By Brendan Loy (Twitter/FriendFeed)

Baby needs to be born by 6:27 AM Friday for me to win the Baby Pool. Possibly even earlier, depending on new guesses. http://bit.ly/lKo3B

By Brendan Loy (Twitter/FriendFeed)

Baby needs to be born by 6:27 AM Friday for me to win the Baby Pool. Possibly even earlier, depending on new guesses. http://bit.ly/lKo3B

By Brendan Loy (Twitter/FriendFeed)

Just got a refund check from Comcast for $0.29. That’s less than the postage it cost them to mail it. Heh.

By Brendan Loy (Twitter/FriendFeed)

Just got a refund check from Comcast for $0.29. That’s less than the postage it cost them to mail it. Heh.

By Brendan Loy

One of the more peculiar aspects of my new blog, without question, is its subtitle: “All the Nose that’s fit to blog.” Where on earth does that come from, and what does it mean? Well, as Page 2 of the August 29, 1995 issue of the Living Room Times newspaper explains:

One thing about this newspaper that often confuses readers is our slogan, which has been included on every issue ever printed of The Living Room Times.

The slogan, of course, is “All the Nose that’s fit to print.”

And the truth is, it doesn’t really mean anything.

Brendan Loy came up with it on December 27, 1993, when he wrote the first issue of the Times. He decided to call the newspaper, which was at that point written only for the sake of writing it—Brendan didn’t start bringing it to school until several months later—“The Living Room Times.”

This name reminded him of the world-famous New York Times, which has the slogan “All the News that’s fit to print.” Brendan wanted his slogan to be slightly different, so he came up with a nonsensical, meaningless, and somewhat corny satire: “All the Nose that’s fit to print.”

The slogan stuck, and has now become a Times tradition.

In light of that tradition, it seemed only natural to adapt the slogan to the bloggy reincarnation of The Living Room Times. So, instead of “fit to print,” now it’s “fit to blog.” But “All the Nose” remains, in all its glorious silliness and meaninglessness.

Becky, however, thinks keeping the old slogan is a stupid, terrible idea, as it’s obscure, nonsensical and will require constant explaining to the uninitiated. Frankly, I think she may have a point — and I was bolstered in this belief when Josh Rubin, one of the LRT’s biggest fans during high school, expressed similar sentiments via e-mail.

But I’m still undecided on the point. So the question is, first of all, should I keep the slogan? And second of all, if I get rid of it, what should I then put in the white space at top right? What should take its place? You can answer question #1 via the poll below, and question #2 in comments.

By Brendan Loy

The Boston Globe’s always exceptional photoblog, The Big Picture, has a typically fantastic post about the Iranian uprising, titled “A troubled week in Iran,” featuring great photo after great photo of the turmoil, all 990 pixels wide.

This follows on the heels of three previous posts with photos of the election and subsequent protests. Lots of great stuff. Definitely worth checking out.

(Hat tip: Robin Sloan’s excellent Iran Tracker site.)

By Brendan Loy

As I mentioned at midnight, the date of today’s blog relaunch wasn’t just picked at random. On the contrary, I’ve had my eye on this particular date for quite a while. Why? Because this blog is called “The Living Room Times” — and, as of today, it has been exactly a decade since the publication date of the final Living Room Times newspaper issue of all time, reporting on my class’s graduation from high school.

Here’s the front page of that 10-years-ago-today issue. Note how the masthead is “wearing” a graduation cap, because the Times itself was “graduating.” I always thought that was a nice touch, if I do say so myself. :)

Some months ago, after deciding to name this blog “The Living Room Times” — an obvious choice, by the way, and one that I can’t believe didn’t occur to me last summer when I was trying to think of a name to replace “Irish Trojan” — I settled on June 23 as an ideal launch date. It appeals to my innate sense of symmetry, to say nothing of my obsession with anniversaries. So I’m rather pleased that I was able to pull it off. :)

Anyway, you can view the whole issue here, if you’re so inclined. And that’s not all: I’ve converted a whole bunch of old Living Room Times issues (originally created in Microsoft Publisher, or, in the case of the very early issues, Microsoft Write) into PDFs and PNGs, and created an archive of them here on the blog.

The archive is still a work in progress — I need to add little descriptive blurbs for most of the issues, and narratives for the school years, plus there are some missing issues that I hope to find and add — but even so, there’s a lot of content to peruse, if anyone feels so inclined. I haven’t counted, but I know there are well over 100 issues online, out of the 400-plus that I published from 1993 to 1999. (Officially, I published 371, but there were a whole bunch that didn’t get counted.) Putting together that archive is mostly for my own benefit, I suppose, but I imagine some of my old classmates will get a kick out of it, too.

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By Brendan Loy (Twitter/FriendFeed)

RT @TheFix Gov. Sanford Returns! http://tr.im/psSb

By Brendan Loy

Here are some things that I’ve done, seen, and taken pictures of, since I went on my “blog hiatus” last November:

USC vs. Notre Dame at the L.A. Coliseum, November 29, 2008:

Planetary conjunction over Denver, December 1, 2008:

Toby in front of our fireplace, December 21, 2008:

Pretty pictures of the Superstition Mountains, December 25 and 26, 2008:

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By Brendan Loy (Twitter/FriendFeed)

I am a Tweet. Click my icon to view the source at Twitter.com. Any #hashtags or Twitter names (e.g., @brendanloy) are also links.

By Brendan Loy

As noted in my official blog-launching post at midnight this morning, I’m returning to the blogosphere today after a seven-month hiatus with a new blog under a new (old) name: The Living Room Times, the title of my old school newspaper. I’ll have more to say about that name, and its history, a little later.

But the name of this blog isn’t the only thing that’s changed from my previous bloggy efforts. I’m also introducing a bunch of changes and new features, to try and make this blog fulfill the purposes and plans I have for it. Above all, I’m trying to figure out how to keep it fresh, and a worthwhile place to visit, even though the demands of being a father, lawyer, husband and homeowner will make it impossible to blog full-length posts with anything approaching the regularity of the good ol’ days. Here’s some of what I’m come up with to bridge that gap, along with various other changes and features:

• FriendFeed and Twitter posts: As you can see above, my posts to FriendFeed (which are usually just links to articles, websites or whatnot that I find interesting, sometimes with a wee bit of commentary in the text of the link) and my Tweets to Twitter will be automatically imported into this blog, and displayed on the homepage as what I’m calling “mini-posts.”

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By Brendan Loy (Twitter/FriendFeed)

It’s a good thing I’m restarting my blog. Clearly America needs me to help recover from our Long National Jon & Kate + 8 Divorce Nightmare.

By Brendan Loy

I have various additional introductory blog posts scheduled to go online throughout the day today, but in the mean time, blogworthy stuff is happening in the world — and the cosmos. Specifically:

[This] morning, NASA’s LCROSS spacecraft will fly by the Moon only 9,000 km above the lunar surface. The purpose of the encounter is to put LCROSS in an elongated Earth orbit and position it for impact at the lunar south pole later this year. Live video streaming of the flyby begins at approximately 5:20 AM PDT on Tuesday, June 23, 2009. Click here to watch.

For those keeping score at home, 5:20 AM PDT is 6:20 AM Mountain Time, 8:20 AM Eastern Time, and 12:20 Greenwich Mean Time (the latter being, for reasons I’ll explain later, this blog’s time zone at present).

Anyway, tune into the webcast later this morning and watch!

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By Brendan Loy

I’m back, baby.

After more than seven months in the blogospheric wilderness, living off social-media crumbs (primarily FriendFeed and Facebook) and resisting the everpresent Call of the Blog, I’ve decided to get back in the saddle (or off the wagon, depending on how you look at it). I’ve accomplished what I wanted to accomplish by taking a break, and now it’s time for a fresh start. So here I am. (I’m guessing many of you didn’t think I’d stay away this long, eh?)

I’ve named this new blog after my old middle-school and high-school newspaper, The Living Room Times — and I’m launching it on the 10th anniversary of the final issue of its namesake. (Holy cow. That means it’s been ten years since I graduated high school. Wow.) I’ll have more to say about that later this morning.

I’ll also have more to say about the structure and features of the new blog, its odd subtitle, my plans for it, and so forth. But, for now, just a couple of quick points:

• This blog is best viewed in Firefox or Safari. There are some CSS layout problems in Internet Explorer, which I intend to fix eventually if possible, but for now, I’d recommend using a different browser.

• Here are the blog rules. The big change from my previous blogs is that I’m requiring commenters to register. This is an anti-spam and anti-troll measure, which I hope won’t have too much of a chilling effect on the 99% of you whose commentary I welcome with open arms.

You can register with a pseudonym if you like, just so long as you provide a valid e-mail address (which won’t be made public). Or you can log in using your existing Facebook, Google, OpenID, Twitter, AOL or Yahoo account.

Please let me know if you have any technical difficulties registering or logging in, or any other problems with the new site. I’m sure there will be a few kinks to work out in these initial days. You can e-mail me at irishtrojan [at] gmail.com.

Meanwhile, whether logged in or not, for the next little while, you can “comment” on this post — and on the launch of this blog — using the “live chat” window below, which was also present on the countdown page that I had on my homepage for the last 24 hours. I’m going to shut down the chat window before I go to bed, though.

Anyway, welcome, and stay tuned for more introductory posts and other new blog content throughout the day.

P.S. Oh, and for those watching the relaunch live, I promised fireworks, so here you go…

Pay no attention to the “2008,” or the people speaking Chinese :)