bioneural.net

Three Rounds for the First-lings who touched the sky,
Seven hundred Hopefuls in Round Four alone,
Nine Rules proffered for them to blog by,
One button to [Submit] before the world prone
In this Cyberspace where the Virtuous vie.
One Site to list them all, One Site to find them,
One Site to syndicate them all and to the Readers bind them
In this Cyberspace where the Virtuous vie.

Update 30.03.08: bioneural.net withdrew from 9rules Membership on 30 March 2008.

I thought a small poem was in order to celebrate the offer of bioneural.net joining 9rules.com—someone thinks bioneural.net is OK. Not having seen or agreed to the Membership agreement (as of this writing), this is merely a preliminary offer. I'm not part of the Community yet. So while we're in limbo, what's this all about then?

What is 9rules?

The 9rules Network is a community of the best weblogs in the world on a variety of topics... Anyone can join 9rules—you don't have to be well-known, networked, rich, successful, or beautiful—but you do have to have a fiery passion for the medium.

You can only join during a 24-hour submission round. Round 4 initially selected 111 sites to join the network from 700 evaluated submissions. To my genuine amazement, bioneural.net was offered inclusion in The 700 Club.

Member sites are allocated to a Community, ranging from Apple to Writing as representing the primary focus of the member site. As you can see from my tag cloud, the primary focus of bioneural.net is the Mac—but no word yet as to which Community I've been allocated. Content blogged by each Community is given it's own feed, and the site has a Blog feed of its own. The 9rules website focusses on the "best of the web" by higlighting some member articles in a Featured page and feed.

What are the 9 rules?

An obvious question. Here's the list of "rules for living" that played some part in the origination of the site:

1. Love what you do.
2. Never stop learning.
3. Form works with function.
4. Simple is beautiful.
5. Work hard, play hard.
6. You get what you pay for.
7. When you talk, we listen.
8. Must constantly improve.
9. Respect your inspiration

Stop and pause to reflect on these in relation to yourself, and your blog (if you have one). Really.

They're good rules—certainly good to live by—and most definitely good to blog by. For me personally, and with respect to what I am trying to achieve with this site (and in life generally), they translate thus:

1. Love what you do: It will be interesting to see what 9rules membership does for my visitor stats. But do you know what? I don't care if visitors are few: I blog here mostly for my benefit. If occasional readers benefit as a side effect, that's just great. There are times when we all need to be a little egocentric. When your day-job involves tales of woe and dis-ease, it's important to be able to escape somewhere that sets you free.
2. Never stop learning: As exemplified by my recent migration from a static site to one using PHP and MySQL. The previous site worked fine; I'd just taken it as far as I could, and wanted to test my limits instead of those imposed by the technologies in use. Life long learning is also part of my work ethos as a medical practitioner.
3. Form works with function: It's the creative expression I haven't had much use for since my school days. I admire products and services that are crafted with love and care; "It just works!" can be a positive attribute, but very rarely is just working good enough. "Looks smart, works even smarter" is a better characteristic to aim for.
4. Simple is beautiful: Like the design of the iPod, or the dashboard of the Alfa 156—sometimes less is more. Be this two columns instead of three, pictures instead of words, 3 links instead of 20,...
5. Work hard, play hard: You get out what you put in—but find a comfortable balance. If you choose to work part-time you might typically choose the "standard" over the "deluxe" in life more often than not. But that leaves time to play. Work to live; don't live to work.
6. You get what you pay for: Investing little time, money, or effort doesn't always pay off. "Free" isn't always better, but there are many notable exceptions, especially on the net. Sometimes you get more than you pay for, and such tools or products can make a vast difference to your enjoyment in using them. For example, spending considerable amounts on Macs and software enshrines a different attitude from those who "make do" and never install anything beyond the default "as shipped" applications—not that I don't wish things were cheaper!
7. When you talk, we listen: If someone takes the trouble to leave a comment on my blog, I'll try to take the trouble to acknowledge it. It doesn't always happen (sometimes there's just nothing to say), but the point is that we can't properly exchange ideas and information without two-way communication. There's another side to this: sometimes we need to talk to ourselves. When you talk (type) you are communicating, whether or not there's any third-party listening. Your alter egos (who says you have to have just one?) are reading your words and helping you to make sense of them, sub-consciously assimilating, classifying, processing, reflecting, formulating, and any other -ing you care to mention.
8. Must constantly improve: The tweaking never stops. Aim not to ask "How do I achieve..." and think "job done" when you've achieved it. I see my web development efforts as undergoing constant evolution. There's often a better way...
9. Respect your inspiration: Isaac Newton's "on the shoulders of giants" phrase comes to mind; I try to give credit where credit is due. Likewise, if I have an idea that I then discover has been hatch before (as many have), it doesn't belittle that thought. Ideas are never bad—it's their implementation that can be.

Do you own reflection, and feel free to let me know what these rules mean to you. Admittedly some are a little clichéd, but don't let that detract from their value. You can do far worse than adhering to clichéd rules!

Apologies to Tolkien. bioneural.net does not endorse the tactics of Sauron the Great, and any connotations that might be drawn from comparing the "One Site" to the One Ring are purely coincidental.

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