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Why don't I have a blog?

fede.dm

1–10 of 107 posts

Re: Why don't I have a blog?

#2
I totally get it, but I blog[0], too.

> I don't have anything interesting to say

The main reason I blog is to improve my writing. Because I've been blogging for about 10 years, I have a record of how it's changed over time. I'd like to think that it's gotten better, but I have no feedback on that.

Most of what I blog about is whatever game I've finished playing. I usually end up collaborating what others have said, but I'll add in a few notes or grievances that stand out to me that I haven't found anyone else talking about. When I read an old post, I'll come across those little things and I remember exactly what I was thinking about and why I wrote that.

> I'm not a good programmer

Me neither. I'm not some demigod like John Carmack. I'm an everyday programmer working the web mines. When I'm not blogging about games, I sometimes blog about some nifty feature I implemented[1] or novel way of solving a problem that I wanted to take note of.

> I don't think it's good CV building

I'm 99% certain that no one has read my blog and wanted to hire me because of it.

I guess that's a long-winded way of saying that I write and blog for myself. I use it more like a personal journal instead of groundbreaking thoughts that I want everyone to read.

[0] https://theandrewbailey.com/

[1] https://theandrewbailey.com/article/220/Background-Text-and-...

Re: Why don't I have a blog?

#3
I’m confused, is this not a blog post?

It was a good read, you clearly have interesting things to say!

I do share a lot of the same things you describe. I would like to blog, mainly for myself to practice writing and keep a record of things, but yeah, it’s difficult. I also find it’s a lot of work to do the research and all, time I maybe rather spend on building things.

Re: Why don't I have a blog?

#4
I think you have plenty of interesting things to say.

I'm in the same boat as you are, but I think if you put yourself out there you'd be surprised how much interest there is in the things you write.

I had a blog post featured in a Ruby newsletter because I shared it on Reddit:

https://blog.ty-porter.dev/

Re: Why don't I have a blog?

#6
I have a blog. Almost nobody reads it. That's okay!

I treat it like a public notebook. When I find something interesting, I write a quick blog post. When I have to muddle through a technical issue that requires piecing together multiple other sources on the Internet, I write a blog post to summarize. I've written blog posts on getting Walmart security videos to play (Verint codec is a bitch), decoding Marine Corps brig phone call audio time stamps, setting up CAC readers and DoD Root Certificates on a Mac, actually moving Time Machine history to a new Mac (which should happen automatically but never seems to work for me), etc.

My blog isn't the only source of this information on the web. It usually isn't the first source. It's rarely the best source (for a while, it was the best source for figuring out Walmart Verint security videos, but my solution is now outdated). But I do my best to put things together in a way that will be helpful to someone in the future who doesn't know what he's doing -- even and especially if that future ignoramus is me.

Re: Why don't I have a blog?

#8
> They are your typical run-of-the-mill tutorials that replicate what's written on the official framework/language guide

Yep, I'd like to permanently blacklist those idiotic baeldung, w3schools, tutorialspoint, and geeksforgeeks blogspam entries that SEO'ed themselves to the top of every google search I do for anything programming related.

Re: Why don't I have a blog?

#9
> I don't have anything interesting to say

I don't agree with this part.

I use my blog to keep a journal on technical issues that were hard to fix, or was hard to find web sources about the subject. One of my top post is about using PFSense router with Verizon FIOS. It usually receives 2-3 unique visitors a day. It is simple and not interesting, but it helps a few people, so I keep it online.

https://ianmf.com

Re: Why don't I have a blog?

#10

> They are your typical run-of-the-mill tutorials that replicate what's written on the official framework/language guide Yep, I'd like to permanently blacklist those idiotic baeldung, w3schools, tutorialspoint, and geeksforgeeks blogspam entries that SEO'ed themselves to the top of every google search I do for anything programming related.

There's an extension for Chrome and Firefox called "uBlacklist" that lets you do exactly this - you can maintain a list of domains that you never want to appear in the results of Google searches that you do.
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