A propos of not very much, here’s a magazine column about blogging. Regular readers of iSeries NEWS UK may recognise it, as it appeared in that estimable magazine last year.
BLOGGING – it’s the new thing! Everyone’s blogging these days – at least, everyone except you! But what is blogging all about? What are the do’s and don’ts of this new medium – what does it take to be a good citizen of the blogosphere? And that MySpace thing that the kids are doing – what’s that all about? Let’s find out.
Q: Reverse chronological order?
A: That’s right – you’ll see the latest posts at the top and earlier ones lower down. It’s easy to get used to – just imagine that you’re living life backwards, perhaps as the result of exposure to a top-secret military experiment that warped the very fabric of reality itself. Or that you’re reading one of those chain emails where people add their replies at the top.
Q: What about developing a coherent argument?
A: Many blogs have a continuing theme or an argument to which they frequently return. Bloggers whose writing has a particularly clear focus are sometimes referred to as ‘subject experts’, and sometimes as ‘nutters’. You may prefer to avoid being regarded as a nutter; in this case, your best strategy is to have opinions which people agree with. Otherwise, building an extended argument on a blog is no different from doing it in any other situation: cross-examining defence witnesses in a fraud trial, say, or ascertaining whether that bloke in the taxi queue did in fact want some. The only difference with blogging is that you write it all down – that, and the fact that what you write appears in reverse chronological order.
Q: But what would I write about?
A: Whatever you like – the sky is quite literally your oyster. To get some ideas, try browsing some IT blogs. The tech blogosphere is a happy hunting ground for lovers of rare, obscure and historic technology – from the LEO to the One Per Desk, from the Osborne to the Sinclair QL… The iSeries hasn’t been neglected, either – at last count there are as many as two dedicated iSeries blogs, which sometimes feature code! But it’s up to you: you can write about whatever crosses your mind, and goodness knows most people do.
Q: So who writes this stuff?
A: According to popular stereotypes, the typical blogger is a twenty-something American Unix enthusiast who lives with his parents and compensates for his lack of a social life by hunching over a keyboard for hour after lonely hour, conducting tediously pointless contests of geek one-upmanship and exchanging incomprehensibly elaborate in-jokes, pausing only for a swig of Mountain Dew or a bite of cold pizza. This stereotype is far removed from reality – Mountain Dew’s more of a skater thing, apart from anything else. In reality, the range of bloggers is as broad as the range of blogs – and that’s pretty broad. There are blogs out there devoted to every topic under the sun – computing, cult films, Dungeons and Dragons, beer, you name it! It is believed that there are also blogs written by women, although the subject matter of these has yet to be ascertained. That’s the great thing about blogging: anyone can do it. You could be a blogger, if you put your mind to it.
Q: OK, so what is blogging?
A: Blogging is the activity of keeping a blog. A blog is a personal Website, updated regularly by the user; you can think of it as a kind of online journal or commonplace book or advertisement for oneself. The word ‘blog’ may derive from ‘Web log’, a type of Web site consisting of a ‘log’ of other interesting sites. It may also derive from ‘backlog’, a term for the mass of blog-worthy material which dedicated bloggers tend to build up, and the mass of work which doesn’t get done while they’re blogging about it. Alternatively, it may be a cross between ‘brag’ and ‘slog’, encapsulating the experience of reading a blog for (a) the author and (b) everyone else.
Q: Blogs – are they something to do with that MySpace thing that the kids seem to be doing these days? What’s that all about?
A: God knows. Shall we talk about blogging?
Workers’ Playtime 