Double crikey – any blo with two mentions of ‘Yak Shaving’ must be entered into Google Reader. Now :-)

I think I originally ‘knew’ you from your sterling efforts getting embryonic releases of Laconica working (thanks) and just wondered why your identi.ca account there was dormant so I just stumbled in uninvited.

Anyway, I can identify with this post. I have endured similar crises of confidence with my blog – in fact all of my online presence.

I remember committing Web 2.0 suicide once and labouriously deleting 237 Tumblr entries. Christ – those guys need some Bulk management tools.

I’m with Ciaran. As my blog festers and sporadically bursts into life, I realise that I am only writing for myself and I have only ever written for myself.

Why – very occasionally I trawl through my own archives and laugh at my own jokes and wonder ‘Why can’t I produce stuff like this any more ?’

I’ve played with every blogging platform ever invented and currently favour Habari – mainly for the pure unadulterated beauty of the ‘Compose Post’ blank canvas.

However, I also played with Jekyll and the thought of writing in Emacs and ‘commiting’ to publish content is an attractive one.

I think your final paragraph sums it up brilliantly:

‘Write for myself, write what I’d want to read’.

Couldn’t agree more.

And, for what it’s worth, I’d definitely enjoy reading about brewing and coffee roasting – recipes and techniques are the kind of code examples I can understand!

You’re good at writing, otherwise you wouldn’t have as many listeners as you do… And I believe that you’re not fishing for feedback like this.

If you continue to write here, RSS will keep us clued in. I don’t see RSS readers totally going away for a while.

Smiles will continue, just keep “scratching one or more of your itches” here. Just like today.

You have toyed with the idea of an audio show, but I haven’t seen evidence of that. If giving that a try sparks something in you, then you best be about it…

Good Journey

@Geof: Well, I’d never take it down, just turn off the PHP bits and move to something else whenever I wrote again. Actually, this thing is mostly static HTML right now thanks to WP Super Cache.

But, now that I wrote this and I’m thinking about things again, I might just keep this around. Started playing with MarsEdit 2, and finding I don’t actually hate it.

As far as being a writer goes, not everyone can do all their writing (drafts, edits, rewrites, etc.) in public view. Writing is intensely personal. Even if you’re writing about Dojo or hacking delicious, you’re exposing your imperfect innards while you do your best to create something really difficult. Hell, I write for a living — I’m a corporate and securities lawyer. When I’ve finalized a document, all of my drafts get shredded!

@Carter: I think my main source of lament here is that I’m a writer who never seems to write on his own site. I feel like I should be publishing more about the stuff I do. But, yeah, this place isn’t really the center of my online universe anymore.

@Matt: Huh, you know, that Newly Digital in 1983 post was one of my quieter ones in terms of feedback. I always wondered if it got many reads, but it was one of my own favorites to write since it was the sort of thing I liked to see on others’ blogs.

Oh, and welcome to Mozilla! I’m back out to Mountain View pretty regularly, so we’ll have to hang out sometime. Might have to pick your brain about Jekyll and how you like mobile hacking.

@Dan: I’m a bit weird, since most of my friends since the age of 8 have been behind computers, modems, or the internet. And now, my job is almost entirely on the net since I’m telecommuting from my basement 3000 miles away from HQ. So, it’s pretty natural for me to live online.

Still, I have gotten more and more private. My LiveJournal has some entries that I’d never write now, and I’ll probably never post religious / political stuff here because it’s not worth the debate or potential life / career damage.

So… yeah, I’ll probably never again be a blogger, per se. I don’t feel like having a diary online so much as a place where I publish interesting things.

I think really my thing here is I call myself a writer, so I should probably be doing more of it. :)

Maybe your idea of writing for a younger you has legs. I don’t think anything you’ve mentioned is geared toward the less knowledgeable. I don’t mean explaining simple HTML “Hello World”, but why not summaries or highlights of languages you know?

You could point out differences between the languages, maybe reasons certain applications are written in one instead of another? I’m sure there is a intermediate user perspective you could aim at. Parlay these things into possible book sales?

Good luck with what ever you decide.

I like posting code snippets. Maybe I’ll check out github at some point, but I’ve got a 2-year-old now. He’s way more fun and interesting than Python or whatever. (I guess that could be interpreted as implying that my wife is NOT more fun and interesting than those things. Rather than explain why that is not the case, I’ll just say that we’ve been together forever, and I love her very much.)

At any rate, I thought your post merited at least one comment pondering why the commenter does not blog (anymore).

For my part, it has a lot to do with privacy, I think. I knew before I ever installed blosxom that I didn’t want to be a “blogger.” I had no interest in sharing my deep thoughts about life, politics, or anything else. I enjoy talking with people; it’s not an antisocial thing. It’s just that I don’t know what long-term ramifications there may be to such free expression. Likewise, you won’t see pictures of me and my family generally available on Flickr or Picasa (there may be a handful). Facebook is nothing to me except somewhere to echo my Twitter stream, such as it is (and I’ve stopped doing that). Brightkite — forget it! My last.fm profile is about as intimate as I get online.

I’m thinking about shutting down my WP installation. I really don’t use it. The only thing I really use my VPS for is my web-based feed reader.

All of these blogging, microblogging, and social networking services — especially the social networking services — are really interesting to me, though. I will keep hanging around the periphery of them, dipping in a toe here and there.

http://decafbad.com/blog/2003/02/20/ooodae

“Newly Digital in 1983″ is still one of my favorite stories ever. You also got me interested in ifiction and flash fiction. (I ended up publishing a few stories on 365tomorrows and Ficlets.) And this month I’m joining the Mozilla Corporation, partly because I want to work with you and other hackers whose work has influenced me over the years. Your audience may be small, but we’re devoted! :)

I moved my own technical blogging to Jekyll recently. There’s a bit less guilt about slow update schedules when I think of it more like a static collection of articles than an online journal. (And yeah, using a real editor and version control makes it much easier to get longer pieces done.) I use Planet Venus for my personally-hosted lifestream, though these days most of my friends get my aggregated data via Facebook or Buzz.