Blogging since early 2003¶

The earliest recorded post here is from April 2003. I know I did some limited blogging before that on a temporary website for about a year or so: mostly research notes.

If you look at the archive list of this shiny new Quills software, you'll see that the number of posts varies greatly. 2006 (1), 2005 (94), 2004 (184), 2003 (67). Somewhere between 5 and 15 posts per month. The frequency is about right for me, but I dislike the variation a bit. Sometimes almost two months go by without a single post. I've decided to take a more active dislike to that :-)

In 11 Ideas to maintain your blog Rajesh Setty has some good tips if you're serious about your weblog. And I'm serious about my weblog, for some of the following reasons:

• Writing well is a very valuable skill. Writing my own weblog hones that skill.
• I get to give away knowledge and information. Giving that away does not make me poorer; it does mean value for other people.
• Part of above value flows back in numerous ways (being contacted by people, getting opportunities, being visible, etc.). My weblog isn't read by a lot of people, but getting at least 7 pats on the back for a well-written 2005 europython summary can't hurt.
• Man, is it ever good for your google ranking! :-)

Some of the highlights of Rajesh's article for me:

Make a long-term commitment

I've been at it since 2003 and I intend to keep it up for a few decades or so.

Respect your audience

Rajesh has a great term: ROII . Return on interaction investment. If you choose to read my weblog, you should get a good return value on that investment. Therefore I try my best to make it worthwile. Checking links afterwards, writing complete English sentences. I think, for instance, that my conference notes are normal readable prose instead of just a collection of short semi-sentences that look like they were typed over directly from the powerpoint sheets. Oh, and adding links like that one just above to ROII :-)

Observe and Listen

Read lots of other weblogs.

So: on to the next few years of blogging!