Category: Blogosphere

Two days ago Glynn Foster asked the question that is the subject of this thread. I’d like to respond in the first person singular, rather than attempting unsupported generalizations.
The main reason that I think about who reads my blog is that I’m interested in attracting readership from a wide variety of different groups. I find that this leads to opportunities for interesting and unexpected follow-on discussions, whether in blog comments or via email. It also gives me reasons to think about, and post about, a much wider range of subjects. Some topics may not interest you personally, but I hope that each one will amuse, or infuriate, or stimulate at least one of you.
Why? Well, I think about my own blog reading. I know the kind of blog that I tend to linger over, to bookmark, to return to, to link to from my blog. And I know the kind of blog that makes me shudder and hit BACK as quickly as possible. (Entries longer than a screenful tend to do it – sorry Manfreet.) I guess I’d like to make my blog a “go to” blog for others. It’s a modest enough ambition. As long as I don’t blow my bandwidth allocation, I’d like to increase my traffic – why not? I watch my site stats (my provider uses Webalizer) and trackbacks for any hotspots. But all of this requires that I think about who’s reading my blog – not just my family, and a few friends from Sun who see it scroll by on the PlanetSun aggregator, but the rest of them, out there in the blogosphere. Cthulu help me if they find it boring and tune me out!

In a long thread of comments attached to my recent posting about Easter, I ventured an opinion that this thread was closed, that I didn’t think blog entries should generate permathreads. Susan expressed good-natured frustration and asked if there were any rules about such things.
Rules in the blogosphere?
Well, the blog owner presumably has a say about how his or her resources get used. I don’t think by allowing comments a blog becomes a common carrier or anything like that. As for the thread in question, I guess I could simply ignore it and let others use it to discuss the topic. I know at least one Sun colleague who makes a point of posting infrequent, thought-provoking articles and then never contributing to the follow-up discussion. Personally I’d rather be discussing what’s happening to the company that’s such a big part of my life (Sun), or pondering depressing questions like this.
In general, a blog reaches a narrower audience than a mailing list. A comment thread on a particular blog entry reaches an even narrower audience: those people who read the blog and are sufficientlyinterested in the top-level entry to dig into the comments. It seems an oddly unproductive use of one’s time to post lengthy contributions which so few people will read, and even more unproductive if you have reason to believe that the blog owner (the one reader you can count on) won’t be sympathetic to your thesis.
Finally, you can always start up your own blog, write an article on your favorite topic, then post a comment to my blog referencing that article. That way, people who really want to debate the symbolic meaning of nails in the Crucifixion can go hog wild, while I can move on to something more important, like whether painting your roof white can save you big bucks on air conditioning….. [Another gem from those good people at BoingBoingBlog.]

Inspired (as so often) by Chris, I checked out Sperling’s Best Places to see where my ideal place to live might be. Of course, this only looks at the US, so thoughts of London, Oxford, Paris or Melbourne will have to wait. My top ten:
1 San Francisco, CA
2 Boston, MA-NH-ME
3 Long Island, NY
4 Washington, DC-MD-VA-WV
5 Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA
6 New York, NY
7 Pittsburgh, PA
8 Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI
9 Chicago, IL
10 Stamford-Norwalk, CT
I could have guessed the first two, but it’s interesting that a fairly complex multivariate analysis came up with the same results. Dunno why Los Angeles in in there – maybe museums and music.

Reading Terry Karney’s blog I encounter a series of whimsical Internet quizzes, which I proceed to take. For some reason it’s important for me to try to answer correctly…. Anyway, they reveal that I am a Grammar God, an Ideal Lover, that if I were a Greek god I would be Eros, and that if I were a weird Latin phrase I would be Furnulum pani nolo (“I don’t want a toaster.”)
All of this beats spring cleaning, of course. As I said on the ASML last night, spring cleaning involves:
(1) Remove and wash all curtains (or drapes – your choice).
(2) Replace storm windows/doors with screens. (Destroy at least 2 fingernails during this process.)
(3) Doing (1) and (2) on a sunny day reveals all the cobwebs and dirt that have been invisible or ignored for the last 5 months. Clean quickly in case someone notices.
(4) Open garage, remove cars, wash/sweep out all of the salt and dirt that have tracked in over the winter. Make elaborate plans for painting garage floor with epoxy paint. Abandon after you realize that you didn’t know how to prepare the surface last time, and why should it work this year?
(5) Drain and clean humidifiers, remove to basement. Notice window air conditioners, try to figure out excuses for deferring installation as long as possible.
(6) Skip the other plans in favour of a long walk through the Arboretum to look for the first buds of the year….

Every so often one comes across a blog entry that makes you say, “Wow! I must try to emulate that myself in my blog… one day… if I have the courage… and if I have the patience… but wait, could I really?… mmmmmmmmmm”. Such an entry is this from my colleague Alec Muffett‘s blog crypticide (or is it dropsafe? – c’mon, Alec, sort this out).

A friend on the Al Stewart mailing list just posted a pointer to a strangely compelling and horrifying website, Kid of Speed. The author, Elena, is a biker (she owns a Kawasaki Ninja) who lives 130 kilometres from Chernobyl. The site is a photo-record of her journeys through the dead zone that is Chernobyl today. It goes on, and on, and on. Make sure you take the time to give it the attention that it deserves.
[Update: July 14, 2004: This may be a hoax. Maybe not.]

OK, I missed some really essential blogs.
First of course Wil Wheaton’s. His comment about saving throw vs. Irritated Wife is just brilliant. Thanks.
Next, Ray Ozzie’s. A geek’s geek.
The Baghdad Burning blog is essential reading. I came across it in this article in Smirking Chimp.

Here are some of the blogs that I find interesting:

• My son, Chris Arnold’s somethingunderstood
• The author Neil Gaiman
• Allen Brill’s Rightchristians
• Bruce Sterling’s Beyond The Beyond