Be a better blogger

I’ve been off line for the last few weeks for the most part because of the holidays, a constant flow of parties, visits from friends, the odd religious festival(observed in a non-religious capacity of course) and such has meant I have had much more interesting things to do.

Of course, now I’m back at work, and people are back at home things are settling down, though an unexpected thing (which I can’t talk about atm, but it’s all positive) has changed my plan of starting things rolling this week, and so normal upbeat blog activity will resume then.

Until then, be productive people!

I’ve been very busy on my blogs this weeks and commenting more then usual. I finally gave in and embraced MySpace, I still find the site design criminally bad (That’s my professional opinion too), and some profiles make my eyes bleed, and some are so bad I literally can’t read them, but in general it’s fun, and since I know people who use it anyway, I figured I’d roll with it.

My major project now is to make it easy to link all my things together, since everything is some what segregated now, which is good from a blog focus point of view, yet I want an easy way to move between them all as well.

Okay, if you look back a couple of my entires in this goal, I made a grand plan for getting my blogs sorted out in a professional and well considered manor.

Well that’s gone right out the window. I set up two more random blogs on a whim in the last couple of days:
http://media.protocol80.net and http://blog.protocol80.net

Media is set up for Film, Music, Online type reviews and comments – for instance every time I watch a film I get this urge to talk about it, so this gives me a chance to off load some of that though process. The Blog site is for random stuff and isn’t likely to evolve into another to stunning, anything with focus gets it’s own site.

I started a new blog yesterday, specifically for Productivity/Organisation/Getting Things Done type posts at http://productivity.protocol80.net

Now, I don’t really have any ready made content, I’d love to have a nice neat plan of how I’m going to launch with a steady stream of high quality posts all lined up, but in fact I’m just doing it on a whim. From time to time I get the urge to knock out short articles and entries, but without having somewhere to put them, I generally just forget about them, or worse spend so much time thinking about them I could have just done it and put the idea to rest.

Hopefully, this will fare better then my more diluted blogs.

I have several plans for blogs in motion right now, none of which will see light of day until:
1) I have a computer at home online so I can actually work on them regularly.
2) I have at least one months worth of entries for each already written, and outlines for the following months major articles ready so as to allow me to keep a level of quality posts high.
3) I’m sure I can commit enough time to each to generate traffic.
4) I’m convinced that each is actually a good idea.

Blogging has been tricky for me lately, not least because I haven’t had a computer at home, though I finally have that sorted out with a laptop from work. I still need to get broadband sorted out, and sadly, no one in the area has an open wireless AP (How rude of them!). Between moving house, and been ill, and works parties, and lack of access, it’s all been a struggle to get any quality time to write.

So, I have one week of work left now. I’d like to get broadband fixed at home before the new year, so over the holidays I can finish up my website, and begin to settle on a regular pattern in some new directions.

I keep saying that of course, and while I keep inching forward, something comes up to stall me, but the new year should have most obsticals out of the way, which means I just need to keep motivated.

I’m on to day 3 of my radical move to organize and promote my blogs, and websites. I have the first part of my code base for http://protocol80.net up in place, with a really simple post comming out of the database.

I was tempted to use ruby on rails, and then cake (A PHP ‘rails’ clone) but I like the control I have by doing it all by hand – I want to do some pretty complex things down the line, and I’m more comfortable when I know how all the code is working end to end.

It’s like that I’ll use ruby on rails for one of the “satilite” blogs though, once the whole network starts to build up.

So at the moment, my blogging flow is a little slow – but, it’s building back up and the foundations of my new mini empire are forming, so I’m hopeful about where I’ll end up in the next few weeks.

Oops, I haven’t written an entry about anything for far to long, I have good reasons of course, most not havin easy computer access for a while outside work.

That should be changing soon, and I need to start this week just refocusing my efforts

After a couple of weeks holiday, I’ve found after an inital peek of Blogging, I’ve lapsed back into bad habbits – My 43things posts have helped quiet a bit, but even they have dropped off from the inital fluid rush.

Now I’m back in work, and the new PC at home is just about at the stage where I’m happy with the setup. (Downloading updates and patches via a modem is not the best way to take advantage of a new system, but broadband wont be for a couple of weeks still).

So I need to sit back and take a look at what I’ve been doing with my blog, what I like, what I want to change, and get into a more regular pattern. I’d really like to start doing a post in the morning and then a couple in the evening, with one of them each day been something a bit more substantial the 43things driven posts.

Right now though, I can’t see me actually getting up early enough to post in the morning, but two in the evening I can do, and depending on work I might be able to make an extra post during the day.

The past week has been pretty insane, so I’m actually pretty happy with my blogging progress all in all, I’ve not quiet managed at least one post a day, but it’s getting there. Since I have a bit of holiday time comming up from Thursday onwards, I need to sit down and allocate a bit of time to fill out a decent profile in a few of the new places I’ve signed up to – something with a bit more meaning then my usual affair of bland “I don’t know what to write here” jive.

I’m also pondering digging out the old digital camera, and seeing if I can push to one interesting picture post a week. And flesh out a few of my posts (Particularly in my 43things thread on happiness) with some images.