During the early days of Blogging (I meant the early 2000s), when we met up in person during conferences, we talked a lot about blog posts, etc. I once let one of my cousins tag along as I spoke at a conference organized by Macromedia. I did the usual thing with others there, talking about blogs. When we returned home, my cousin said, “You are kind of a deal. People know you by your blog - brajeshwar.com.”
I’ve been lucky to have been recognized by a few people in the wild (IRL) who walked up to me and asked, “You are brajeshwar.com?”
These days, I just write for myself.
Fast forward 15+ years, my daughter somehow decided to search the Internet for me, and she said, “You are like a ChatGPT-powered Discord bot, answering questions on an antique Reddit forum.”
Actually producing value is so last millennium. Ok boomer, you add value. We don't do that here. Unless you make TikToks endlessly aspiring to be a societal net loss kardashian, why are you even breathing? Writing text? Can't the computer just do that, somehow?
I love personal websites but I don't really like blogs. I prefer when people can rework/refine some of their pages instead of publishing new blog posts related to previous ones when revisiting a topic. And as a writer it allows me to write whenever I feel like to. With a blog you kind of feel guilty if you don't publish on a regular basis, and end up abandoning it altogether too easily if you cannot sustain a rhythm. A web page doesn't force you into a rhythm. A blog might be useful for historians in the future, when chronology might be useful but as a publisher and casual reader I find it lazy and unwelcoming for the reader.
I do like however personnal pages that have a small log mentionning the updates to which I can subscribe to.
Agreed completely. From a reader perspective, blogs are also often not friendly to new visitors. How do I find the best entry point? Which entries are fluff and which are deep dives? The best you can usually hope for is some tagging mechanism, but blogs generally expend little to no effort thinking about architecture, discovery, browsability, or the reader’s progression through the site. Don’t get me wrong - that’s a lot to ask of a casual effort. But I do wish we had a genre/format for sharing one’s thoughts online that did encourage reflection and iteration on that level.
>From a reader perspective, blogs are also often not friendly to new visitors. How do I find the best entry point? Which entries are fluff and which are deep dives?
A lot of that is a flaw in the blogging software and the failure of the author to realize they need to customize the design to make it accessible to readers.
One thing I've tried to combat the chaos of blog structures is to include links to other posts in series as a header (when it makes sense).
The biggest hurdle of moving away from a blog to a static format is that blog posts are timestamped and there's no real expectation that they're maintained. With static pages, however, I try to keep them up-to-date.
Can you share some examples of what you're describing. I enjoy blogs, have one of my own that I haven't added to in quite a while. I don't feel under any pressure, for many of the reasons stated in TFA, to update it regularly. But I'm now interested in exploring this alternative you describe.
Any personal homepage of the pre-blog era is a good example.
See here the personal homepage of the late Sheldown Brown, famous for his technical articles on bicycle maintenance, that is still maintained by his spouse Harriett Fell[1] who still add content regularly. I still visit once in a while:
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/org/personal-pages.html
It may look like a big mess and it is ugly by modern standards[2] but it is a real pleasure to visit with tons of articles classed by topics. I find it more interesting to visit than a blog.
Here some humor pages Harriett Fell added in recent year to make fun of Zwift or OpenAI:
like a wiki-blog? But then, when is a refinement to something a new work (like a part 2), a small refinement to the original, or a noteworthy modification e.g. such that subscribers would be notified of the change?
You don't need dated entries, just a topic name, a few subheadings for different parts of related text, and a history page; but presenting update notifications can still be a problem? maybe different levels of notification, or subscribing to specific articles(subheading)/topics?
100%. Reading blogs feels 'messy' exactly for this reason. It's not 2008 anymore when blog posts had a vibrant comment section, so changing the content of the post felt dishonest. Maybe it's modern social media that makes people treat their blogs like a tweet - uneditable, frozen in time.
The thing about irl blogs is how, if it's tech related, then it kinda follows you. So there's a pressure to keep things corporate to not scare away job opportunities.
There's a reason why LinkedIn reads like garbage, and even if it's obvious, people neither point it out or stop.
I am using a pseudonym on my blog and I tend to use a different pseudonym on all websites/services/medias I use. I have often pondered wether I should just publish under my own name or not. The thing is once you do that, there is no going back and I have never felt ready for that.
I know it puts off some people who mistake that for anonymity and think this is ruining the web, that people can't behave if they aren't talking under their own name, I respect that.
I am not looking for anonymity. I don't pretend to hide from authorities. However pseudonimity allows me to express myself while not engaging my current or future employers directly.
> I know it puts off some people who mistake that for anonymity and think this is ruining the web
Its interesting that we got to a point where anyone would consider anonymity to be ruining the web.
When I was growing up in the 90s and early 00s anonymity online was the whole point. Everything online was behind usernames, and usernames weren't expected to be connected to your real identity at all.
Thank you Facebook, you did a wonderdul job of convincing an entire generation that they should put their real name, profile photo, hometown, etc online and tied to everything they say online.
Pseudonyms are nice too because they are, for all practical purposes, identities, just not real life identities. You can build a brand around a pseudonym, even if you can't necessarily convert that to real life cachet. That is somewhat different from pure anonymity, because if you act like a dick eventually no one will take you seriously and you'll lose something of value, even if that value is just the goodwill of your readers.
> I know it puts off some people who mistake that for anonymity and think this is ruining the web, that people can't behave if they aren't talking under their own name
I haven't run across this sentiment with regard to personal websites or blogs. Who is saying that?
I do see it for forums, comment sections, and social media. Those often bring together people who did not consciously seek to interact with each other, and do tend to reward antisocial behavior with attention.
It’s funny how different lives can be. I’ve never been part of the corporate world, been self employed basically my whole working life and my blog is not even a thought when it comes to work. I’d honestly be super happy if someone I interact with for work asked me about something I wrote because I write about things I care about and I’m always happy to chat with people.
> I’d honestly be super happy if someone I interact with for work asked me about something I wrote
As a student (who also has no corporate experience), I share this feeling. The few times I've been asked by other students about my blog, I've always been excited (perhaps a little too much) to share my thoughts and opinions in a conservation.
I'm personally less averse to calling that stuff out these days because I found that I wasn't exactly getting job opportunities in the current market by playing it safe. Since being quiet and uncontroversial doesn't even work, what's the point? I think people are making a mistake by not saying what they actually think.
The only reason I don't have a blog yet is inertia/laziness. It'll happen eventually.
I’ve had this fear a few times - and when my last workplace started getting a bit weird (layoffs) I largely stopped publishing much of anything. I experimented with publishing under an alternate identity a bit, but it never stuck.
Now I’m working through my backlog of drafts, dumping a load of stuff ASAP, and then trying to commit myself to some form of publishing schedule to force myself to “catch up” on the project backlog.
I showed my Mom my personal website a few years ago, and her only comment was it needed more pictures, so I added a picture of a window plant to exactly one page. I haven't showed it to anyone else IRL.
I felt very seen by this blog post. I sent it to my partner and she replied with “Sounds like you. What is IRL” which perfectly sums up the disconnect on some topics that the author also mentioned.
I just spend the past month rebuilding my blog, even though there’s nobody reading it and it really only is my “online home” to play around with and be creative.
My main source of traffic is random Google visits for some “I’ll write this down for myself in case I run into it again” type posts.
I love when friends do this. It's hard to keep up with people and what they're up to. Publishing and letting people subscribe to me is a great way to share things. A few examples of some friends who are doing this:
Justin Searls (fairly known in Ruby and Rails community) mostly quit a lot of various social channels though publishes on some of them one direction. He started a podcast that wasn't meant to be guests of some specific topic, it's just him updating you on things. What he's working on, what he's learning, random stories, etc. - https://justin.searls.co/casts/
Brandur who I've worked with at a couple of places (Heroku previously, and now Crunchy Data) who writes great technical pieces that often end up here also has more of a personal newsletter. While there are technical pieces in there at times he'll also talk about personal experiences my favorite one is some of the unique experiences hiking the Pacific Trail (https://brandur.org/nanoglyphs/039-trails).
This gives me heart. I like writing about technical things, but I also like writing about personal things, concerts I went to, whatever. I'm a whole person, and I never liked the pressure (mostly from social media) to build your "brand" around one genre or style of writing. For me, my site is a personal one where I post about things I'm interested in. Ham radio, machine learning, my travels, pay phones, whatever. Maybe less useful for a reader or audience building but...I just like to write and share things.
The point of the article is one I align with: You're writing it for yourself, 99% of the time. The other 1% is the future you.
I blog for work. I don't discuss it with family. I think I'd find it very stressful answering the "why did you say that" questions.
The corollary of this, is that I write notes by hand in almost every meeting I attend, and never ever read them again -But for things like IETF I do a mixture of .org and meetecho (markdown) because there is at least some possibility others may get value from the shared log in meetecho, and I know I will use the .org to .. write the blog.
I take many handwritten notes throughout the day like you, but found that reviewing them for 2 minutes at the start of the next day has high return on investment.
In the past I’ve used a blog literally to make small notes on very simple things that I always ended up having to look up, or for notes on the “right way” to do something.
For example: for years I was using Pythons requests library incorrectly. The way I was doing it worked - but it wasn’t correct.
Once I published a short blog on the correct way - the correct way seemed to stick better in my mind!
Lars-Christian, your site got a little attention today :-)
No post I’ve written has ever gone viral.
I also have a personal website. If anyone notice what I've written it's a very nice added bonus. For me it's also about personal ownership of my content, and perhaps also a reminder to myself of the old internet - which I miss.
Readit News
I’ve been lucky to have been recognized by a few people in the wild (IRL) who walked up to me and asked, “You are brajeshwar.com?”
These days, I just write for myself.
Fast forward 15+ years, my daughter somehow decided to search the Internet for me, and she said, “You are like a ChatGPT-powered Discord bot, answering questions on an antique Reddit forum.”
https://x.com/brajeshwar/status/1630852614303924224
Reading this term hit my brain with such a sudden wave of nostalgia. It really was a different time.
Now people talk about high engagement twitter threads, linked-in posts or just film each other filming each other for their "content".
I do like however personnal pages that have a small log mentionning the updates to which I can subscribe to.
A lot of that is a flaw in the blogging software and the failure of the author to realize they need to customize the design to make it accessible to readers.
The biggest hurdle of moving away from a blog to a static format is that blog posts are timestamped and there's no real expectation that they're maintained. With static pages, however, I try to keep them up-to-date.
See here the personal homepage of the late Sheldown Brown, famous for his technical articles on bicycle maintenance, that is still maintained by his spouse Harriett Fell[1] who still add content regularly. I still visit once in a while: https://www.sheldonbrown.com/org/personal-pages.html
It may look like a big mess and it is ugly by modern standards[2] but it is a real pleasure to visit with tons of articles classed by topics. I find it more interesting to visit than a blog.
Here some humor pages Harriett Fell added in recent year to make fun of Zwift or OpenAI:
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/time-travel.html
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/openai.html
[1] which also happen to have her own personal page: https://www.khoury.northeastern.edu/home/fell/
[2] it doesn't have to be, this one simply was built in the late 90's
You don't need dated entries, just a topic name, a few subheadings for different parts of related text, and a history page; but presenting update notifications can still be a problem? maybe different levels of notification, or subscribing to specific articles(subheading)/topics?
There's a reason why LinkedIn reads like garbage, and even if it's obvious, people neither point it out or stop.
I know it puts off some people who mistake that for anonymity and think this is ruining the web, that people can't behave if they aren't talking under their own name, I respect that.
I am not looking for anonymity. I don't pretend to hide from authorities. However pseudonimity allows me to express myself while not engaging my current or future employers directly.
Its interesting that we got to a point where anyone would consider anonymity to be ruining the web.
When I was growing up in the 90s and early 00s anonymity online was the whole point. Everything online was behind usernames, and usernames weren't expected to be connected to your real identity at all.
Thank you Facebook, you did a wonderdul job of convincing an entire generation that they should put their real name, profile photo, hometown, etc online and tied to everything they say online.
I haven't run across this sentiment with regard to personal websites or blogs. Who is saying that?
I do see it for forums, comment sections, and social media. Those often bring together people who did not consciously seek to interact with each other, and do tend to reward antisocial behavior with attention.
As a student (who also has no corporate experience), I share this feeling. The few times I've been asked by other students about my blog, I've always been excited (perhaps a little too much) to share my thoughts and opinions in a conservation.
The only reason I don't have a blog yet is inertia/laziness. It'll happen eventually.
Now I’m working through my backlog of drafts, dumping a load of stuff ASAP, and then trying to commit myself to some form of publishing schedule to force myself to “catch up” on the project backlog.
https://brynet.ca/article-x395.html
I just spend the past month rebuilding my blog, even though there’s nobody reading it and it really only is my “online home” to play around with and be creative.
My main source of traffic is random Google visits for some “I’ll write this down for myself in case I run into it again” type posts.
Justin Searls (fairly known in Ruby and Rails community) mostly quit a lot of various social channels though publishes on some of them one direction. He started a podcast that wasn't meant to be guests of some specific topic, it's just him updating you on things. What he's working on, what he's learning, random stories, etc. - https://justin.searls.co/casts/
Brandur who I've worked with at a couple of places (Heroku previously, and now Crunchy Data) who writes great technical pieces that often end up here also has more of a personal newsletter. While there are technical pieces in there at times he'll also talk about personal experiences my favorite one is some of the unique experiences hiking the Pacific Trail (https://brandur.org/nanoglyphs/039-trails).
I blog for work. I don't discuss it with family. I think I'd find it very stressful answering the "why did you say that" questions.
The corollary of this, is that I write notes by hand in almost every meeting I attend, and never ever read them again -But for things like IETF I do a mixture of .org and meetecho (markdown) because there is at least some possibility others may get value from the shared log in meetecho, and I know I will use the .org to .. write the blog.
Or alternatively it could be a place for educational stuff like the more detailed answers on stackoverflow. Except the middleman gets removed
For example: for years I was using Pythons requests library incorrectly. The way I was doing it worked - but it wasn’t correct.
Once I published a short blog on the correct way - the correct way seemed to stick better in my mind!
Dead Comment
No post I’ve written has ever gone viral.
I also have a personal website. If anyone notice what I've written it's a very nice added bonus. For me it's also about personal ownership of my content, and perhaps also a reminder to myself of the old internet - which I miss.