I guess I’m really a part of the blogosphere now – not because I’m writing stuff on a blog, but because someone else’s blog linked to an article in mine. Whimsley saw my response to his article on blogging. I had to smile at the sentence “Except he says it better” — Tom is a professional writer and published author, so this is quite the compliment to little ol’ me.

Tom’s blog is read by a number of other people (friends and family of his, and likely some people who have read his recently-published book), and if his book is a hit, that’ll bump his readership numbers as well. Since there’s a link to my blog on his, that might bump my numbers too. Woohoo!

Oh wait, I don’t care about that. I forgot.

Technorati tags:
blogging

I signed up with Technorati the other day, and I found a way to set up a posting template that includes the technorati tag links, so some of my postings will have these links at the bottom. I’ll put relevant tags on an article, and if you’re interested in that topic, you can click on a link and technorati will search for other entries in the blogosphere that use that tag as well. I’m not going to go back and update a year’s worth of entries to add these tags though, so this will likely only affect new postings. I may add some tags to a couple of recent entries, just to see how it works.

Technorati tags: technorati

A guy at work wrote on his “relaxed slow-moving, occasionally-updated weblog” that bloggers who update their blog multiple times a day are “some combination of (a) well-organized, (b) brilliant, or (c) egotistical”. I can’t say I disagree with that. (I also know that he’s not really referring to me, since I only update my blog once or twice a week.) He then goes on to say that bloggers are “presumptious, almost distasteful” because they publish their thoughts with the implied assumption that they are “worthy” of publication. (Note that he also says that he’s decided that “this impression of presumptiousness is wrong”.) I certainly don’t think that my thoughts as published in my blog are “worthy” of anything. They’re my thoughts, and if you want to read them, great. If you think this blog is a pile of crap, well, there are one or two other blogs on the internet, feel free to check them out. I won’t be offended. I’m certainly not doing this because I think anything I’ve written is particularly profound or meaningful – I am quite sure that nobody gives a rat’s ass about my trip to Wonderland the other day, or what concerts I’ve been to, or my thoughts on the important social or political issues of the day (ummm… I couldn’t find any such links on this blog) and yet I wrote about them anyway. Why?

I don’t know if I have an audience. I know that one or two people at work (JP, MC) have read my blog in the past and have even commented on an article or two, but I don’t know if they read every article. I’ve sent links to single articles to a couple of my friends, but I don’t know if they’ve read any others. Even my wife knows about my blog, but I don’t think she reads it. My kids are too young to know what a blog is (but I’m sure they’ll be LOL’ing and OMG’ing on myspace.com before I know it). So: I don’t think my thoughts are particularly meaningful to anyone else, and other than myself and the occasional google searcher, I don’t know if anyone is reading this stuff anyway. So again we arrive at this question that I tried to answer before – why the hell am I doing this?

Going back to Tom’s description – am I well-organized? Not especially. Brilliant? That’s a stretch, though I’m fairly well-educated. Egotistical? Generally no, but I think there has to be a certain amount of that involved – logically, I must want people to read it, otherwise why publish it? If the writing part of it is why I do it, then I could just write it down and leave it on my own computer, but I don’t.

I enjoy reading other people’s blogs. When I went to DC in January for the CC testing, the validator was a guy named Daniel. I’d never met nor even heard of him before then, I haven’t talked to him since (and likely won’t ever again), and he probably doesn’t remember who I am. Yet I still read his blog, even though he generally talks about his friends who I don’t know, and places he goes in LA, where I’ve never been, as well as his interest in the Jewish faith, about which I know very little. It’s certainly not one of my favourite blogs, but I still find it interesting now and again. I’ve occasionally found blogs from people I’ve never met nor heard of, and sometimes they can be enjoyable too.

Perhaps it’s egotistical of me to think that someone, somewhere, occasionally enjoys reading my blog. I guess the end result is that I find it fun to publish this stuff, and if nobody reads it, then no big deal. I’m too well-organized and brilliant to care about that.

You may notice some images down the right side of my blog page – these are for some web sites that gather sponsors who donate money to specific causes for each visitor to the site, in exchange for the right to advertise on the site. These sites support causes like breast cancer research, literacy, food for the hungry, and saving the rainforest.

I came across these sites a couple of years ago, and after some due diligence to make sure it wasn’t a scam, added links to our home page. Then I rewrote our page when I registered the perrow.ca domain, and didn’t put the links on the new page — they just don’t really fit in among the pictures of my kids. I’ve added them to the sidebar of my blog because I have looked into them a bit, and I think they’re legit, and because they support causes that I believe in. My mother, Gail’s mother, and Gail’s late grandmother have all been touched by breast cancer, and they all survived it. Me, Gail, and the boys have also walked in the CIBC Run for the Cure for the last couple of years, in the hopes that surviving breast cancer will be the norm, not the exception.

Please, if you could do me a favour and every now and again when reading my blog, click on one or more of these images and then click on the “Click here” button in the middle of the page you get to, that would certainly help. Thanks.

Wil Wheaton* has one of the most widely-read blogs on the ‘net. I’ve been reading it for about a year and a half – I started reading it because I’m a huge Star Trek: The Next Generation fan, and of course Wil played Wesley Crusher on that show for 5 years. After a while, however, I came to realize that he’s a damn good writer, and now I read his blog because I enjoy what he writes, and the Star Trek angle is secondary, especially since he doesn’t write about Star Trek all that often.

* – Wil’s site was wilwheaton.net, but he started having problems with that site last fall, and so he temporarily moved his blog over to Typepad. Six months later, he’s still on Typepad, but I think he plans on fixing up his own site and re-launching it sometime soon.

Recently he started podcasting – basically recording himself talking rather than just typing stuff, and then releasing the recording as episodes of “Radio Free Burrito”. People started sending him questions that he would answer on his podcasts, and I sent him one asking about his least favourite episodes of ST:TNG. Today, he answered my question – a couple of episodes during the first season called Angel One and Code of Honor, which were, indeed, quite bad. He also mentioned a particular conversation that Wesley had with Tasha Yar talking about drugs, and how embarassing the lines were to say. Wesley asked Tasha why people did drugs, and Tasha told him it made them feel good. Wesley said that it was artificial, Tasha says that it doesn’t feel artificial at the time, and Wesley says he still doesn’t understand, to which Tasha replies “Wesley, I hope you never do”. I wondered how Wil felt about that conversation – it was a very thinly-disguised attempt at a public service announcement. Luckily, they stopped short of having the characters turn directly to the camera and say “Kids! Don’t do drugs! And stay in school!”, but it wasn’t far short.

Anyway, it was cool to have some famous person say my name (and not even mispronounce it!). Last year, I got on the radio, and now this. My big break is coming soon, I just know it…

OK, fun’s over, everyone outta the pool. Gail has discovered my blog. She mentioned it the other night at dinner, though we talked about it for approximately 15 seconds before being interrupted, probably by some piece of wisdom from Nicholas (“Look, I put my fork in my chocolate milk! That’s hil-air-ious”). I’ve already gone through and deleted all the articles about my sexual exploits with the Toronto Rock cheerleaders, so I think I’m safe. :-)

As I mentioned in a previous article, my blog was never a secret from my beloved wife; I just never made a point of mentioning it, because I figured she’d ask why (“I dunno”), and what kind of stuff do I write about (“just stuff”), and my answers would probably be rather disappointing – to me, if not to her.

Here is a comic about the blogging craze. Makes me wonder why I write in this blog – is it for the money? No, though it’s kind of nice. For the chicks? No, though, again, that’s a welcome perk. Because my thousands of devoted readers are clamoring for more of my innermost thoughts? Um, no.

I don’t really know why I have a blog. Sometimes I think it’s kind of a historical document – so in a few years, I can read what I was thinking way back when Figgy died, or when we went to Vegas, or something like that. Other times, it’s just an outlet for me to vent about stuff (ObVent: if someone passes you on the right, in all probability it means that you’re in the wrong lane, not them!), and sometimes I feel like I want to share my opinions with someone, but I don’t know who, so I just post ’em here.

It’s funny – I’m not sure if Gail even knows I have a blog. It’s not a secret – there’s a link to it on our own web site fer cryin’ out loud – and I’m not trying to keep it from her, I just haven’t made a point of telling her about it. And I know why I haven’t — the first thing she’d ask is “why?”, and I don’t really know the answer.

Well, not really (actually, I love my job), but I’ll bet the title is eye-catching to any of my colleagues who happen to come across this blog. I found out today that two of the aforementioned colleagues, John and aListair are both active in the blogosphere.

John obviously has a digital camera that he uses frequently, so his blog is fancy with pictures and everything. I, on the other hand, have a 35mm film camera (purchased in the previous century), so there are very few pictures on my blog. I’m trying to convince Gail that we need a digital camera as well, but she won’t go for it.

Hi there – Welcome to my blog. I just created it this morning on a whim, and I have no clear plans on what to post on it, but I’m sure I’ll think of something. Some of the posts will be sports-related, others will be technical in nature, since those are two of my favourite things. I’m sure many will be about my wife and my two sons, since they are three more of my favourite things. :-)

Anyway, hope this is not too uninteresting, and maybe a little fun. Enjoy!