::scr Blogging

[Paul Mison]

Foreword: I was arguing this down the pub with Simon last night. I seem
to prefer the cut-and-thrust of real conversation (or perhaps the
analogue of it on IRC) to the long posting of email. Nonetheless, I'll
try and hack this into some form resembling that conversation in case
other people are interested.

On 21/11/2001 at 15:44 +0000, simon wistow wrote:

>When pushed on this down the pub I admitted that I read some things
>that could
>be described as blogs - Slashdot, Mandrake.net (although not as much as
>before), Plastic, Damien Conway's page and the DNA lounge page. Plus I
>contribute to #london.pm's blog-of-sorts at http://www.astray.com/scribot/

There's a whole bunch of things in there I'll get back to later.

>Mandrake.net I only read occasionally - I started when Enlightenment
>DR 0.11
>was in the pipelines and I found it fascinating to read about how the
>development process was coming along and the design processes that were
>happening. Now it's fairly dull and I only read it when I'm bored. This is
>sort of true for Damien Conway too. Also, to a lesser extent, for the DNA
>lounge - that's interesting because it's a diary of one man's 2 year
>sturggle to get a club built and running in SF and now the fact that
>he hates
>running it because he can't run it the way he wants to.
>
>At the other end of the scale are the people who write personal
>diaries on the
>web. On the one hand some are just banal -
>http://www.grayblog.co.uk/2001_09_01_yesterblog.html :

Your quoting here isn't great. I assume this is content from the blog?

>o Why didn't someone tell me about Groovetech before?? 3000 DJ sets as
>RealAudio streams. Coool. Currently listening to Stakka and Skynet.

That would be interesting, if I had broadband.

>o A good site about Elite and other games of that ilk. I've played
>Elite on
>the C64 and PC, and it still rates as the best game I have ever played
>- the
>prospect of Elite IV fills my wallet with foreboding.

Ooh, I might have to find that URL.

>Dull, dull, dull, dull, dull. *YAAAAWN*

No, it's not. OK, the bit about the casserole was a bit boring, but a
page on Elite? If it's good, it's nice to see it linked.

>Others are just plain fucked up [...] and that blog was just chosen at
>random from livejournal.

If you chose a URL at random (ok, that's not particularly easy, but I
think Google might do something like the old Altavista random link)
then what are the chances that would be either dull, badly designed, or
both? Remember, 99% of everything is shit.

On the other hand, when you look for things (say, details of ghost Tube
stations) the fact someone out there is nuts enough to have catalogued
them is useful. Ditto for blogs; find an item on one about, say, how to
make a nice casserole and it's useful.

Why don't you like Damien Conway's 'blog' any more? It seems to me it's
a diary from someone saying things you should find interesting. What
changed? Too much about his personal life?

>Most however, fall, somwhere in between and as such, to me, seem fairly
>pointless. Mainly, I suppose, are a bit like the cgi chatrooms and message
>boards of a few years back. Thos irritated me because they were like news
>groups or mailing lists - only worse. Ok, sometimes it was useful for
>people
>who had restricted access but they still irritated me. A lot of the
>blogs that
>I've seen  recently seem just to be an incestuous group who self
>reference and
>link.

This reads to me like 'Item: people are stupid.' You don't like message
boards: because there are ordinary people posting? Do you think
usenet's a bit better because of a slightly higher barrier to entry?

Self-referencing goes on in our group, too, although it's a lot harder
to trace. I remember, though, how AYB went via Haddock, UMS, IRC, and
independently Simon got the same URL going through another route. The
only difference here is that blogs are more public and you can see the
paths clearly.

>Maybe it's because I'm worried that if this had all happened a few
>years ago
>maybe we wouldn't have things like Slashdot - instead of contributing to a
>common blog they would just keep the links to themselves.

But you don't; people spread the links around. There's even something
called Blogdex (google for it) that indexes what links are hot on blogs
at the moment.

Shit, there are so many other points we brought up that aren't well
covered here. Right, time to make a postburst happen. Sorry.

--
:: paul
:: beware my prophetic chickens