What you get when my brain crashes…

Blogging is HARD

Blogging is HARD.

No, seriously, it is.

Now, before you brush me off, thinking that “you just write a few paragraphs every so often and that’s it,” let me assure you - there is quite a bit more to it than that (or rather, there has to be more to it than that if you want your blog to be at all successful).

Unless you’re just writing a blog as you would a journal or diary (that is, for no one to read but you and maybe your best friends), then you are right - blogging is easy. Just write about what you did at the mall today or how mean your teacher was to you in 3rd period English, and you’re all set.

Now, if you want to write seriously and maybe even get random strangers to read your blog and (presumably) enjoy it, you’ve got your work cut out for you.

The biggest hurdle for new bloggers is just getting something to write about, and actually writing. Constantly - or at least regularly. If you only post once per month, nobody’s going to come back, and you’ll be doomed to only be read by the occasional person who got lost while searching Google.

Once you commit yourself to writing on some sort of regular schedule (doesn’t matter what it is really, as long as you stick to it), you’ve got to… well, actually WRITE. And if you think back to your English or Creative Writing or Essay classes or whatever you took in school, you might remember that it’s often very hard to write about something - everyone gets “writer’s block” at one time or another. And blogging is no different than a weekly essay assignment - except that you won’t flunk a class for not blogging, and without that strong impetus to write, you may be tempted to slack off. (Even with the strong impetus, you might still slack off - I know I did in college!)

So blogging is hard because you have to write, and write often. But of course that’s not it, either, because you have to write, and write often, about things that you feel strongly about (and hopefully that other people want to read about). And believe it or not, that’s not always easy, either.

At first, if you’re dedicated, you might find it somewhat easy - just spout out a rant here and there on a regular schedule - while you have your morning coffee or whatever - and you’re all set, right? Well, sort of.

It’s easy at first because you don’t know any better. Like anything, practice makes perfect. As you blog more and more (and presumably read other people’s blogs at the same time) you’ll become a better writer. And part of being a better writer is that difficult stage where you’re good enough to see the flaws in your own writing, but not quite good enough (or perhaps confident enough) to make the changes you need to rectify the flaws.

In point of fact, I’m sort of at that stage myself. I’ve started using the “drafts” feature of WordPress quite a bit to work on … well, drafts of posts. When I first write them, they are often horrible - full of grammar problems, ideas that just wander all over the map with no cohesive vision to link them together - basically, a mess. But over a few days (or sometimes weeks) I work them into something that “works.” And some days, my writing muse is working overtime and I manage to write a few good posts all at once.

In the old days I would have posted them all immediately. Now, though, I’m taking a cue from Raymond Chen and using the “scheduled post” feature of WordPress to schedule any extra “good” posts for later - that saves me from having to work like a dog, trying to come up with stuff to write about to keep to my schedule.

So blogging really is hard - and that’s fine, things that are hard are often worth the effort. In the case of blogging, the pay off is two fold: you get to participate in a new communications medium that is sweeping the Internet, and by writing often, you will become a better writer - and that can have “real world” benefits.

So by saying “blogging is hard,” I’m not trying to dissuade you from blogging - far from it. I’m saying that blogging is hard because that’s my excuse for not posting anything for a few days. Wait, no, that’s not right. I’m saying that blogging is hard because that’s how you know it’s worth doing.

So give it a try - there’s no excuse not to. You can get a free blog just about anywhere these days, so there’s no cost to start, except for your time. And the time and effort you put into it will pay off someday. Who knows? You might even become such a good writer that you’ll get offered a book deal. Hey, stranger things have happened!

(Image credits to mathowie and andyp uk for their Creative Commons licensed pictures.)

Update on OpenID

Well, I’ve had my OpenID for a while now - and frankly, I haven’t used it once since I signed up.

Oh don’t get me wrong - I am totally for the idea of a single, universal log on. But, in my opinion, the system isn’t quite “polished” enough.

Adding all my information into OpenID was easy enough, as was setting up the account. But whenever I try to sign into an OpenID-enabled site, I end up redirected back to my OpenID provider’s website to enter my password and “approve” the access. It’s a bit reminiscent of Vista’s User Account Control dialog that so many people complain about - except now it’s on the web.

Thanks, but no thanks.

I gave it a fair try - I even tried enabling OpenID on this blog - but in the end it was just too hard, too complicated, too much extra work for not enough gain, and in many ways it wasn’t backwards compatible. (I tried to enable OpenID login for comments AND leave the normal comment form for people who don’t have an OpenID, but wasn’t able to get it working.)

Perhaps I’ll give OpenID another try in a few months… we’ll see. But for now… it’s got a “thumbs down” from me.

Sorry, OpenID.

OpenID

So, I finally made the jump and signed up for an OpenID - on the recommendation of Jeff Atwood, I chose myopenid.com as my provider.

Interestingly, you can set up your own domain through OpenID and basically give out OpenIDs based on your domain, instead of someone else’s. (In case you’re not aware of how an OpenID works, basically your “ID” with OpenID is a URL, say, http://keithius.myopenid.com.)

So of course, I signed up my domain, starkeith.net, so that I can give out OpenIDs based on my domain.

If you’d like to have an OpenID from starkeith.net (in the form of http://id.starkeith.net/[your user name]), just let me know. But be warned that I get to choose who gets them, and I will be choosy.

There’s no real difference with an OpenID from starkeith.net and any other open ID provider - I just think it’s cool to have my own domain be part of my open ID.

Of course, finding sites that use OpenID will be a challenge… and of course to not be a hypocrite I need to figure out how to allow OpenID on my blog… but hey, one step at a time, right?

Online Identity/Anonymity

This story over on Slashdot about how the Washington Post’s online executive editor Jim Brady is arguing against anonymity sparked quite a lively little debate.

The problem isn’t really anonymity - it’s identity.

They don’t want to know who a particular person is, they just want to somehow stop that one person from coming back. They don’t care who you are, they just want to make sure that “you” don’t come back.

This is not a new problem.

Basically, what you need is a trusted, secure, centralized system that you identify yourself to. This centralized system then anonymizes your identity to allow you to participate in anonymous discussions. If you mis-behave (or if the owner of the discussion group just doesn’t like you), you can be banned - and the system takes care of the actual “banning.” The owner of the discussion group just says “ban anonymous user #xxx” and the system connects it back to “you.”

It’s sort of like encryption - where only the central server has the decryption key.

As an interesting aside, Arthur C. Clarke made an interesting use of this concept in his novel “The Songs of Distant Earth“, in the form of “ship’s council.” If you can, pick up that book and read it to see an example of this problem “solved” (in a manner of speaking).

Unfortunately, because of the centralized requirement of this form of anonymity, it will never really be possible on the Internet. After all, there is no “central” anonymizing server. And you can’t just make your own for various reasons - your government might seize it, you yourself might not be trustworthy, etc.

I sort of hope that one day we can solve this problem - because it is a problem. Just look up “sock puppets” sometime and see what I mean. But for now, I think we all just have to learn to deal with it - because it’s better to have broken anonymity than no anonymity at all.

Comcastic “Support?”

Earlier this week, on Monday, I had some Internet trouble.

My ISP, Patriot Media, was recently bought out by that cable company everyone loves to hate, Comcast. On Monday, my Internet stopped working, and so I set about trying to figure out what went wrong.

I saw right away that it seemed as though my local (as in neighborhood) network had finally been switched over to Comcast’s network - the IP had changed to a totally different class A network, and as a further clue, the host name now said “comcast” instead of “patriotmedia.” OK - so why can’t I connect to anything?

I was getting the new IP address via DHCP, so I knew I was at least connected to Comcast - but I could not ping the DHCP, DNS, or Gateway IP addresses I was given. Very strange! So the problem must’ve been on their end.

Ugh. That means I have to call Comcast tech support and probably go through all my troubleshooting all over again.

Sure enough, that is exactly what happened. Even though I’d already done the whole “connect your computer directly to the cable modem” thing, they made me do it again. And again. I mean, I know why they make you do this, and I know that they’re probably told to ignore callers who say “I’m a tech person, I know what I’m doing” (which I did say, in not so few words), but still…

Anyway, they eventually said they’d have to escalate it (duh!) and would it be OK for a tech to call me back on this number? I said sure, made sure they had the phone number right (they did), and hung up.

Several hours later, with no Internet, I was going through withdrawal. Remember, I live on the Internet!

So I called back to get a status report - and they started making me go through the troubleshooting steps again! So I firmly asked for a status report, and they said, basically, “they’re working on it.”

To keep myself amused, I was periodically checking my ‘net connection, resetting my router and cable modem to see if I had connectivity. Finally, after 6 hours, the Internet came back to life and I was able to get back online.

Fast forward to today, and I get a call out of the blue. It was Comcast… calling to see if my Internet was working now.

For those who can’t count, that’s 3 days later they finally called to check in on me.

I guess you could say that this is what “Comcastic” really means - leave your customers hanging for 3 days before following up on something that you fixed 3 days earlier. If they keep using that word in their advertising, well… to quote a great movie, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

UPDATE: I have a follow-up post regarding this issue - and it’s good news!