Prior to blogging here I used to write stuff on advogato here. Read it if you are brave . This was written during the Linuxcare days and shortly thereafter.

What have I learned from all this? I learned to be careful sometimes writing things here because I lost a friend with some content once. I have also learned that blogging is not some super fantastical community thing and we don’t need large cultural or social institutions like technorati or others to make us better. What we need is the desire to communicate, dialogue, and always find new (or old) things to write about. If you are in doubt about starting a weblog, simply don’t. They are a hard mistress and after awhile its like social constipation if you don’t blog.

Thanks to the few readers from work and other places who happen to stop by, comment, and let me know either their pleasure or unhappiness with some of the crap I have posted here. If you don’t like what I say; remember who owns this space.

My Ubuntu and me both thank you!

I plan on using this on a few ubuntu systems I deal with on a daily basis so we’ll see how things go.

I’m sorry to say though that I don’t write for any of them; yet if they find value good! I stopped writing this blog for others after I ran out of links. You know what that’s like right? You are pumping the 1000th blogpost out and suddenly you have linkosis. Links don’t come and you search. You are frantic. You need to reach the authority level on the Big T. You need to see your link in’s and out’s higher and higher. But there is that wall like the marathoners hit.

Well, I hit that wall some years ago and decided that this here blog was really not for anyone else. Sorry if you read this and thought I wrote all this for some altruistic and world healing thing. I don’t. I write it because I can. If you enjoy it, good. But don’t expect some quality of work or quantity of lines here. This is my property, my damned Ubuntu.

I’ve been tempted a few times to write a more technical weblog actually; to gather my so many years of experience doing technology from start-ups to companies like the GAP and Visa. Offer some great reality for everyone. Truth is, there ain’t no truth. Reality is, there ain’t none of that either. Everything you see here is what you see here. Nothing more and nothing less.

I can barely write this weblog and I admire those that can pump out the words like they’re using some secret sauce that makes words and sentences boil out. Then they can divide up their thoughts into logical frameworks and send them off into the ether to the places they belong. If I had two weblogs, I would probably not write to either of them. Its all a pretense for the most part and as Kurt Vonnegut, Jr once remarked,

be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be

I must be careful with my pretend life

Thanks to Ben at Tarskitheme for the nice and versatile theme. I love the flexibility and looks.

Why have blogs become a significant part of the media landscape so
quickly? Just what is it that makes the medium of blogging so
compelling? What are bloggers blogging about and why?

From Day 2: The What and Why of Blogging

No, I understand the Big Why questions and why they’re important. But the why question I have both transcends and is more basic. Why blog at all? What is it that draws people to the blog as a media of discovery, definition, deliberation, and perhaps even creation? I think we are all anthropologists of a sort on a mission of discovery and we perhaps do the blogging as Technorati says to present personal and professional ideologies. But why? I think its just as personal as though Mojave Desert prehistoric bloggers so long ago told us mysterious bits and pieces.

Imagine a blog-ologist digging up the remains of the blogosphere some years ahead. She turns to her robotic companion and begins the archeological meandering that makes up so much science.

This blogosphere was rich and textured. It seems to take into account a wide tapestry of human behavior, condition, and social life. People did this and did this often. This sphere of the blog was rich but yet people hammered each other at times and the media loved and hated it. We don’t have enough material culture; but was this sphere of the blog truly full of the same kind of human or did a wide swatch of humans do this blogging? Are there so-called socio-economic indicators of power, wealth at work? What is this whole authority thing and how did it cause stress and evolution of this sphere? Did the sphere ever look fractured or at stress because its social evolution could not keep up with its technical? Was there ever anomie at work?

Soon this future blog-ologist would put down the word-based trowel and rest. I bet if there were one blog she would read with relish and desire and wanting more; it would be Doc’s. I sure would want Doc’s blog encapsulated so I could read his journey. There is wheat and there is chaff. Blogs come and go. People update or not. The deeper why questions remain. But the blog-ologist would want to know. What were those social, economic, technological, and personal things? What caused the sphere to fragment and join again and get more complex? Is it the answers that Technorati presents or are the questions deeper and the report, while it provides a wealth of statistical, personal, and other information, cannot really reach the fabric.

Who knows?

Now, I’m sitting on this blog on my own Ubuntu powered Apache2 server. I own the server and it does mail, web, and a few other things. Linux just does these things well. I also run Dovecot and Postfix on it for mail and openvpn for vpn.

After three years of gently writing posts which appear in their chronological order, I’ve learned a few things about blogging:

1. Don’t take it too seriously. Chances of me making it to the top 100 are not even in this universe and if they were I’d deny wanting it. Blogging is important but I don’t want or need to write “clued in” manifestos where I hop the train and ride to awareness. Where each post is adored and commented on and read and linked and relinked and reread. I have had a few posts with comments like my take on Linuxcare and Levanta and its passing. That’s cool! In fact, a number of old friends posted comments to the blogpost and I appreciate you guys taking the time to read my drivel.
2. Blogging is habit-forming. I blog because I must. I feel the pressure raise and then its the five pound chicken/ten pound egg thing. I get constipated with words left unsaid, thoughts unexplicated, ideas lingering. I must blog.
3. Blogging is not fun sometimes. I get bored with it and want a different thing. Sometimes, I want to stop; but then I get that full feeling and I know its not fun and I have this habit I must satisfy.
4. Finally, blogging is just blogging. I’ve learned that its not some social fabric for me and its not raising some kind of consciousness that others can link to. No, its me being a part of a larger universal thing; but it is just me and I may fit and I may not. Its still blogging and I get chewy goodness from it but I want nothing more from it than what it gives me.

Someone asked me at work whether they should start writing weblogs. It took me a moment and I just stared at them and asked, “why would you want to do that?” If you cannot answer, then you should not be doing it. So embrace the years, watch the posts roll by but they are just that. I gather, capture, wonder, post. Will I ever tire of the never-ending dates and times arranged by this software? Probably not. WordPress seems to get generally better as time goes by for me. Themes get nicer and widgets dress it up.

I’ve actually been blogging for longer but those other blog posts are lost in the time past. I still have an Advogato presence and I read it every so often to remind myself that this blog really has not evolved that far.

For about 6 years total and 3 years with this content, I’ve been catching various and unusual flights of fancy, bits of realism, science, technology, fantasy.  Most or all emanating from my own curious grasp on life and reality. I’ve reached the decision point that there really is no reality and that’s okay. We just need the concept because without it, the universe is too big and honking. We also need to believe in a thing which we can define. The universe is beyond definition; but then again so are our feelings.

I’ll probably carry on blogging even though I believe that the actual reason we all blog has shifted subtly from empowering social institutions that seemed to spring up to help us catalog, link, and manage. Sites like Technorati seem to have a place. But I’d openly question what we use them for?  We know we need to have special institutions that help us mark our way through the kazillion or so weblogs and find that signal in the noise.

I’d openly admit to being part of the noise. My signal ratio is low and I cannot help it. Perhaps one day, this blog will become some other social fabric; but I’ll always remember what RWR told me more than a few times:

“Remember where you are and what you are doing”

I’m trying RWR. So much has changed that marking that reality is difficult at times. But you were always there for me then.  Now I know where I need to be when I am there and I have an idea these days what I should do. This weblog is not an anchor or a social statement. Its a mile marker and a directional beacon for me.