As of April 11, I have been blogging on use.perl.org for a year. It seems like only 13 months. Weird. In any case, I’d say this experiment with blogging has been interesting for me (if no one else). My biggest concerns with blogging are:
- typing to see my pretty words
- composing entries so that don’t say what I really mean
- taking blogging too seriously
A few months ago, I consciously stopped doing daily (hourly?) entries because I felt I had stopped trying to say anything meaningful (for a large deviation of “meaningful”). Instead, I was more interested in watching the total number of my blog entries increase. That is a stupid use of my time. I will renew my effort to make this blog not only interesting to me, but [dare to dream] to make it relevant to others. After all, I find diaries somewhat distastful. I’ve never kept one myself before blogging. Unlike a diary, blogs are a public document. One of things use.perl.org does right is provide the option of allowing other users to comment on an entry, an idea that is incongruent with a private diary.
Another interesting part of blogging on use.perl.org is the phenomenon of parallel conversations that start among other people’s blogs. It’s not quite like usenet, where there is some pretense of a directed conversation. Instead, it sort of reminds me of the McLaughlin Group. Someone states an opinion to no one in particular. Then another blogger shouts “WRONG!” and preceeds to rant [again to no one in particular] about the egregious reasoning proffered by the first blogger. And then the fun really starts. I sometimes imagine that use.perl.org blogging is like going to the carnival and passing all the barkers advertising their booths. Sometimes, the blog entries are just as lurid.
In any case, I think I’ll be blogging here for the forseeable future. I’ve build enough of my own web sites at this point. I don’t need another one dedicated to my prattling. For those that have been reading my blog, I appreciate your patronage and your comments. Thanks for dropping by.