Ramblings of a Technology Addict

Thursday, June 12, 2003

Reading Chris Pirillo's new eBook.

So I had the opportunity to read the book that I maligned the other day, and while I won't take any of what I said back, I think that my points are valid for other reasons which I'll return to, Chris and David have written a good eBook that I would recommend to newbie bloggers. For old hands that have gotten their own domain already, or spent time tweaking their site and creating a blogroll and a link cosmos, I'd wait for what I might hope the sequel would be...
The sequel's title ought to be, and you can use this if you want, Chris, Blogging Like a Race Car Driver: Fine Tuning Your Blog, because that's what we all need. I read this book and of the ten tips, I found one particularly useful and ringing that it ought to have large bold print and written in 18 point type, but I'm not going to give away which it was.
Overall, I don't think that anyone who's already gotten their own domain or done a lot of work on their blog is going to learn much from their effort, but if you have a friend who is starting to blog, gift then this and make them study it. As a veteran(?) of blogging, it won't help me get my traffic boosted too much, I'm afraid.
Overall, I've had a lot of thoughts about blogging today, the most interesting among them being: Is blogging something that we're going to look back on in 20 years and say "Oh yeah, I had a blog" like our parents say "Oh yeah, I had a pet rock"? I don't think the answer is an unabashed no, and I'm not sure it's a definitive yes either. But here's what we have to beware. We can't let blogging become so thoughtless that you break one of Chris and Dave's 10 rules, we can't just do this to do this, we need to have a motivation behind it. So blog for yourself, but have a goal in mind, because blogging when you're just going through the motions is masturbatory and pointless. Just ask Preacher, we all need a break, we all need a sabbatical from writing some times, especially when you get down about it and you're afraid you're losing that edge that makes you write in the first place.
Since I've left college, I've not had coherent educational structures in my life, and I'm left wandering around, throwing bits of my intellectual nature at projects, and not doing things full force like I would with a class or a paper. I suppose that's my rationalization for what goes on here, it's a good combination of my creative side which is left frequently untapped by my life, and my intellectual side which is also laying unfocused at the moment.
I said I'd come back to my earlier objections with some more detailed explorations and here they are...
Creating Commercially Viable Blogs may end up jamming the signal on the blogs that were done for love of the game and done artfully well. Do we really want Amazon banner ads and software adverts all over our blogs? Are we going to end up with bloggers with pages that look like they're made of the same fabric of a Nascar driver's racing suit? That is what I am afraid of, and professonal bloggers who are given grants from corporations and having pledge breaks like NPR (which I still maintain ought to be considering for addition to the Geneva Convention) interrupt the flow that a good blog maintains and that is what will desecrate what it is that we do.
5:06:04 PM  comment []

I believe this calls for a collective "WTF?!"

In the NRO today, Dick Morris writes that "Bill ran after me, tackled me, threw me to the floor of the kitchen in the mansion and cocked his fist back to punch me." I can't make this up. I couldn't if I tried.
2:31:44 PM  comment []

For Every Turn of the World...

Please welcome to this vagabond place Alexander Michael Wasylik and congratulate his parents Dineen and Mike. Alex shares a birthday with Ben Jonson, the playwright... In small proportions we just beauties see,
And in short measures life may perfect be

10:27:31 AM  comment []