The Answer’s 42

So, it’s just come out of a (Jewish) new year, a time when traditionally people take stock of the previous year, and decide on new directions they’d like to take with the next. This is such a time for me, and what better time than to resurrect an old project such as this? I’ve also decided I’m going to link together all my programmer-y, social media-y things as well because it’s generally a good thing to do, and so with a change of Twitter handle and a wave of the magic wand and -boom!- I’ve begun the first steps in the new direction I want to take with my blog and my life!

I’ve had this blog for a few years now, and been a .com for a few years more, but I’ve never been sure what I’ve been wanting to do with it. I’ve come off and on over the years as I’ve never been able to decide quite what to do with it. I’ve written reviews of comics, I’ve written about my life, and I’ve written about politics, and I’ve written about tips I’ve come across when doing software development stuff because I need a place where I know I can find it without trekking miles through the deep, dark, dense set of Google results generated by things like “how to compile X” or “how to configure Y”.

I’ve kept the blog up and running, paid for it, occasionally written a post just to feel like I’m keeping it alive but I’ve started to feel that I’ve got something really good here that I’m not using. And I think I could use it a lot, lot better. Blogs, are, after all, a thing, and a thing that can be a force for good in your life (as well as a source for ill, for example if you’re a politician who writes ill-advised blogs only to have them come up in your campaign…) so I think it’s time my blog started to earn its keep again.

A few observations I’ve made:

• Politics: Life is inherently political, and if you’re “not political” then you’re kidding yourself. But my youthful attempts at being a great political philosopher = fail. So perhaps not many of those from now on. Not that you can avoid politics in industry…
• People like software development blogs!: I’ve noticed that the most consistent things searched for on my blog are topics about software development, mainly some how-tos I’ve written over the years. And I realized that I actually liked writing those. So naturally, more of that.
• People REALLY like geeky stuff like film posters: My all-time high most viewed post here was Posterrific, a post where I waxed lyrical about film posters, and I even managed to attract one of my favourite writers and artists in Sonic the Comic from when I was a kid, Nigel Kitching, with a blog post where I gushed about it endlessly. Those were definite highlights!
• The blog looks old: I’ve stuck with the current (dark, gloomy as of the time of writing) design… and I think I might need to find something else. Perhaps WordPress will have something in its stock, if not necessity is the mother of invention.

I got a good feeling about the future…