gl.

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Monday, February 24, 2003

 
9:25 PM: [#] [0]

oooooo! rob's teeeessssty! :) "some of you ... are not doing your part to question, challenge, think, rethink, unthink, understand, overstand, overturn, inside out, provoke, prod, protest and unsettle."

i love rob. i admire what he's trying to do here and i often live vicariously through his moral indignation. i apparently like blogs for different reasons than he does, though, so here are "gl.'s three rules of blogging (tm)":

rule #1: know your audience. i read my access logs; i know i can count my regular readers on the fingers of one hand, the addition of random readers on the fingers of both hands, and still wish for a sparkly ring for the last finger. this space is mostly for me & the three other people who care about me. more importantly, i think blogging is a tremendous way for me to organize my brain: it's what high fidelity refers to as "autobiographical" organization. even if nobody else read it, i'd still keep a blog.

rule #2: know your voice. if you hadn't guessed, i am scattered, with half of me devoted to art, half of me devoted to os x, and another half of me devoted to hopeless introspection, often about my job. (i know that adds up to more than a whole. if you wanted to talk to a rocket scientist, talk to brian.) i write poetry in part because i don't have the attention span to write stories. the blog format, small interjections which may or may not be relevant, suits my personality well. speaking of which....

rule #3: know your medium. blogs seem designed for fewer, smaller posts. the size of the input field is a big clue. they're timestamped for a reason. they're meant to be informal; they're meant to transmit the essence of the moment. blog posts are like izone polaroids, or photo booth strips, rather than carefully crafted national geographic photo essays. if you want a lecture format, i guess you could set up a discussion group and set it to moderate posts. or start your own zine.

i didn't even know i had these rules. i guess rob's call to action worked, though i suspect he meant it for larger, more important issues than this. ;)

[update: argh. this made a lot more sense before rob deleted the original post. i'm hoping he brings it back.]
[update part deux: he brought it back!]