Rob's Blog

After going through a period of writing a post a day, it’s now been nearly 8 months since my last post.

It’s not like I’ve not had anything going on. The latest development we’ve had is we moved house at the beginning of August. We’ve moved out of York and are now living in Whitnash (near Leamington where I grew up). We’re in a bigger house, and we’re nearer my parents which hopefully means a bit more support with some free childcare. I also don’t need to work from home any more (no more shedworking!), so I have a 2.5 mile commute (by bike or on foot) every day which means I’ll get some much needed exercise!

There is also some news which seems pretty old by now: we’re expecting our second baby in November. This is all pretty exciting, if a little scary, but we’re really looking forward to giving Izzy a brother or sister (we chose not to find out the sex again this time).

The other big news is that Abby has started a business called Izzy’s Mum selling breastfeeding clothes and accessories. She’s been spending what little free time she has sourcing some great products, and I’ve been busy developing a website. It’s still early days (things got put on hold a bit for the move), but things are looking promising.

I think I’ll try and post a bit more regularly again. I keep having ideas for posts, but never get round to writing them. In the mean time, that’s it for now (any bets on how long till the next post!?)

I’m up early (well early for me – especially for a weekend). I was wide awake (which is again unusual for me in the morning), so I thought I’d get up!

I thought now was a good enough time to sum up my Post a Day experiment.

In ten days I wrote eight posts. Nothing particularly exciting. The most viewed post got just 25 views, but that’s not too bad.

I quite enjoyed the challenge of trying to write something every day. I expected to write more about what I’d been doing in the previous 24 hours, but instead found writing more about what was on my mind. This probably made for slightly more interesting posts (emphasis on the slightly!).

I’m not quite sure why I stopped. I think it was partly I was pretty busy, and when I had paying customers wanting work done, and Abby getting bored on maternity leave, I couldn’t justify (to myself) taking half an hour every day to force myself to write. I probably also ran out of things to write about!

I will continue to post more often than I did previously – it’s been good getting my thoughts down “on paper”, but I’m not going to try and stick rigidly to one a day. In fact I have something else I will probably write about later today.

If you want to get started with a blog, or want to kick start one you already have, forcing yourself to write once a day can be a good way to get motivated, but I don’t think it’s for me in the long term.

Well, here I am – I made it to Day 2 of writing a post a day!

Recently I’ve discovered Twitter. I’m sure everyone knows about it by now – it’s a bit like posting a Facebook status to a public page. This means it can be searched and read by anyone, and is described as a “Microblogging” service.

I have to say I quite like it. You don’t have to put much (if any) thought into the posts, so it is easy to fit into your day (although Abby is always saying “you’re not twittering again are you?”).

I did try and put it to practical use on my recent Birthday night out. I tweeted the location of the pub we were in, so anyone joining us later could see where we were. Unfortunately I used SMS to update the location, which took a while to update, which meant that the only person who tried to find our location, got an out of date message! He found us in the end (through a good old fassioned voice call). It would have worked much better if I used a different tweeting method.

I am getting into it though, and I even have some followers I’ve never met which is quite nice (although I think some are following the MySpace school of thought – if I follow someone maybe they will follow me – I haven’t been unless they introduce themselves!)

I will leave you with this video, which isn’t exactly complimentary of Twtter (although I found it through Twitter), but is very funny:

I’ve had this blog for a few months now, and I’ve started to think about my reasons for starting it. When I started I didn’t really have a plan for any theme or anything,and I’m not sure I really expected anyone to read it.

Most of my posts get almost zero visitors. My most visited post is a rather un-interesting one about how to fix a text copying problem. At least it shows I have something useful to say, although even that has just over 300 views! I get around 5-20 pageviews on an average day.

Should I be suprised I am essentially bloging to myself – I’m not even sure I’ve got anything interesting to say. It’s also not like I read many other blogs on a regular basis. In Thunderbird (currently how I read RSS feeds) I am subscribed to:

• 3 System status pages
• 2 Blogs of friends who have gone travelling. One has returned, and both have gone pretty dead
• A feed of web design leads (I never actually use any – I should really remove it)
• Fadtastic – a blog of web design trends
• Weebl’s Stuff – I love those cartoons
• The personal blog of Natalie – a uni friend, and the blog of her photo retouching company she started recently

The last two I only really started reading when thinking about this post!

I know I get one or two readers of my posts when they are imported into Facebook (Hi Michelle!), and I don’t know if anyone subscribes to my feed, but very few people regularly read my posts.

So, I don’t read anyone else’s, and I’ve not got much interesting to say, so it’s not surprising I don’t get many visitors, so I started to think about why I started a blog in the first place.

Blog Technology Familiarisation

Like I say in my tagline “I thought it was about time I started a blog”. I develop websites for a living, and I can see that blogs are becoming more and more important. I felt I needed to familiarise myself with both the mechanism for running a blog (Permalinks, trackbacks etc), the etiquette, and of course the software behind it, in this case WordPress. The easiest way to do this is to start my own – even if no-one reads it.

Constructive Procrastination

Working from home, I do on occasions find my mind wandering! I thought I may as well allow my mind to wonder somewhere creative! I’m not sure if this has happened though!

Passing on Knowledge

Occasionally I have to hack a piece of software, or spend ages trying to find the best way to fix a problem, and I like to share it with the world. Not all of my posts of this type have become popular, but some have. Examples are the Text Copying problem, fixing a bug in a WordPress template, and instructions on how to use OpenID with your blog. The first two have had moderate success, the last one not as much!

Money

I think I always hoped my writings would become popular and I would be able to make money from advertising. I’m not thinking this is unlikely, but I think the hope will always be there in the back of my mind.

Fame?

There are lots of people out there who become well known for their writings on their blogs, whether technical or just about their every day lives (although I can’t think of any at the moment!), and I think I always hoped to become famous, or at least respected for my blog, or at least one post, but I always knew this was unlikely.

Personal Diary

Finally, whether it was my intention or not, this blog serves as a personal diary that I can look back on, just like people used to write “Dear Diary”, and is a great place to vent my thoughts.

So, there are my reasons for writing. If anyone does read this come and say hi, and you have your own blog, why not think about your reasons. Add them to the comments, or write your own post and let me know.

If anyone with their own personal blog let’s me know, I will add your feed to my reader and start to read yours (at least till I get bored!)