It occurs to me that there may be a few more readers here than normal over the next couple of days, and some new reader orientation is in order.

This blog has been around since May 1, 2003. I started it as a place to note interesting things I encountered on the World Wide Web (the textbook purpose of a weblog), comment on politics, and post the occasional family photo. Tulsa politics has become the central focus of BatesLine, but I still touch on the other topics you see listed on the title image, which was inspired by the famous map of the London Underground. Lately, I've been consumed by the election, but ordinarily you'll find entries about Western Swing music, global news, national politics, Tulsa history, theology, and whatever else strikes my fancy.

Over the course of nearly three years of blogging, I've added a lot of content and have tried to find an easily navigable way of presenting it. The masthead, just below the title, provides some convenient links. Over to the left, there's a link to a PDA-friendly version of the homepage -- excerpts from the ten most recent entries with as little ornamentation as possible. Over to the right, distinguished with a white background and red text, is my "spotlight" -- a place to link the current entry to which I most wish to draw your attention.

My blogging led, starting in the fall of '03, to a weekly appearance on Talk Radio 1170 KFAQ's Michael DelGiorno Show. (My normal slot is Tuesday mornings from 6:10 to 7:00, but I will also be on tomorrow morning from 6 to 8 as part of a panel discussing the city elections.) If my regular schedule changes, you'll see it updated on the masthead.

Last fall, I began writing a weekly column for Urban Tulsa Weekly. You'll find a link on the masthead to my latest column, a summary of all my columns with links to each, and a link to G. W. Schulz's profile of me. If you want to get an idea of who I am and what makes me tick, that's a good place to start.

Below the masthead, there's a quick link that will take you beyond the rest of the front matter directly to my latest blog entry. Below that, you'll find the titles of my most recent ten entries with links to each.

Next is the most recent ten entries of my "linkblog". I set this up last October both as an exercise in web programming and as a way to note web items I found interesting, without having to think of a clever title or add a lot of commentary. There's a link to a complete archive of linkblog entries.

Finally, we get to the blog proper. Most entries are presented on the main page in their entirety, but sometimes you have to click a "continue reading" link to read the whole thing. Comments are welcomed, but I reserve the right not to post your comment -- here's a link to the BatesLine commenting policy.

The Technorati tags under each entry give you a way to see what other blogs have been commenting on a given topic. For example, this link will take you to most recent blog entries tagged Bill+LaFortune.

Now to the sidebar: At the top, you'll find my Okie Blog award for Best Political Blog and the cover from the UTW profile (that link also leads you to the profile). Next is my e-mail address, cleverly obscured to defeat spammers. I'm a member of the Media Bloggers Association, an organization of bloggers who comment on the mainstream media. In February 2005, the group helped me deal with legal threats from the Tulsa World.

The Tulsa Bloggers button leads to a page displaying the latest articles from bloggers who write regularly about Tulsa news and politics. Below it is a link to the UTW feature story I wrote about these bloggers in January.

You can advertise on BatesLine! It's cheap -- $10 a week, $20 a month, or $45 for three months. For a mere tenner your ad gets over 10,000 views a week.

I also participate in a free ad exchange called Blog Ad Swap, the creation of Danny Carlton aka Jack Lewis.

Below that there's a tip jar -- your donations help cover hosting fees and research expenses.

The "Best Posts of 2005" button takes you to a collection of excellent blog entries compiled by Jeff Faria aka Mister Snitch. If you've never dabbled much in the realm of blogs, this would be a good place to start.

Below that, there's a button linking to information about this fall's Okie Blogger Roundup, the first-ever large scale gathering of Oklahoma-based bloggers.

The "Blog Ecosystem" section gives you an idea of how BatesLine fits into the grand scheme of things in the blogosphere. I'm a "Large Mammal", which puts BatesLine roughly in the top 1,000 blogs worldwide. Clicking that will give you a list of blogs that links to me. Technorati's "Blogs That Link Here" and "Who Links to Me?" do the same thing, but differently.

(More later.)