Well, the website turned out to be the easy part. The blog didn’t come along until much later. When it did — I confess, I have a “domain fetish” — I registered “Probable Cause” for the domain name of the blog. “Probable Cause,” of course, is a really low standard of review; hence the subtitle.

To check it out for yourself, click on over to RHDefense: The Law Office of Rick Horowitz and its embedded blog, Probable Cause: The Legal Blog with the Really Low Standard of Review.

All That's Left of Some Poor Soul's Past

In approximately 1993 or 1994 — digital archeologists will just have to take my word for it — I created the first of many websites. I don’t remember the exact URL for the site: it might have been something like http://www.cybergate.com/~rickh since the now-defunct Cybergate ISP was how I gained (SLIP!) access to the commercial Internet. Eventually, I moved to ValleyNet Communications (later to become Protosource Network after I became the Vice-President there) and bought the domain name “Winkola.com.” (This is derived from a nickname (“Winky”) given to me by Sarah Serafimidis. That’s a story for a whole ‘nuther post.)

Back then, if we wanted to build blogs, we had to code our way uphill, through the snow,both ways!  And that’s just what I did for quite a long time.  Winkola.com constantly morphed as I posted information about things that interested me, images from local plays — not part of any failed Hollywood career as one Holocaust denier has mistakenly claimed all these years (do these guys ever get anything right?) — and I slogged my way through several versions of HTML code to eventually add an “events calendar” complete with links to the “events pages.”  Ah…for the days when the <table> tag was brand-new and we were all trying to figure out how to make it do things it wasn’t (then) designed to do!

Though by then I was part of a small group creating applications with perl, it never occurred to me to create blogging software.  This was not the first — or last! — time that I missed my opportunity to be involved in something significant.  I still ruefully remember sitting around with friends, laughing at the guy who bought chairs.com, or some other generically-named domain, which seemed to us quite silly at the time.  (I even laughed about the idea of buying rick.com.  I did not.  Today, that domain is worth a lot of money, too.) Consequently, as with my dinosaur-friend above, all the fleshy-parts of my proto-blogging pages are lost.

But I digress.  Repeatedly.  And this was supposed to be a “blurb.”

Eventually someone with more business sense than me created blogging software.  I won’t bore you (even more) with all the packages I tried before settling for several years on MovableType™.

With the birth of my first MovableType™ blog, Unspun™ took the place of Winkola.com.  (Winkola.com still exists, but is merely a referrer — or “referer” as the “correct” (mis)spelling of that word has evolved in HTMLspeak — to Unspun™.)  From at least 2003 through 2008, it powered blogs I wrote at Unspun™ and TechStop™.

In either late 2007, or early 2008, I started learning about WordPress™.

The one language I had not dealt with a great deal, PHP, powers WordPress™ and that delayed my getting to know it. In a word — okay, three words — I love WordPress™. Tinkering with WordPress™ lead me back to something I’ve always loved: building websites. In mid-December 2008, I decided to create a “mother-of-all-Rick’s-websites” here at RickHorowitz.com, using WordPress™. The theme I selected and am busily modifying is Revolution Office from Brian Gardner Media, LLC & Circa75 Media, LLC.

Since the development of RickHorowitz.com, Unspun™ will now focus more on political and social commentary, while a new blog will be built — sledding downhill with WordPress™ the entire way! — at RickHorowitz.com for more general, and/or more personal, posts.

You now know more about Unspun™, and a few other things, than anyone either needs or cares to know. To get some firsthand experience with Unspun™, click one of the many instances of its name in this post.

So even prior to becoming a criminal defense attorney, I knew that I wanted FresnoCriminalDefense.com.

Unfortunately, someone else owned it, although the person who owned it wasn’t doing anything with it.

A few weeks ago, a third-party contacted me, stating that they had purchased the domain and asking if I wanted to buy it.  After a little haggling over the price, it was mine.

Since then, I’ve worked on building the website there and just this week noticed that I’d placed on the first page of Google for the phrase “fresno criminal defense.”

I already owned RHDefense.com and had worked hard on developing that site and blog (both of which also place well with the search engines).  So I made a decision: keep the focus for FresnoCriminalDefense.com regional, focusing on criminal defense law in Fresno County and its immediate environs; the blog at RHDefense.com will be for more general commentary.

The real trick is going to be keeping the content fresh and useful on both sites!

I don’t post a lot there for a variety of reasons.  After all, a big part of my living is made by writing motions for other attorneys.  If I give too much away, I reduce my ability to support myself and my wife (not to mention the guy who likes to collect the rent for my office space).

Still, I try to post enough to give an idea of my legal writing abilities.  So if you’re interested in seeing what I can do there, let your browser do the walking and check it out.

At first, I was very resistant to the idea of joining.  Then my friend @jonimueller, who I originally met because of her WordPress web workings, kept at me long enough that I finally decided to try it out.

I’m glad I did.  Although I still think the idea often floated about how Twitter will help your business is primarily hype, there is some indirect truth to the idea: I’ve met a number of practitioners of law and some marketing gurus who have given me some good pointers on drumming up new business.  While none of those people has asked — nor is likely to ask — me to represent them in any criminal cases, tips from at least one helped me move my website from a Google position on page 8 to a Google position on page 1.  For two of my websites.

Twitter has another positive effect on my life.  Since my “day job” is operating a solo criminal law practice in Fresno, Twitter helps me to get a “human fix” whenever I start to feel too isolated.  I’ll just pop open a browser window and exchange a few 140-word comments with what has become my own small band of connected comrades.

So special thanks to @jonimueller for pushing me to join Twitter.  And a shout to fellow lawyers @minasirkin, @nikiblack, @HouCrimLaw, @ScottGreenfield, @MIAMICRIMLAW, @lisasolomon, @gideonstrumpet, @PaulBKennedy, @VBalasubramani and a whole host of others who help this solo feel connected via the virtual water cooler that is Twitter!

These days, I don’t get much time to shoot, because I’m trying to start a law practice.  A friend has a studio and occasionally, I’ll join him for a shoot, or borrow his studio and bring in a model myself.

These days, I feed my artistic self by trying my hand and designing and maintaining my various websites and blogs.  When I get time, I play around with photographs I’ve taken in the past — I’ve a rather large collection numbering in the thousands — and try my hand at transforming them into digital paintings.

If I ever strike it rich and don’t need to work a job for money, I’ll probably try to get more advanced training in digital painting and photographic techniques.  Then I’ll spend my retirement pretending to be an artiste.