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It's a little better than plumb

Editor Kevin Ireton introduces his new blog, titled Better than Plumb

Issue 188
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For nearly 15 years, I have resisted adding an editor’s page to each issue of Fine Homebuilding, with my smiling photo and a boring nosebleed from me wherein I satisfy your burning desire to know what’s on my mind that month. Some editors pull this off successfully. Others simply offer a tedious verbal tour of their latest issue. Frankly, I was never convinced that I could find something significant to say every two months, and because magazine real estate is a precious commodity, I didn’t want to displace information that was likely to be more useful to you.

But now there’s the Internet. I’ve launched my own blog on FineHomebuilding.com with a smiling photo and with the expectation that I’ll have something significant to say at least once a week. My blog is called “Better Than Plumb” because I once heard a carpenter use that phrase while reading a level. He described the wall he was checking as “a little better than plumb,” meaning, of course, that it was just a little bit off, which is how the world looks to me most days. One benefit of my blog is its immediacy. After we started getting feedback about our April/May cover, I posted a blog entry. If you missed it, check out the post dated April 18, 2007 (“Safety not always simple”).

My colleagues at the magazine have their own blog, “Chalk the Line,” and between us, our goal is to tell stories on each other and on ourselves; to share observations about our own work, be it carpentry or magazine making; and to help you know a little more about Fine Homebuilding and the people who make it.

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