This was originally published on my old blog BackpackBook (Livro de Mochila), a project that blended literature and travel, sometimes just traveling in my lucid dreams. It ran as “Idéias Novas” on March 10, 2009.
Livro de Mochila was born mainly to push me into reading and writing more often, and also to try, somehow, to push my friends into reading, so the books I recommended would wake up the pleasure of traveling.
I think I reached my personal goal up to a point, but I don’t believe I encouraged anybody with the words and the accounts I left here.
Either way, besides apologizing for my absence around these parts, I’ve come back to say that I’m turning the site into something more personal. Some photos, some videos, and other philosophical journeys about the origin of the universe and the meaning of life.
The design is also being reworked, bit by bit. I liked the old one a great deal. I liked it far too much, and changing it hurt my heart.
New ideas, new design.
Anyway, there will be fewer words around here too.
Ronaldo asked in the comments whether I built the new layout myself, so here’s the longer answer. I’m reactivating the blog after two years. I used to post more about literature, travel and its motivations, but I started losing heart for two reasons. I lost a lot of time writing, rewriting and changing my mind at every moment, which left me discouraged, and I felt I wasn’t managing to encourage people to read and travel.
I’d given up, but after noticing some trends I’m picking the blog back up, now with more of a personal blog feel. I’m unifying all the information I have scattered around the place (Multiply, Orkut, Flickr and so on) into a blog of my own, without depending on external tools that could go offline at any moment.
As for the layout, I customized practically all of it by hand, Flash and WordPress. From the old layout to this one my goal has always been to simplify access to the information as much as possible. I’ll leave the millions of bars, banners and links to the portals. If you want, I’ll even post the source code for that orbiting tag cloud, though I doubt another lunatic would use it.