Welcome!

Not long ago, I knew nothing about blogging except that I had fun reading one particular blog and kept checking back when the author went on hiatus. I read the entire thing, from the first post to the current, and at times, laughed myself silly and had people wonder what I found so funny. Yes, I was in my cubicle, and yes, I was on my break time. It took several days to read all of the posts. I just left an extra browser window up for the several days that it took.

Over the years, I have flipped through various blogs that I have come across, and been intrigued with the depth and detail of the illustrations, storytelling and the myriad subjects that drive people to express themselves in the blogosphere. I gave thought to the idea of starting a blog, and after due consideration, I satisfied all of the criteria that I'd distilled from a few years of observation and a fair bit of research.

Considering that I was an HTML illiterate, and knew it, I counted on my strong background in Computer Science. I learn what I need to when I need to. So far, so good, but that lack of knowledge definitely influenced the concept and scope of my first blog. Things are going well, and there is enough material now that it qualifies as an online novel. I'll let you go find it.

When you are in control of when you post, if you are just starting out, there is a danger of burnout. It happens. Only discipline can overcome this danger, by preventing it in the first place. You have to know your limits, or set them in advance. This is not my first blog post, and I do maintain a blog with daily update frequency. There are some tricks to pulling off such an ambitious project. Even users of Twitter have discovered, micro-blogging is still writing, even with all those abbreviations that they use.

If you are anything like me, writing consists of pushing the correct buttons on a keyboard, and there is an optimal size for these buttons. If you're going to write a blog, it's probably going to involve typing, so get a good keyboard. If you're a keyboard slouch, a text oriented blog might not be for you. Writing by hand and scanning the posts might be an alternative, but that will still involve interacting with a computer, scanning the original, and then stuffing it into the same editor that you use if you were a written word blogger. I think typing is much more efficient, and it takes less equipment.

Perhaps a photo-blog is more your style. This works, and I do agree that a photo is worth 1,000 words or more, but there is one small problem — photos take space, and that means that they will take time to transfer across the various segments of the Internet. If you're on a cable modem, you've got great download speed, but the upload speed may not be to your liking. If you're an accomplished photographer, and size your images for the Internet, then go for the photo-blog approach.

Video blogging is yet another approach, and You Tube is a popular site for hosting your own videos in the format of a television channel. Pod-casters can produce their own audio programs and distribute them as well. Some blogs become multimedia archives, and that's one of the reasons that I've created this blog — to provide a vehicle for experimentation and then talking about how I do some of the things that I do.

Regardless of the main medium of your blog, you're going to be using a computer and that is a task that I've integrated into my world. I even studied computers in College and got a nifty certificate for doing that piece of work. I've written lots of code in several languages, and in all of the cases, the comments, like this, are more important than the code itself. Writing code is really a dual audience publication — for the compiler and for you, because you're not going to remember why you wrote the code the way you did — but I digress.

The central theme here is that Blogging is a creative activity that will require time. What you write on a blog, you intend for anyone and everyone in the world to read, and perhaps comment upon. While there is some degree of control being an blog author, you are still putting yourself out there to be judged, and even inviting it. Only time will tell if the risk is worth it for you.

I've managed to carve an interesting niche in the blogosphere, and I am enjoying watching it grow. I've had some of my friends tell me that they want to blog, and ask me how I do it. It is for these people, that I create this site. Call it my technical support self, I consider this blog a time saver. I've been asked often enough personally, that by writing this blog I will ultimately save time and help all those that ask. Therefore I share my experience, and I invite other bloggers to chime in and share theirs via comments. Feel free to plug your blog and advertise your wares.

If you're thinking of starting a blog, and you're interested in support help, just use the contact link on the right and send off a message. It'll just prove that you've learned your way around a keyboard.