I seems to have been blogging a lot more in the last couple of weeks than I was to start off with. I’m not completely sure why I blog at all, I have some ideas and one day I’ll write more about “why” but for now I can answer the easier question: Why have I blogged so much lately?
Well partly its because I have things I want to say and when I think them through they make sense as a small piece of writing. As anyone who knows me will know I usually do have things to say, but the second part, about actually writing it down as a short piece is new, its a skill I’m getting better at now I’ve started doing it more regularly.
That’s the first part of the answer: because I can.
The second part goes back to something I mentioned a couple of weeks ago: the importance of feedback. A couple of things have happened lately to give me feedback on my blog.
First, I (finally) got around to getting myself an RSS reader (Mozilla Thunderbird - damn good mail client and RSS reader, highly recommended) so I’ve been exploring all that jazz. Its great, I now see just how important RSS is, this may be a small simple thing but it is really important. I can remember when PointCast first started doing push news and everyone thought this was big. Now we’ve reduced it to a commodity - and an Open Source one at that.
Second, a couple of people I know actually told me they where reading my blog! Shock horror, someone actually pays attention to something I write. That makes me feel good, they wouldn’t read it, let alone tell me they read it, if I was writing complete rubbish.
So there you go. Two feedback mechanisms that are reinforcing what I’m doing, makes me feel good about it, tells me I’m on the right path.
It's odd that you should mention Thunderbird, since I'm just about to switch away from it. I started using it not long after I discovered I liked Firefox, but have always felt it somehow awkward: the RSS features are nice, but I don't get the benefit of a browser environment, such as a larger viewing window, the browser history to show visited links, tabbed navigation for pages opened from links, browser extensions, etc. It's more 'Web 0.5' than 'Web 2.0' :-) If you haven't tried a browser-based RSS reader, I'd encourage you to make the comparison.
ReplyDeleteAs for Thunderbird, those aren't the only reasons I'm moving from it. I've lost data to Thunderbird's 2GB limit and there are lots of little annoyances such as no apparent way to default to plain-text messages while having the option of HTML. The interface is slow and never quite organises itself the way I'd like it to, it's a nuisance to merge profiles, the threading support is lacking, etc.
I only recently realised that I actually manage all my e-mail with Outlook on my work machine via Terminal Services over a VPN. I wonder what my employer's privacy policy has to say about that?