Log Phase

There's a meme doing the rounds about "why we blog". It started with Martin Fenner over at nature Network a year or so ago, and post-Scienceblogs vs. Nature Network.

(teh ghey fight, if ever there was one...Seriously. I'm not going to get into the whole thing here (yet), but what a fucking waste of electrons that row was. They are two different media, catering to two different audiences, with two different operating paradigms. Fucking bullshit, comparing electrophysiological analysis of NMDA Receptors in HEK cells, v.s patching native neurons in organotypic slices. Yeah, you can address the same basic questions, but you're look at two completely different fucking systems.)

Anyway, the meme has started up again via Steffi Suhr. I'm not one for scribbling about that stuff. This is a (mostly anonymous) semi-rant blog and I'm fairly sure, Dear Reader, you don't give a fuck about my motives for blogging...

 

 

 

...but...

 

 

 

...I was looking at the weekly email from my stat counter peeps today though, and saw something modestly exciting. And thus I'm going to break my own embargo on writing about why I write.

I have been a blogger for something like 6 years now. My first blog was virtually identical to this one and was inspired by the discovery of the first blog I ever read. It's gone now, long defunct as the author/blogger has moved on in his life. He was (maybe still is) an inspired musician and comedian, very entertaining writer and an associate in the same musical scene I moved in when I lived Up North. I saw what he was writing and enjoyed it greatly. After a while I saw through some of the humour, and realised there was catharsis in his writing. He was exorcising some daemons and exercising others. I wondered if I could do the same thing, seeing as I was in an interesting and transitional period of my life; I was separating from my wife, but still living in her house while she worked in Florida, I had just quit my job and was unemployed and almost an illegal immigrant, and I played drums in a fairly well known local rock band. I felt I had enough material to write, but wondered, "could I write".

Yes, it turns out I could.

Sometimes, you, Dear Reader, have been kind enough to leave a comment or two complementing me on my writing or praising a somewhat demented turn of phrase. Well, back in ought-four I started the first version of Some Lies and slowly, slowly, slowly accumulated readers and commenters. I learned the cardinal rules of blogging through trial and error (its funny how there are now websites devoted to telling bloggers the most obvious fucking things).

1. Use pictures (see below)


2. Keep it to the point (bollocks to that)


3. LINK OUT


4. TRACKBACK


5. COMMENT ON OTHERS' BLOGS

These last three are how you accumulate readers, and without readers, you don't get comments. And despite what anyone says, we all love to get comments.

Despite the pleasing sibilance of the aphorism, If You Build It, They won't come. because no one knows you're there and if someone does stumble upon you, you're just noise in an infinite system. You need to stand out. There are other tricks too (like using Technorati and Vlog (if that even still exists)), because they force-direct traffic to your page.

Anyway, I gradually watched my stats climb and it was fucking brill. At it's height (right before I killed the blog) I was getting thousands of hits each week and averaging 20+ comments per post. Not the most awesome comment count, but pretty damned good, considering maybe 1 in 20-50 of your readers will actually leave a comment. Especially on blogs like mine, because they tend to be the kind of blogs that build a comment-clique and folks are hesitant to jump in just to say "nice story" (which is a real shame).

Through my blog I mapped and told the stories associated with my changing life. I blogged through my move to my current location, my trouble with a long distance relationship and the exciting decline into alcoholism and emotional meltdown that went with watching my career as a postdoctoral (post-PhD/grad school) scientist collapse in ruins around me. The blog gave me an outlet and through it was able to hone my writing skillzorz, and actually pick up other writing gigs.

When it came time to re-direct my focus, clean my fucking shit up and move on with my career/life I used the blog as a crutch. And when I finally transitioned away from the awful fucking diseased soul destroying hell of the lab bench traditional basic science into clinical administration, I killed the blog. It is still stored on Google's servers, and I go and re-read now and then, and I've lifted some old posts from there for shits and giggles.

For reasons of my own I wanted an outlet for my writing/rambling/musing and frothing mental ejaculations and decided to resurrect Some Lies. And here we are, Dear Reader, a year into the new Blog. It still has that New Blog Smell because I don't post as frequently as I should. But that might change now I have discovered MarsEdit. I get to write offline in mark-up text, and post when I'm ready at the click of a button.

Fucking. Brill.

And on top of that I just saw my stat counter reflecting a log 0.5 increase in readership hits! (Don't worry, non scientists lurker, I made that up. I'm not sure what log 0.5 is either).

Oh Joy! I'm building traffic, my loins vanity is swelling and I have an easy and accessible means of writing that doesn't involve the crappy fucking TextEditor on my Mac.

Thank you, Dear Reader, for pooping popping by. I'm going to be making a few cosmetic changes around here (including more pics, see #1 above). Let me know if you think they suck, or even better, tell me how awesome they are and how much you wish you were just like me.