Landing… softly?
I’m the Rob Harrap who is a geology professor at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
Amazingly there are several Rob Harrap’s who are academics. So this might mean you are looking for… someone else! If so, I recommend you go find them. They are not here. I’ve looked.
Why am I here? Why did I land on a site distinct from Queen’s University. Well, there are three or four reasons.
First, I’ve been on the web for a LONG time. I had one of the first websites in the world (relatively speaking) – in 1993. Back when keeping a text list of useful websites was more than adequate. And my site grew into the Queen’s Geology site, and then that was hived off (because running it wasn’t my problem) and … then a lot of years happened. The tools at Queen’s were a pain in the ass to use, so I didn’t do a lot with the site. I occasionally launched subsites built with a builder tool for courses, but… you know… it kind of languished. And then some.
So then Queen’s decided to be much less friendly about profs hosting personal sites on their servers, probably (cough) something to do with people actually expressing their ideas freely (but not me… I’m WAY too boring to get anyone in trouble). So I thought about it, and did nothing for a couple of years.
Until today. Until TODAY. Today we draw the line. Well, okay, not so much, today I got my butt in gear and actually clicked on a few buttons. And wow, amazingly, that had an effect. Here. I. Am.
So what is going to be here, other than this odd reminiscence? Well… I write a lot of stuff that is more or less open source. I want to share it beyond my students. I have projects that people might find interesting. I want to share them. I have photography that someone might want to see (and use). I want to share it. I have music that nobody should ever have to endure. Not going to share that anytime soon.
To make this a little more personal, and a little more situated, here is something I took yesterday while canoeing. I was at Frontenac Park, north of Kingston, on Big Salmon Lake. It was about 8:15 am. The canoe is a Swift Keewaydin 15 solo (rigged for canoe or pack-boat use). The camera is… my iPhone Xr. The shoes are pretty ragged.
So we’ll see where this goes. This is a start. A start is half the job done, they say. Who they are I’m not sure, but…