Continuing the discussion from this weekend... why do I blog? The simple answer is to serve up more google ads.
Pffft. I can't keep a straight face. I only started doing the Google ad stuff in last
July, and then mostly as a curiosity. It generates slightly less than two Starbucks' mocha-equivalents per month, which is not to imply I've actually met the $100 minimum for them to send me a check. But when I do, I'll be blogging from the caffeine train!
The real reason is a complicated combination of factors.
It's an extension of my persona, in convenient centralized online format!
I've had some form of online presence since the late 80s. Mercifully, my earliest postings on USENET have moved onto the dipole afterlife. Some examples remaining from my grad school days include inadvertant spamming the SunSpots mailing list (my "vacation" was, ironically, going to the ACM computer programming contest in Louisville), trying to be funny, and musing about bike fabrics and patents. I wasn't a very good Ph.D. student. (Truth be told, the spouse bilocation problem trumped anything else.)After college, I maintained the online guitar tablature archive, a listing of (Austin) bike rides, and (Austin) home inspectors. The guitar tab thing got a little strange when laywers, apparently with nothing better to do, started making threatening overtures to people doing guitar tab postings. I freaked, and wanted out. Cal Woods and Pete Palmer kept it going where it's at now.
I'm still maintaining lists of bike rides.
It's a creative outlet, exercising the right half of my brain.
I set up a proof-of-concept web site for work to help justify a better connection and show we were being proactive in supporting the sales critters. I put a lot of thought into the content, but what ultimately swayed management was an animated giant Monty Python Foot squashing the CEO of our arch-nemesis. That event forever piqued my interest in marketing. (The best way I can explain it is to suggest reading Max Barry's Syrup or the first 50 pages of Jennifer Government.) Mission completed, I kept the web site for my lists of books, bike rides, and pictures. Because it was so tedious to maintain, I updated it only when I went on vacation or flying. For example, this is my house from 3000'.When I noticed some of my coworkers using software that removed most of the adminsitrative hassle, I switched hosting providers, abandoning MivaScript forever.
I started posting about bike rides, then a bizarre comparison of breakfast cereals. I'm still all over the map, but as I've written more, it's become easier and enjoyable to write. This is good.
Meet other people - Blogging has been a venue for meeting people I probably wouldn't have had the fortune of meeting otherwise. I've only met a few folks in person: Susan, Fran, and Kristin. I've worked with Ted and Doug, interrupted Ben at lunch once, and shared a college apartment with Director Mitch.Another aspect is living vicariously through others' experiences. For example, I'll never get to do a thorough remodel until my portable entropy-generators are grown up and stop peeling the wallpaper. But, thanks to blogging, I can experience what it's like to donate a lot of coffee mugs and buy tasteful, post-college furniture. Similarly, if Susan ever wondered what her cats would do if they had opposable thumbs, she doesn't have to forgo sensible decor for the plastic and machine washable. (Answer: they'd drop stuff on the carpet; make paper dolls; pour differing amounts of colored water into all the plastic cups, mix it with random items selected from the pantry, and call it "an experiment"; etc.) It's win-win.
So how about you all, why do you blog?
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