On blogs and blogging and other such related matters
I'm kind of surprised at how often I'm actually finding time to write online... I guess I have more to say than I initially thought. Ah well, it certainly isn't my loss ;-).
As I've been writing and consequently paying more attention to what other people write as well, I've come to a few conclusions about blogging or LiveJournaling or whatever the heck you feel like calling it at the time.
First of all, I don't understand the point of friends-only blogging. I mean, chances are the people who are going to care are already your friends, in which case who are you trying to hide stuff from? I'm not trying to say that those of my friends who do that aren't justified in doing so, I guess I just don't understand the point. The whole reason you're putting your journal on the web in the first place is for others to see it, so what does it matter if Joe Schmo III from Russia sees what you wrote? It's not like he'll understand what you're talking about anyways (he is, after all, Russian), and even if he does it won't matter.
I think that if you're going to share what you think about things online, you may as well let the whole world see it, because anyone who really wants to know will find some way of finding out anyways, so why not just make their life easier? I'm not saying that everyone should share everything out in the open on the web, but at the same time I believe that being as transparent as is possible with anyone and everyone you meet ensures that people know who you really are, and can make judgments about you based on that as opposed to the front you put up. Of course, everyone puts up some sort of a front, and sharing your deepest, darkest secrets with the world is by no means something that I recommend doing, but at the same time if it's something that's secret enough that only your friends need to know, why not just tell them individually, and simply blog it privately if you're concerned about looking back on it at some later point.
The biggest problem for me when I was blogging a year and a half or so ago was that in making most of my entries friends-only or visible only to certain friends I ended up making comments that were targeted at specific people (who conveniently couldn't read my journal), which is just stupid. Now I feel that if I'm going to bother writing in the first place, I'm either going to write for myself or for everyone, with no middle ground.
The beauty of blogs is that you're able to write how you feel and what you think, and you're putting those two things out there for everyone to see. There's just a comfort in knowing that some random guy in Russia (or someone closer to home, like Nick) might stumble across my blog and get a kick or a chuckle out of something I said. By making my blog public, I find that I am forced to think through how I feel and say to myself, "is this really something you want people reading?" In the process, I often realize just how stupid whatever I'm feeling is in the first place.
Anyways, enough about that... I've been thinking about purchasing some hosting space somewhere recently... although I'm not sure whether or not I'd use it enough to warrant buying it. $15 a month would be more than affordable given my salary and the lack of anything significant to pay for, but all I'd use it for is the random files I put up for people, my blog (I'd probably set up a wordpress and use that), and... that's about it. Given that, I most certainly wouldn't need 400Mb of space or 2 MySQL databases or what not, but it's tempting nonetheless. I miss being able to put stuff on the Starbound server and having pretty much free reign on it like I did a few years ago (when there actually was a Starbound webserver). For now though, I'll just live with my LiveJournal and my ASU hosting (which I'm not entirely sure what my quota is file-size wise, but I have yet to run out of space).
There's lots of other stuff I could ramble about, but I think I've reached my quota for the afternoon, and my homework looms above me (stupid Human Event paper) so that's it for today. Enjoy yourselves now.
As I've been writing and consequently paying more attention to what other people write as well, I've come to a few conclusions about blogging or LiveJournaling or whatever the heck you feel like calling it at the time.
First of all, I don't understand the point of friends-only blogging. I mean, chances are the people who are going to care are already your friends, in which case who are you trying to hide stuff from? I'm not trying to say that those of my friends who do that aren't justified in doing so, I guess I just don't understand the point. The whole reason you're putting your journal on the web in the first place is for others to see it, so what does it matter if Joe Schmo III from Russia sees what you wrote? It's not like he'll understand what you're talking about anyways (he is, after all, Russian), and even if he does it won't matter.
I think that if you're going to share what you think about things online, you may as well let the whole world see it, because anyone who really wants to know will find some way of finding out anyways, so why not just make their life easier? I'm not saying that everyone should share everything out in the open on the web, but at the same time I believe that being as transparent as is possible with anyone and everyone you meet ensures that people know who you really are, and can make judgments about you based on that as opposed to the front you put up. Of course, everyone puts up some sort of a front, and sharing your deepest, darkest secrets with the world is by no means something that I recommend doing, but at the same time if it's something that's secret enough that only your friends need to know, why not just tell them individually, and simply blog it privately if you're concerned about looking back on it at some later point.
The biggest problem for me when I was blogging a year and a half or so ago was that in making most of my entries friends-only or visible only to certain friends I ended up making comments that were targeted at specific people (who conveniently couldn't read my journal), which is just stupid. Now I feel that if I'm going to bother writing in the first place, I'm either going to write for myself or for everyone, with no middle ground.
The beauty of blogs is that you're able to write how you feel and what you think, and you're putting those two things out there for everyone to see. There's just a comfort in knowing that some random guy in Russia (or someone closer to home, like Nick) might stumble across my blog and get a kick or a chuckle out of something I said. By making my blog public, I find that I am forced to think through how I feel and say to myself, "is this really something you want people reading?" In the process, I often realize just how stupid whatever I'm feeling is in the first place.
Anyways, enough about that... I've been thinking about purchasing some hosting space somewhere recently... although I'm not sure whether or not I'd use it enough to warrant buying it. $15 a month would be more than affordable given my salary and the lack of anything significant to pay for, but all I'd use it for is the random files I put up for people, my blog (I'd probably set up a wordpress and use that), and... that's about it. Given that, I most certainly wouldn't need 400Mb of space or 2 MySQL databases or what not, but it's tempting nonetheless. I miss being able to put stuff on the Starbound server and having pretty much free reign on it like I did a few years ago (when there actually was a Starbound webserver). For now though, I'll just live with my LiveJournal and my ASU hosting (which I'm not entirely sure what my quota is file-size wise, but I have yet to run out of space).
There's lots of other stuff I could ramble about, but I think I've reached my quota for the afternoon, and my homework looms above me (stupid Human Event paper) so that's it for today. Enjoy yourselves now.