TedPage: 200th Post: A retrospective

I noticed that this is my 200^th blog post. I'm not sure that is a monument of any real significance, but it is a monument. So, I'll take a few moments for reflection.

I guess the question for me is: why blog? It does take effort, and my blog isn't widely read. I doubt that I influence anyone's opinion on, well, anything. I find the stronger reasons for doing something should be internal rather than external. So here are the reasons that blogging works for me: (in no particular order)

Not only suck

When I spend time on the Internet I often feel like I am this great consumer of information. I find all kinds of cool stuff online. From the commercial websites that pay writers, to the guy who happened to write a howto on whatever I happen to be doing. I hate thinking of myself as someone who only consumes the work of others, I want to contribute to the pool that I take from. While I'm not sure that my blog entries are as good as the material I take from the system, I like to feel like I'm giving back something.

Practice Writing

It may seem kinda silly, but I really don't feel like I write anymore. Yeah e-mail to friends, technical documentation, but no real writing. Nothing to make or defend a arguement. I just don't write that much. Not that I was ever very good at it, but how can I expect to get better without practice? I wouldn't consider my blog a literary work, but just the process of putting words on the page helps me not loose all my writing skills.

Get my vote

With Google's Pagerank the relevance of webpages is determined by links to that webpage. Simplistically, every link is a vote for that webpage. So, if I'm not making links, I'm not voting. And there are webpages that I want to vote for, so I need to be making links.

Opt-in Announcements

For a while, I'd send out e-mails when I put various things on my webpage. Every time I'd add a new album of pictures, I'd send out this massive e-mail to seemingly everyone. I don't think that offended anyone, but I would hate for someone to despise getting e-mail from me. This way, people can opt-in to find out about the various things I put up on the Internet. Now, they have to put up with a lot more static, but it is all opt-in.

I'm not sure what good reasons are to blog or not to blog, but those are mine. Now, here are some fun historical links. First post, 50^th and 100^th.