The Post with No Content

Time for some shameless self promotion. I know that bunch of people read this blog via feed readers and rarely clicky the things on the sidebars. I also know that I rarely update the sidebar links to the other services I use. So this post will be a sort of “if you like this blog, you may also like this other stuff by me” kind of deal. I’m going to throw a few links out there and tell you what content you can expect there and you can decide if you want to check it out or subscribe. :)

First of, let me tell you why I just don’t put everything here. Over the last few years I sort of figured out what I what kind of stuff I want to post on this blog. My topic choices are still a rather wild scatter shot but I cut them down to the following list:

  1. Programming and Web Development
  2. Various IT and Technology stuff including security, software, and reviews
  3. Linux fanboy stuff
  4. Video Games and video game reviews
  5. Book and Movie Reviews (leaning heavily towards SF/Fantasy genre)
  6. RPG and Tabletop Games
  7. Random humor/rants related to any of the above

So in broad terms this collection of topics can probably be defined as “geeky stuff” or “the stuff that definitely won’t get you laid”. That is sort of the direction where I’m taking this page in case you haven’t noticed. There is a wide array of things that I used to do here, but then stopped. For example I try to refrain from posting about politics and religion. When I had 2 regular readers who I knew in real life, and who shared my political and religious views this sort of stuff was fine. Now that I see more than a dozen of regulars from all parts of the world, and from across the political spectrum commenting on my posts I think I can do better. These sort of posts quickly get personal, and I sort of want the small but quite diverse community we have here to thrive and grow rather than bicker over politics.

Another thing I try to avoid here is one-link or one-picture posts. I try to put some thought and effort into every post (not that you could tell by looking at my atrocious spelling and grammar) and simply doing a “cheg this out guyz!” posts seems like cheating. Especially since these days I’m under my self imposed 5 posts per week limit. I try to do quality over quantity – it doesn’t always work out but that’s the idea. Same goes for blurting out one liners, or commenting on mundane shit that I’m dealing with at the moment.

I still have an urge to post that type of stuff and in most cases I have found different outlets for them. For example, I tend to post crazy links, silly pictures and interesting quotes up at /dev/random tumbleblog. Some of you probably know about it, some probably don’t. That’s where all the silly stuff and links/quotes which don’t warrant a full blown article go.

As a side note, have you noticed how Web 2.0 takes old concepts and transforms them into brand new things? In the past, link blogging had a more or less negative connotation – it was re-blogging, recycling and rehashing stuff that was not original. Web 2.0 took that, renamed it as tumble blogging and all of a sudden it is acceptable and cool to have a tumblr account and regurgitate content aggregated from various places. That said, I try to put fun stuff at /dev/random – you won’t see links to stories from the front page of slashdot or digg there but rather various visual memes, and random quotes that I found either funny, or insightful. Also, no LOLCats (cause they are stupid) and I try to keep it SFW.

Speaking of Web 2.0 and social media – my primary medium for blurting out stupid shit throughout the day is twitter. Some of you already follow me there, and there is a flash widget somewhere on the sidebar here but my profile is here in case you want to check it out. I don’t think I need to explain to you what Twitter is – unless of course you have been sitting under a rock for the last year or so.

I still do not have a place where I could openly wax poetic about politics – which of course may actually be a good thing. Perhaps I should just refrain from commenting on these things unless they are related to my area of interest (ie. silliness like software patents, IP laws and etc). If I ever set something up for purely political and jaded rants I will let you know but it will definitely be separate from this blog though.

Then there is of course my Flickr photostream which doesn’t get updated that often, but it’s there if you want to stalk me. And of course there is facebook and myspace linked in the sidebar but I really don’t use these to post any content of sorts. These are the tools for interacting with my technologically underdeveloped real life friends and family who do not blog, do not understand twitter and reject email as communication medium as a personal rule.

So this blog, /dev/random, twitter and flickr are the places where I’m most active and sort of encompass the full spectrum of my public online activities. Just to put it all together I created a friendfeed account (cause that’s the latest cool thing, I hear) and simply dumped feeds from various services I use into it creating a life-stream sort of thing. It is like a big feed of feeds – so for example if you don’t use Twitter but want to be updated when I tweet you can subscribe to it.

How does your online life break down? I know some of you use twitter – and have blogs. I tend to subscribe to the blogs of my frequent commenters and I follow them on twitter if they link to it. How does your online life split up into various services? Do you usually dump everything into a single blog/journal or do you try to compartmentalize it across various blogs and services?

[tags]blogs, blogging, twitter, tumblr, /dev/random[/tags]

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.



8 Responses to The Post with No Content

  1. Well, you at a minimum introduced me to friendfeed!

    Reply  |  Quote
  2. Mart SINGAPORE Mozilla Firefox Windows Terminalist says:

    Awesome list of topics! (though I’m not such a hardcore linux fanboy)

    I have just gotten my own host and domain about a month back. Still haven’t find a good direction yet for my own blog, and I usually post very randomly. Guilty of a tons of one-liner posts! Probably because I treat my blog like a dumping ground for nice web videos that I like. :P

    Reply  |  Quote
  3. Matt` UNITED KINGDOM Mozilla Firefox Windows says:

    I sometimes get the feeling, that some time in the future someone’s going to ask me if I have a **** account, and fill the **** with every online service under the sun trying to find something I’m on.

    My online activities are pretty much limited to a handful of forums (using different usernames… although if you were a regular on both places you’d pretty quickly notice me talking about the same things in both) plus my extensive collection of RSS feeds.

    If you tried, you might be able to find multiple posts by “Matt`” and link them back to me, but they’re scattered across the face of the internet… I pretty much avoid the whole “social networking” scene – I can fill my time efficiently enough as it is.

    Reply  |  Quote
  4. Matt` UNITED KINGDOM Mozilla Firefox Windows says:

    Amendment to the above – my *identifiable* online activities are limited to that – obviously I do all kinds of other crap online :wink:

    Reply  |  Quote
  5. freelancer SWEDEN Mozilla Firefox Windows Terminalist says:

    Like Matt, I try to avoid this whole “social networking” thingy. For my online social needs, I use the GateWorld Forums, and that’s about it. I used to have a blog, but never posted anything, so it’s kind of dead :P

    Reply  |  Quote
  6. Adam Kahtava CANADA Safari Windows says:

    I live a fragmented online life… I’ve disassociated my flickr, twitter, blog, and facebook accounts from each other. Like you, I use facebook to communicate with non-techy family & friends, with twitter I’d probably annoy and bore the hell out of ppl, flickr is for friends & family, my blog is typically hit by employers and techy people.

    If someone wanted to dig around the internet they could discover all my outlets, but at this time, I don’t have a reason to consolidate and link my sites and feeds. I’m not sure anyone would really care if I did. :)

    Reply  |  Quote
  7. Luke Maciak UNITED STATES Mozilla Firefox Ubuntu Linux Terminalist says:

    @Adam – I actually use a Facebook App which reposts my tweets as my Facebook Status.

    At one point someone told me that I have by far, the most bizarre status messages than anyone else she knew. LOL

    I guess that’s because on facebook most people do the whole “is sad”, “is happy”, “is driving to work” whereas twitter can get all kinds of crazy.

    Reply  |  Quote
  8. Adam Kahtava CANADA Mozilla Firefox Windows says:

    LOL.. I did the same and had similar reactions. My twitter app on facebook was prefixing my status as “Adam is Twittering: …” My facebook friends were confusing Twittering with Twitterpated, which according to the Disney cartoon Bambi means to be in love. Chaos ensued, I made it stop. :)

    Reply  |  Quote

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *