read/unread feature in email, you could have it in the Xanga unibox, yeah? So here's how I lay out the page in my mind. Not all specific, but some ideas. Maybe I will sketch it out, and post it.

• Pulses. What if you were to log on every day and see a little ongoing stream of 15-20 pulses (less important than posts but still important) on the right side of the screen? Or (!) pulses could even be on a little ticker-tape running across the top like news headlines. That would be awesome. And we wouldn't have to get them confused with the posts. There should be a link that will nav you to a page of the last 100 pulses.
  
• Photos. New photos from my friends should be in a module in the top left, or thumbnailed across  the top, bottom, or one side of the screen. Don't get me wrong, OwenHiggins. I still think photos are important. A link would lead to a separate page of the most recent 50 thumbnails. Yeah.
  
• Video / Audio. Whatever. I don't even care. A small module somewhere out of the way would be fine.
• Recommendations. I think the recs should be in a list similar to the pulses. Just the last 5-10 recs. What? Are you gonna be like, "Oh noes! I fell behind in reading all mah friends' recs!" No. Click to a page of the last 50.
  
• Blog Entries. Hey isn't blogging what this is all about? Writing? Reading other peoples' writing? The center of the page shouldn't be a mixed list of all of the above. It should be a list of the last 100 actual posts by my friends and subs. The screenname of the blogger, the date and title of the entry should be clear. Maybe even a feature that tells you whether you already commented on it or something, in case you don't recognize the title.

And Finally, if Nothing is Going to Change
I have noticed that unless my posts get immediately recommended, I don't get a lot of traffic to them, even regular readers who are interested in reading them, until after I have done something I never thought I would do: I timestamp them. That's right. The ever-flowing current of the unibox away into page five oblivion means that unless you keep timestamping your posts to keep them at the forefront, people who WANT to read them may never find them in the mess of other content. Why didn't they find the post? Because they didn't log in during the same hour that I posted it. I really wish my old regular friends WOULD timestamp their new posts, because it's hard to wade back through the old content to try to find out if anyone posted anything, and if I miss it by a couple of days, it won't even be there. Then I have to go around and check a bunch of blogs individually, only to find that in fact most of them have not posted anything new, and one of them has posted two things and I missed them both, even though they were awesome. Why do I get ten times more pulse comments than blog entry comments? Because pulses can go up every half hour without effort, whereas an entry is only posted so often because it ideally takes more work. As long as the system is biased against posts, I think timestamping is understandable.

So I conclude: I'm not evil. I don't endorse bad Xanga habits or poor Xanga etiquette. But I do like timestamping, because it helps. I wish more of my favorite bloggers would do it. So, I think timestamping is not evil. It's understandable and useful. Its helpfulness just continues to increase as more and more quality writing gets lost, choked out and unnoticed amid a million pulses, uploaded images, and a wanton shotgun spray of hit-and-miss recommendations. Yup.