About Walking West
Walking West is a weblog, one of tens of thousands currently swarming across the web like locusts and picking it clean of links. If you're not familiar with weblogs (or logs, or blogs), think of them as a hybrid of newspaper column, journal, letter to friends, links page, and mental bulletin board. You can read more about them here and here. Or you can just immerse yourself and pick it up by osmosis like the rest of us.
I write it with various people in mind: a few regular readers; miscellaneous friends who read it now and then; and an amorphous mass of complete strangers who read it whenever. At times I'll name-check other webloggers, but don't let it faze you; I'm just acknowledging those who are taking an interest. If you're taking an interest, drop me a line.
About Me
My name is Rory. I'm Australian, early 30s, married, no kids, and temporarily living in Melbourne, with plans to shift to the UK before long. For a brief overview of my life up to mid-2000, take a look at Half-Life.
I have an eclectic, if not schizophrenic, range of interests, which is reflected in this log. One of the longest-standing is political science: I've published a book on the Pacific and have interests in political theory, development politics, Australian politics and international politics.
These days I work in the web. I was a teenage hacker (in the old sense) way back and even have a computer science degree, but left IT for a while until the web drew me back. In the past few years I've been a computer-support guy, a web designer and webmaster, and an IT policy adviser for the Australian university sector. So you can expect some technical and big-picture IT commentary here too.
I'm also a cartoonist and a writer. Right now I'm writing about Madagascar, which my wife and I visited last year. Then there are the usual things—movies, music, day-to-day life—that make up much of any weblog.
But mostly, Walking West is about a personal journey through the world and the web. I hope you enjoy wandering along with me.
28 March 2001
©2001 Rory Ewins