called the Blog Herald
started a series last week
on starting a blog
but i was distressed to discover
that the original intent
of the expression 'web logging'
(to log your websurfing
with public annotations)
has gone entirely by the boards
as they offer you just two options:
a personal-diary-style blog
or a topical-niche blog
online personal diaries came before blogs
and when the words 'blog' and 'weblog'
started being applied to them
i was flattered at first
(*ahem* having coined the term)
but there's a problem here
that everyone, on or off the Net
knows what an online journal should be
but not-at-all what an
original-definition-weblog
should be
so the former definition is tending to
usurp the latter
through sheer ignorance
so i'd like to take the term back
from online journalling
and make them find their own neologism
the Blog Herald is also
77 days in
to a 100-day project
recommending
"100 blogs in 100 days"
(without topical restrictions)
which i'll confess
i haven't even skimmed
(though i'm a faithful fan
of the Herald itself) because
the Herald being itself narrowly topical
even after reading it all year
i still know absolutely nothing
about the Blog Herald editor
(or editors) as people
so why should i trust their judgment
on topics outside their niche?
my primary conscious purpose
on 17 December 1997
in creating (then) Robot Wisdom WebLog
was to 'unify my brand' on the Net
because i was posting widely
on Usenet/netnews
and on my website
but readers in any given newsgroup
or readers of any given webpage
saw only that one limited aspect
of my interests
from the first it was for me
a matter of honor
to link
everything
i found interesting
without censoring the frivolous
or controversial
with John Lennon
beside AnaCam and JenniCam as
let-it-all-hang-out
role models
(although this ideal is probably
impossible to fully reach)
adding an mp3 jukebox
again extends that ideal
for to segregate
my musical choices
in a separate blog
would make as little sense
as to segregate
into separate mp3-blogs
my mainstream music-favorites
from my esoteric ones
the unit-measure for blogging
is the blogger
and you subscribe or unsubscribe
to the blogger-as-a-whole
based on whether you find them
simpatico
(i've always wished that someone
would create a partial duplicate or
RWWL Digest
that echoes just my mainstream links)
so my main problem with Slashdot
is that there's no 'them' there
i just don't know who's interested in what
and who understands what
so the news-stream it offers
remains largely unfocused sludge
and now the Huffington Post, too
has become almost unreadable
because it aggregates
100 different windbags
with no common voice
