With a title like that you probably think it is an oxymoron. This mélange and that cowboy can never be organized! Actually, I try to do it; sometimes every six months and other times every couple of years. There is even a way for you to understand it. Read this little essay and, when you forget how, just push the button on the left marked ‘general’ and it will pop right back up again. And then you will remember. Wonder of wonders, right below it will be all my other reorganizations back to the beginning.

Let’s talk about the beginning for just a moment. The homepage of Tricolors gives a fair amount of the history and is still relatively accurate for the period between 1999 and 2007. Boil it down to one sentence and the timeline would read: 1999 DDBookline; 2000 Tricolors; 2003 Paris Arrival; 2005 Cowboy in Paris; 2008 Return. The one glaring error on the homepage is the beginning of paragraph 2: “We is a she: Dominique ….” As readers for the last two or three years will know, she is no longer. I just simply can’t change the homepage yet. For one reason it is still home for me. The last couple of years have been all about that and my physics.

Now I am reorganizing. That little tip about pushing the button marked general under categories is crucial to understanding Cowboy in Paris now. The original categories were all about the initial concept of explaining Paris and France to the English speaking world. They were, more or less, self explanatory then. The beauty is they still work for the current pages of 19-49. Yes, everything I know about France is still there – it is just buried a little deeper now.

I don’t know how to change the structure or the names so I have just adapted. Good was and is everything I thought was good about France; more recently it is just the category Europe, and even more recently biography. Better were the things I thought were even better than good about Paris; more recently the subject was business and games. Best were all the things superb about Paris, France and the French; more recently the subject covered was physics and science. Mixed is a mixed bag. About France it covered those things that had both positive and negative aspects. Since 2007 it has dealt primarily with my Sweetheart, cancer and death. It is a very mixed bag and tends toward the emotional. It is my personal perspectives. Ugly is ugly and I seldom used the category even then – in the beginning it was about the few things I did not like about France and the French. Great was about all the Places I wrote about in France because it is very hard to find a place that isn’t gorgeous. General, as I have already explained, is organizational.

Some aspects of Tricolors are no longer operable. Now, neither the Magazine nor the game Common Denominator is functioning. I hope to have them back up sometime in the future, but my hope is dimming. My plan was to change the name of the magazine to SHE and have most of the items that are currently in ‘mixed’ appear there. I am not technically capable of managing the infrastructure of the site so I just work around the original structure. Another thing that no longer worked was the links between title and article so I have delinked the original Table of Contents. You can get around that by simply typing the first couple of words of the title in the search box. I have also added a new Table of Contents for the items added in the last 18 months.

November 30, 2009 / Organization of a Cowboy / OC pg 1, © 2009 / CIP # 657, Dec 25, 2009 / GEN

Let’s be honest – this is way more than you want or need to know! Stop reading when you are convinced.

There is now a new Table of Contents entitled After-Words and all the earlier tables have been reworked to follow a similar format. This was necessary because all the earlier Table of Contents had been linked to the articles, but those links ceased to work when we changed servers a couple of years ago. Having given up hope of solving that problem we have delinked the articles. To help navigate we have substituted the date of the works appearance on Cowboy in Paris; and an acronym indicating either the articles subject or its placement.

All these acronyms and abbreviations have been in use since the beginning and have appeared in the taglines at the end of each piece. Of course very few people ever read any of those taglines but they usually contained a wealth of information. Now that they are appearing in the Table of Contents it is necessary to clarify their meanings and connections. Every individual essay had its own number and either that number, or its range of numbers, is often useful in finding them.

Which particular Table of Contents a piece appeared in is very significant to its chronological order and its probable subject matter. The first three, for all intents and purposes are just one with three different categories. Each succeeding table is reflective of a new organization and purpose. They are all phases really of A Cowboy in Paris. If you are still reading just skim the rest:

NAME / ABBREVIATION / USE OR FUNCTION

1 – Tricolors / TRI / Internet site on the WWW.
2 – Magazine / SHE / On TRI in Paris.
3 – Common Denominator / CD / Game on TRI.
4 – Cowboy in Paris / CIP / On TRI in Paris.
5 – Categories / CAT / On CIP # 6-13 below.
6 – General / GEN / On CIP this covers organization.
7 – Table of Contents / TOC / On CIP this covers content.
8 – Places / GRT / Originally this covered Paris and now everywhere else.
9 – Good / GD / Originally this dealt with Paris, then Europe and now biography.
10 – Better / BTR / Originally this involved France, and now games and business.
11 – Best / BST / First it dealt with the best of France and now deals with physics.
12 – Mixed / MXD / After Paris this covered SHE, cancer and personal topics.
13 – Ugly / UG / Seldom used and the only in its first guise.
14 – Archives / ARC / On CIP this is by month and year.
15 – SHE / MAG / On CIP it now deals with the personal, health issues and family.
16 – OAR / OAR / This means Opposites Aren’t Really-Real and deals with physics.
17 – Game / GME / Covers Common Denominator and now other games (below).
18 – After-Words / AFW / Document and Table of Content on CIP, (the sixth).
19 – Organized / ORG / Coming document and Table of Content on CIP, (the 7th).
20 – Biography / BIOG / In CIP, AFW, and ORG deals with biographical material.
21 – Impressions / IMP / The first TOC on CIP covering numbers 1-100.
22 – Places / PLC / The second TOC on CIP with numbers 101-300, (to 200 used).
23 – People / PPL / The third TOC on CIP covering numbers 301-400.
24 – General / GEN / The fourth TOC on CIP with the ranges 400-456 and 500-569.
25 – Renewal / RNW / The fifth, ranges 457-480, 570-599, 600-626, & 680-87.
26 – After-Words / AFW / The sixth, with the ranges 650-656, 701-800, & 801-839.
27 – Organized / ORG / The seventh, ranges 657-679, 840-950, & 951-1100.
28 – 840-950 / OAR / Physics.
29 – 951-1100 / SHE / The Magazine and personal.
30 – 1101-1200 / BIOG / Writing, biography and books.
31 – 657-679 & 1201-1300 / GME / Games and business, includes CD (2nd) and:
32 – Game / CI / First game Categorical Imperative.
33 – Game / DV / Third game Da Vinci Quiz.
34 – Game / VERT / Fourth game Verticalize – French game.
35 – Game / GBU / Fifth game Good, Bad and Ugly, a Great Game.
36 – Game / YIB / Sixth game You In a Box.
37 – Category / EUS / Articles dealing with the relationship of the US & EU.
38 – Category / TPS / Unknown acronym used in business and games.
39 – Unknown / UNK / Abbreviations used with unk. derivation including COF & TPS.

December 10, 2009 / Alphabet Soup and Numbers / TOC pg 3, © 2010 / CIP # 659, Dec 2009 / GEN

Every couple of years I adjust the direction and emphasis of Cowboy in Paris. If you click on ‘General’ under categories on the left of this page you can read all the earlier adjustments chronologically in reverse. If I was you I wouldn’t read them all – you’ll probably get easily bored. But I would read carefully the second article entitled A Simpler Time and perhaps skim a few of the others. At least you will learn a little on how to navigate the site and what you might find if you push some of the other buttons below ‘General’. Really, the problem is that the infrastructure was built with the earliest concept of ‘Cowboy’ in mind. I don’t know how to change that – so I jerry rig.

The first two years we stuck fairly close to the original concept of relaying impressions of the people and places of Paris and France from the perspective of this cowboy. They are all still there just further back. The last couple of years have been scattered all over the place and decidedly more personal. A Simpler Time mentioned above makes it a little clearer. I will continue in the same vein but there will be a little more emphasis on physics. It has been about 2/3 personal and 1/3 physics but, starting with the next installment, those figures will be generally reversed.

There is one other point. Back in 2007 we were ‘off the air’ for a few weeks. I believe it had something to do with changing servers. Finally we did get most of the written content back up, but most of the links and pictures didn’t work. I tried hard but failed to get that fixed. It used to be a much better site.

May 21, 2009 / Going Forward / AFW pg 93 © 2009 / CIP # 774, May 23, 2009 / General

Through the magic of time manipulation welcome to the world of yesterday that I write tomorrow. More precisely what I wrote forward, presented backwards, so you can read it forward, as I wrote it originally. Alice would look through the glass darkly and smile. Back To The Future was right. Go push a button, point a pixel, falsify a photo, fax a file, add an attachment… Technology is at very minimum a two edged sword. Trust and truth are sometimes the twin deceased. It is a crazy world we live in.

590 – Manipulation … Time Travel and Travail / used May 22, 2007 / CIP 2, pg 10, © 2007 / Mixed / SHE / Original appearance May 22, 2007

In the early years of the 21st Century – a long, long time ago now – life was simpler. Back then A Cowboy in Paris was born and Good was good, Better a little step above, and Best a major step beyond. Mixed and Ugly were seldom talked about. All Places were great. It worked fine for Impressions and Places, it got a little sticky with People and it didn’t work at all with the General. Then the format changed, but not the infrastructure. Oh my it got complex. Now Good is still good, but it could also just mean an article on the European Union, or a country in it. Better may still be a step above, but it also could just be that the subject matter deals with business, or games, or coaching. Likewise Best is best, or perhaps physics and/or another science is involved. Mixed is just that and it is sometimes personal, while Ugly hasn’t changed much yet, but stay tuned, it could widen it’s horizons soon. The remaining Generals are mostly organizational. When the subject matter is the other, or the or, there is no attempt to correlate the judgment value implied by the heading name. Nor is there now any effort made to daily have one each of a particular category. Maybe it is all a little more complex, but it is also simpler to surf A Cowboy in Paris, if you know all this.

Original appearance April 26, 2007 / CIP2 583 / © 2007 / General / CIP

Less monuments, more moments. Less people, more philosophy. Less celebrity and more celebrating. Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata or Stephen Hawking’s ‘Grand Design.’ Big Bangs, the metric system and Möbius Strips. Cancer, Cern, physics and Alzheimer’s. Language and false friends – subjects all. The attribution will still be there, but the idea will be paramount. Less biographical and more philosophical. Hot ideas only because I’m passionate about them, not because they are hot. Idiots and ideas, but mostly, and hopefully, with a little ‘i’. We need more pronouns like we, and she, and even he. That one letter pronoun is overused, overcapitalized and underworthy. Concepts and notions of continental proportions – usually in sporadic, 5 paragraph meter.

Original appearance April 17, 2007 / CIP2 574 / © 2007 / CIP

Aha! Just when you thought: “Fine! He promises A New Cowboy in Paris and then what happens? Nothing! Almost three weeks of nothing!! He promises us A New Beginning on March 21st and here it is, almost ½ of April gone, (okay, okay. 1/3rd ), and nothing! Nada!! Rien!!!” What he didn’t tell you was he was getting married on March 27th. He was going on a honeymoon on March 29th. He was returning on April 8th. And here it is April 9th – A Renewed Beginning. The rest of today’s entry he actually wrote before he left and he saved it for after he returned. So the old title (on the 21st) also still works: “A New Beginning …./…. The New Is The Old and Vice Versa.”

Original appearance April 9, 2007 / CIP2 581 / © 2007 / CIP

A few of you may be aching for the good old days (last week, last month, last year) when it was all just a little bit better organized. It still is – in the Archives, in the Table of Contents (Renewal, Impressions, Places, People, General) and in the categories (Places, Good, Better, Best, Mixed, Ugly, General). Most of what you came to expect is still there – you just have to surf or click your way through the Table of Contents which is linked to each of the articles that are still on line. Yes, a few old, or out dated, or irrelevant paragraphs were either deleted or turned off line, but otherwise they are all still available. All the impressions, all the people, all the places and most of the rest. Go surf!

Original appearance April 9, 2007 / CIP2 580 / © 2007 / CIP

I’m tired of the old format. On March 28, 2005 A Cowboy in Paris was launched. First there were 100 ‘impressions,’ then there were 100 people, and interspersed there were 100 places. The second 100 places were picked and many people and topics too. Everything was graded and packaged in neat little chunks. In the meanwhile, for the most part, the original 300 ran again and again in numbing cycles. Much of our energy switched to The Magazine section of Tricolors, and even more to game development. Oh yes there were some things new in Cowboy – particularly the series on The European Union that ran for the first time last December, and just ran again above. And finally I got tired of the old format and decided to mostly stop the reruns. This is paragraph 570 and page 142 of A Cowboy In Paris – and it is a brand new beginning.

Original appearance March 21, 2007 / CIP2 570 / © 2007 / CIP

So what’s the big deal? What exactly will be different? For one thing it will be less structured and more sporadic. Originally the idea was to write an approximately five paragraph essay that, more or less, included one place and either 4 things or 4 people that this cowboy found interesting about France. Give or take, every third day there was supposed to be a new installment. Give or take there was. We even tied it all up in a pretty little package by grading each of the four as either good, better or best and one of the items as mixed or ugly. We never said it but the fifth item was always the great one, because virtually every place in France is great. The approach seemed to work because our readership (as measured by unique visitors) grew and grew. True, The Magazine languished (that was actually just the remnants of the original Tricolors launched in October 21, 2001), but with ‘Cowboys’ growth the numbers kept going up and up. Then we put our emphasis on the Magazine and it grew but Cowboy didn’t. So now we will be a little less structured and a lot more sporadic, but hopefully the energy will be back.

Original appearance March 21, 2007 / CIP2 571 / © 2007 / CIP