Illusory Follies Andrew Flanagan's Blog

Yikes

It's been a month again without any updates. I'm not good at this blogging thing. It's difficult because I think I haven't defined my purpose very clearly. From my second blog entry way back in January 2005, I said that I would have this site "chronicle my hobbies" and might also include "items that I find amusing". I feel a little cheap simply rehashing the million-and-one sites out there that have funny things on them so I tend to not include unless I find them extremely funny and I think that my blog readers likely won't see the source site. With regards to my hobbies, it's hard because my availability for hobbies ebbs and flows so when I'm not posting it's usually because I'm not doing much.

The thing I find funny about that original post is that I said: I know [my blog topic] is not original, but then again not many people are interested if your hobby is photographing sumo wrestlers."

I think in fact that I would have more visitors if I had chosen sumo wrestler photography. I would have a very real chance of becoming the biggest, most popular sumo wrestler photography site. It would be part of that "long tail" that may not be as popular overall but with global availability could dominate the niche.

The problem with talking about just my hobbies and things that I find funny is that everyone does this and although it's more interesting than journaling my diet (hey, that's what Twitter is for!) it's not terribly thought provoking. I don't have a budget in cash or time to do anything that's too thrilling or novel so I'm mostly just talking about my little 25 minutes of coding adventure in Groovy or my weekend of wiring the house (which I just did this last weekend!)

So I've decided to branch out. I think two things would help. First: posting more regularly. I need to get in the habit of posting at least every other day. That's a lot of posting, but when I'm busy, I will content myself with rehashing other sites that I've read and digested. I usually have thoughts about posts on Coding Horror or similar sites and could easily indulge in 20 minutes of logorrhoea and save Sarah from having to hear me talk about some software methodology and why I think it's terrible/wonderful.

So that's the attempt. More posts, more content, less junk, less stuff about boring hobbies.