So I am not your traditional blogger, not that there really is a traditional blog, now is there? However, let’s say I don’t link as much as others and I foray into the entrails of my personal life a bit more than most other blogs that I read and link to. In part, I do this because I feel like other have a handle on the linking and since they are doing such a fine job of it why bother to repeat?

But in the last few days as I have struggled to keep awake (the snow in Chicago or something has made me really sleepy), I have come across some really cool and interesting sites and articles on our such fine and wonderful Web so here they are for your enjoyment and New Year’s edification:

1. First, a really great Overview of Free and Open Source Software from our pals at Grok Law. In my opinion you can never have a glut of general overviews and reviews if they really are general, expansive, informative, and pleasant to read.

2. Rabble has pointed out one of the most sublime looking of blogs. Damn, she’s got game in the aesthetics department. This sounds a bit chesse-odd-ball-ish but her site gives me this calm sense of pleasure it is so pretty. It does on the web what gardens do for me in the real world.

3. So, so, so, let me tell you, this Debian compilation meta blog is an anthropologist’s wet dream. However, my fieldwork dream is pretty much over so I won’t comb it as regularly as I would have had it been around in the past but wow, what a wonderful idea to congeal, to cement, to link the disparate members of the Free Software project together. I guess GNOME has had its own meta-community blog for a while now.

4. Good writing. What makes a good writer? I don’t know the answer but some folks have been looking at whether blogging improves writing. In my case, I think absolutely. I used to write a personal journal and without the audience, without knowing that my words were enjoined to perform at some level, I wrote a lot of wet, soppy, mopey… trash. It was thick, ugly, muddy, fuddled and befuddled as I knew only I would read it. Though, I have to admit some days I do miss writing the marshy stuff from time to time, which is why some of the mushy slop makes it into my blog from time to time.