This is my journal of the 24 hours in my life captured for the "Behind the Curtain" project ("BTC"). It's not any special day, just the day the project chose. It's an ordinary day, so most of what you'll see here is quite ordinary, for me. One of the purposes of the project is to learn about each other through looking at that ordinariness.

You can read all about me and my career on my web site, if you wish. I've done many web photojournals of events in my life, some of which I've posted on my web site in the Albums section and on my log, such as the 1999 Digital Storytelling Festival, Fall Comdex 1999, and Watching the Boston Marathon 2000. I've also created a small web site called www.webphotojournals.com sharing what I've learned and my biases. This, though, is the first web photojournal I've done just showing whatever happens to occur on a regular day even if it doesn't relate to anything special.

As usual, when I take pictures I try to use available light whenever possible (i.e., no flash). I also leave out people who ask not to be shown. (Some, like my dog, have no choice.) I like to tell a story, so I usually put more than one picture on a page when that makes up a coherent whole. To make that practice more acceptable for those of you with 28.8 modems, I try to keep the pictures small and crop them tight. The attempt to keep the picture file sizes down is the main reason the pictures are almost all so small. I'd rather go with more pictures and less resolution to help tell a story.

I also tend to use bold so you can skim and get the essence of what I want to say without needing to wade through all my carefully crafted prose. I try do use captions, too, since that helps those that skim, and, to be realistic, many of you do skim and complain if I leave the captions out.

These pictures were all taken by me, unless you see both my arms. If I'm in the picture close up, I usually took it by holding the camera at arm's length. This web photojournal was written over a few day period the week after.

I first found out about this project, I think, from Dave Winer's Scripting News. I thought about doing it, but didn't know if I had the time. The fact that I could do it any 24 hour period within two days, though, pushed me over. It made it easier to realize Sunday afternoon, when looking at all the people signed up on the main BTC site, that I hadn't signed up nor started taking pictures. Well, I figured, I might as well -- I should show at least a little bit. But what would be interesting? I've shown so much before: Getting in cabs, signs above public toilets, my hotel room, meeting with coworkers, etc. What could I show? Well, if all those people think it's worth while, I'll do what I can and see what happens.

First picture: Signing up to be one of the "official" entrants of BTC at 5:53:18pm Sunday (according to the time stamp my digital camera puts on the file):

You can see my setup at home (from the left): Inkjet printer, Gateway Profile 2, external Zip drive and CD burner. On the screen is the signup form for BTC. Now I was committed.

You can see my dog, Prince. He's a 9 1/2 year old Portuguese Water Dog. The table is in the kitchen, and is the one I usually put my laptop on when I'm writing my weblog at home. (It's where I'm typing this sentence now, Wednesday night.)