Why blog?

This is the picture i have on my desktop. I wish i could remember where i found it, because i love it, and someone else made it, and i wish i could give them credit for it.

Are blogs inherently narcissistic?

As a *nix technologist, i use google to fix 75% of my problems *very* quickly. Google just finds the already-published answers, many of which come from personal blogs, short write-ups of problems solved.

It's like stone soup

As an aside, I read a lot of newspapers. There's a huge, ongoing conversation about how newspapers *create* news, while bloggers move it around, pick out the nice parts, etc. Are bloggers destroying newspapers? I reckon it's a question worth asking, but with respect to technology, it's a null one.

Personal observation in general, and micro-problem-solving in particular, is where blogs excel. I'm a little embarrassed that i started so late, but i've gotten to the point in my life where, more and more, i use technology to solve a clear-and-present problem. I need it to fit me.

Enter cellphone blogging.

I need it to be simple, to work as near the speed-of-thought as possible. Keybindings are a great example. I learn new firefox and vim keybindings because they allow me to work *much* more rapidly, with much less thought, once my fingers finally learn them.

Sometimes computers are a pain to find, or there's no internet access, or my battery's down, or i only have time to check my email and run. On the other hand, my cellphone can stay on for days without a charge, (finally!) has a thumb keyboard and camera attached, and can almost always send pix messages. Alternately, I can use my laptop with gmail; then i get a real keyboard and firefox's spellchecker, and i can compose a well thought-out email quickly and easily.

I don't want a blog to take time out of my life. Rather, i want to put a little bit of effort into it here and there to make my life better. For me, these are the things of which speed-of-thought blogging is made. Only now do i enjoy tossing things into this vast and mercurial stone soup cauldron.