My experience in the past two classes has been good. In particular I really enjoyed the IT and Public Policy class. For this history of computing class we have an impressive ensemble of speakers, including Steve Wozniak, Butler Lampson and Ray Ozzie. To make the class fun (and to make sure I pay attention), I’ve decided to live blog the lectures that I attend. Tonight is the first class, so be sure to check back!

Anywho, this short post is just meant to be a I’m-here-but-not-dead shout to the [[wp>lazyweb|lazy web]]. I’ll be back later with something better to say.

I wonder how others write. I look at all the great posts on //so many// blogs, it seems as if everyone is just bubbling with ideas, //and// endowed with great literary skills to put forth their thoughts in a lucid manner. And whatever crap I turn out, it takes me atleast 15 min to write up a single post. It was atleast some consolation that [[http://guykawasaki.com|Guy Kawasaki]] takes **two to three hours** for [[http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/02/blog_versus_boo.html|writing his posts]].

Its not that there’s nothing to write about. I could write about our frustrating experience trying to setup Himanshu’s laptop with an external display and compare it with my own very succesful experience with both extended desktop and dual-head setups; I could write about my experiences with Turbogears and recent toying around with Vim7; I could write about the fantastic work that the new-born Udai chapter at Waterloo is doing, with Adi at its helm and so on.

I think the problem is that I always have this “hurried” attitude towards writing anything. Its as if I’m writing something simply for the sake of it. Friends who share my geeky side would probably remark that I do it only to maintain my presence in search engine indexes (since the frequency of content update seems to be a big factor in almost all algorithms). The other problem is the style of writing — good writers have highly individualistic styles of writing. I think my writing is very “generic” :-) But thats something that will only improve with time, and with even more writing.

Whats the point of this post? Well, at the very least its more “real” than the last one. More importantly though, its a note to self — yet another reminder to think about what purpose this blog really serves. And on that note, I leave you with [[http://desicritics.org/2006/02/26/000427.php|a great interview of Guy Kawasaki]].

I think focused blogs are great. However, I don’t feel any pressure to write one of my own. People write focused blogs either because they are intensely passionate about the subject (in which case no external incentive is required), or there’s some incentive to blog (they are in a business where blogging is almost essential, the blog is directly or indirectly a source of revenue and so on).

Whatever the case may be, there are two invariants: the author is knowledgeable on the subject, and more importantly, is ready to devote the time and energy. I firmly believe that maintaining a good quality, focused blog is a full time activity — meaning you need to devote atleast 4-8 hrs per day on your blog.

I have neither the time, nor the motivation to spend so much time on my blog. When I started this blog, I said the motivation was to document bits and pieces of my life in case I become famous enough to write an autobiography or something :-) While that may have been a joke, the fact remains that this blog gives me a window unto myself. I’ve often been surprised looking at some old entries and thinking “hmm, now did I write that?”.

I have bad memory — both short term and long term. And even though I’m not entirely into the GTD cult, I do believe that our brains should be freed of doing mundane book-keeping. So I dump pieces of my mind into this blog, and let it be archived. Thats the primary purpose. I haven’t cared much about readership, or making the blog attractive to the visitors or making a conscious effort to make the posts meaningful and insightful.

Not to say that I wilfully write nonsense, just that its not worth my while (yet) to put a whole lot of effort into ensuring quality. That might change over time, but right now, thats the way it is. And I’m perfectly OK with it :-)

Check out [[http://indiablogwatch.com/entry/msm-plays-ostrich-while-indian-bloggers-rock/|this story]] over at IndiaBlogWatch.com (Floating Sun is mentioned towards the end). They spelt my name wrong though.

They keep on coming.

via [[http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/13/google_launching_blo.html|BoingBoing]]

2 down, I think 11 more to go :-(

Well, whatever. It just seems more robust (and my permalink URLs are all of almost the same length now).