Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Things I've noticed about blogs and bloggers

I've been doing my research since I had my blog epiphany last Friday. First off, I can reliably report that most folk's reaction to the creation of these web wanderings are variously:

- Don't put your photo up there, for God's sake! Anyone could see it!

- Okaaaay. That's a bit geeky, isn't it?

- What on earth do you write about? (Still trying to figure that one out myself...)

- Why don't you just send an email to people if you want to tell them what you're up to?

Mock posts from cynics include:

Dear Blog

Today I went to work. Talked to some people and did some emails. Had lunch. Planned my hotel and flights to California and bragged about foreign travel to sceptical colleagues. Anyway, that's all for now.

Bye, Blog.

PS Is anybody out there???


The folk who DO get it have been great and very supportive. (And my huge thanks go to my two expert advisors, Martin and Tom who answer my ridiculously stupid questions and make me feel as I've joined a good club and not a collection of saddos)

But in looking around at what's out there, here are my first impressions of Blogland -

- The ones I pass straight over are the ones which are a bit techie or 'under the bonnet' (that's 'hood' to any US readers) and leave me cross-eyed. Feeds, patches, code - I'll stick to words, thanks.

- The ones I find gripping are the political blogs - although I am yet to find one that supports Bush not Kerry. Not that that's who I back in this Election, but the overwhelming trend in the blogs I've read to date is liberal.

- Also, voyeuristically, I DO enjoy the blogs which just detail the day-to-day of someone's life and links they've found. One I came across today had a great story about Haddock (herring?) farting and how boffins seem to think that this is how they communicate. Hysterical.

- Finally, the real gems are the ones which are totally off the wall or slightly specialist. Try
One Million Footnotes ,for example. Posts are simply short, cunningly-crafted sentences which paint amazing pictures in your head and somehow stay with you long after you've logged off.

Blogging. Dontcha love it?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"The ones I find gripping are the political blogs - although I am yet to find one that supports Bush not Kerry"

Prepare to be gripped, moore-ons:

http://www.moorewatch.com

Wastedpapiers said...

Found your blog just clicking on the "next Blog" button which I tend to do occasionally in the hope of finding something interesting. Political Blogs definately a turn-off. yawn!
The haddocks communicating by farting sounds much more my idea of what a blog should be doing - filling out heads with lots of useless and daft information! Also the occasional nice picture or photo-

http://a1scrapmetal.blogspot.com/

or poem-

http://rogerstevens.blogspot.com/

or music-

http://tofuhut.blogspot.com/