Why Blog?

Boy: “I look and record it. It gives life to her where otherwise she might not have had life. That’s a scary thought.” - Headcrash

OK after a week and a bit of blogging I thought it might be useful to set out why I’ve started this blog.

It’s a scrapbook – one thing I’ve immediately found is that it’s a good way of bringing things together. Things I find new on the web (the AMV stuff) , things I’ve always known about but keep forgetting where they were (the cat’s eye imaging), or things that just quirk my interest. If I need them for me, or to show a friend or colleague I know I just need to dive into my Blog scrapbook to find them, rather than spend ages re-searching the web. With my Palm and Bluetooth/GPRS giving me near constant web access its starts becoming very easy to show people stuff and almost lift the bar on the quality of information you pass. No more “I read somewhere….”, not even “here’s the URL”, just “here is..”.

It’s a mind-map – somewhere I can connect my thoughts, my influences. Bringing order to that scrapbook. Years ago on my wall I had a huge sheet of paper, 6 foot by 4 foot or thereabouts. On it I had a massive mindmap showing my influences, and then there influences and so on. I was always delighted when two apparently unconnected strands suddenly met up in some common source. The blog is a bit like that. Bringing together everything that interests me……and hopefully synthesizing something new.

It’s an artists or engineers notebook - I want this blog to help my own creativity. Give me a thinking space, somewhere to put ideas down, work things through and come back to at a later date. Yes I could use paper – but since getting my first Palm I’ve tried not to use a paper notebook ... ever. I could use the Palm, buts it lacks the multi-media element, the nice to read element, the always connected element (just).

It’s a diary – I haven’t kept a diary in 30 odd years – except when traveling. Never had the discipline – but typing is easier for me than writing. More fun. More sexy? It will be interesting to put all my thoughts into some sort of temporal context. Diaries tend to be private, Blog’s aren’t. Strikes me blogs break down into 4 kinds, diaries ( usually from young women), rants (usually from young men), technobabble (usually from “more mature” men), and campaigning (from just about anyone). This one is definitely technobabble, and although my family will no doubt put in the occasional appearance it isn’t “about” them. But the girls might find it interesting as they grow up – assuming I keep it running that long. Perhaps it’s linked to that Headcrash quote at the beginning – by recording it it makes it real.

It’s a confessional – Probably not in this case. I have toyed with the idea of running a separate anonymous blog to really lay bare my thoughts. Maybe I’ve done it, maybe I haven’t.

It’s a newsletter – Although I already have a web site, the blog gives a more timely way of keeping friends and acquaintances up to date with what I’m doing. Interestingly the staff at work recently discovered by web site and started quoting stuff I used to do. They thought I’d lost my techie edge. Maybe this will set the record straight.

It’s the latest thing – I’m a neophile. I admit it. I like to look at what’s new, to play with it, understand it. Ideally I like to be creative around it and contribute new works, new code, new thoughts. A few years ago it was WAP, then SMS, now its blogs and wi-fi. I want to get stuck in to this stuff, to see where it can take us. There used to be a poster, for Apple?, for Wired? It said “The future isn’t something we travel to, it’s something we build”. I want to help build the future.

It’s vanity – OK so most of the above suggests that the blog is for me, not for the rest of the Internet. But I’ve been long enough around the web to know that it would be nice to have this blog picked up on by others and to receive some level of recognition for the quality of its content, and to join the technorati.