20081030 What's All the Whining About?

Two years ago I decided to start experimenting with blogging.

Experience has given me the opinion that your own opinion is not worth much if you are considering something that you do not have any experience with.

Another way of putting that might be "Don't talk the talk unless you can walk the walk."

There are many variations but the sentiment is the same.

That being said - I think that I now have the basis from which to form a meaningful opinion:

Blogs Suck

This one is no exception and of course anyone who hears me mention it in person first acts amazed and then surprised surprised that it even exists - even if it's the tenth time we had the same conversation.

And it has occurred to me that reading a friend's blog is like a social obligation - once you start doing it - it is expected that you continue. How stupid is that? But the truth is that I have very likely gone in person to see my friends perform on stages in high-school auditoriums and seedy bars more often then those same people bothered to surf to a web site I wrote.

And that's fine. Because most of what I write about - they wouldn't be interested in.

And that is the real problem with blogs - they let everyone feel important because everyone can have a press-kit on-line and feel like a celebrity - but when it comes down to substance - there is very little in the way of Truly Interesting Things To Say out there at all.

I also inherently rebel against the constraints that blogs put you under. I know how to author web-pages from scratch and I am still of the mistaken opinion that I will do a better job than the templates that make my pages look like everyone elses.

But as I said this is a mistake. Just because I can make one, it does not immediately follow that I will make it so. Usually in fact, I do not. Rather I put in some really awful skeleton pages in place and never get around to making them look the way I actually intended.

Which is where the idea of the WYSIWYG editor embedded in a web page starts to actually make sense. The downside is that I have to force all of my entries into the pre-established format and flow them into the pre-established page layout. This is probably OK for >80% of the cases, but the perceived loss of control more than anything is what bothers me.

For people who can not do it to begin with - this is probably enabling...