What, you're still reading this?

That first post was very serious, and although I think it was completely appropriate, it bothers me because I don't want this blog to be depressing. It has to be fun to read. But I'm not going to just tell jokes and other randomnesses, I don't want to try and wax profound on movies or other media, and I'm not going to go link hunting to bring you the news. There are far wittier and worldlier people's blogs that I go to for that; their links are on my sidebar. Point of fact, I'm going to try and only put links to blogs I actually read regularly myself over there. So if you want news and movies, try one of those links.

So what is it that I want people to come here for?

Allotment Gardening suffers from my difficulty. It is- as I intend this blog to be- a straightforward running account of a project; and, I'm afraid, it's rather dry. I read it because I find it interesting. But it's not strictly 'entertaining'; It's virtue is its candidness and that it stays utterly on the subject. I just found this blog, and I'm afraid that the Blogger who writes it (His name is Pat) has stopped doing it, as he hasn't posted in over three weeks according to his time stamp- although he's talking about October in a recent post, so his dates may just be mixed up. I'd e-mail him and tell him I like his blog, but he doesn't seem to have any html knowledge; he hasn't added any links or given an e-mail address. Oh well, I hope he goes back to it.

But right there is another thing I want to try and avoid, at least in the beginning: meta-blogging.

Never the less I feel the need to do it right now. Because to my amazement the people I'm linking to- the ones that do link hunting, commentary, and random humor- are actually linking back. And they were linking back when all I had on this page was the Definitions. This must be some sort of netiquette thing about reciprocating links.

On the other hand, Wynette over at What Would Vegeta Do actually QUOTED me, so apparently she actually read my one post. To my horror the sentence she quoted is one that I wish I hadn't written- it's just a little too hyperbolic. So much so that I've gone and changed it. I'm sorry, I'm a perfectionist. In fact, I've already edited that post several times. And the Definitions as well. This, after spending more than two evenings working on both posts.

Which brings me to my next issue: I can't spend hours and hours writing and re-writing these posts. It doesn't help that I don't have a well-developed writing habit; it takes me an hour just to get into the mood, after having checked all the blogs that I follow and all the things they've linked to. I need to be able to turn on the computer, rattle off a progress report, and then get on with this revolution of one.

And it has to be damned interesting, or no-one's going to come back to read it.

So, in short:

1. The posts must be interesting to read.
2. The posts should mostly have original, coherent, non-referential content.
3. I need to be able to write the posts quickly.

That, and there's something wrong with the rather advanced HTML that formats this webpage; it keeps making my sidebar a footer when I add things to it. So far I've been able to make adjustments to squelch it, but I'm going to have to learn cascading style sheets in order to fix it permanently. And in my browser, the blog isn't using up all of the space on the left side. And the font size is too large.

These and other adventures in the next issue of The Thought Sink! 
Included @ 10/20/2003 01:47:00 AM; And so on, etcetera, etcetera.

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