A couple times this week, I’ve come across issues with bi- words. The first time, it was “bi-monthly.” Now, is that twice a month or every two months? The second time, it was “bi-weekly.” Is that twice a week, or every two weeks? I’m just not sure.

You see the problem, right?

This is a great example of the Curse of Knowledge, which I often summarize as “just because you know what you’re talking about doesn’t mean anybody else does.” You simply can’t use these words to say what you want to say, clearly and with no confusion, unless your audience already knows exactly what you’re referring to. Best to avoid them.

All of which seems so obvious to me that I feel I must be insulting your intelligence. Yet I come across things like this all the time — and am probably guilty of doing it too. It’s so easy for us to forget that other people might have no idea what we’re talking about.

Just launched the new carlthoren.com. For the past year, I had my site up on Apple’s MobileMe, which was easy to set up, but expensive and inflexible. For this new site, I used WordPress, which I love, in conjunction with the easy-to-use and modify Atahualpa theme. I highly recommend this theme: It’s the only one I’ve come across which provides a control panel with hundreds of design and site options that take care of the CSS for you. And if you do need to add some custom code, it’s usually obvious what you need to do. It’s a free theme that can pretty much do everything. Amazing.

Part of this new carlthoren.com is having a blog, which I hope to update with random thoughts, observations, and updates for anyone who might find them interesting. Nobody’s really that interested in other people’s opinions and ideas… yet it’s nice to have a forum for sharing your own, all the same.