Step by step, blog by blog

This web page of mine is a neverending project. I am getting used to it. Either I will write under any conditions, and a kind reader will survive it somehow, or I will not write. Oh, I know very good how my webpage would look like in perfect situation! My plans are great and detailed, I have been preparing them for three years... while paying for domain name and webhosting, where almost nothing was available. So finally I decided this was not the right way. I could invent and improve for the next three years. Just the blog part: I would like to divide articles into categories, to make exports to all seven versions of RSS "standard" together and by categories, a clickable calendar on the side, permalinks and trackbacks and stuff like this. And when it will be ready, maybe I will already be a retired person with a lot of free time, so I will have opportunity to ask myself: "What did I want to write about? For whom? A does anybody want to read it?" No, this is certainly not the best idea.

So I decided this summer that it was enough of perfectionism, and I will just start doing this; going forward and pushing all technical problems ahead like a bulldozer, until they are solved somehow. A bit of writing, a bit of programming. So my previous articles were without ability to write comments; if I would be waiting until the comment system is ready, those articles would not exist and this would be the article number one.

In computer science and in real life, it is often better to have a good enough solution now, than to wait for a perfect solution indefinitely. Mistakes can be removed later. According to the evolution theory this recipe was enough for creating men; I guess for one blog it will be OK too.

There could probably be an easier way; there is a lot of web systems ready to install and configure; a lot of free webhosting services with ready software, you just register and write. But I do not trust them. There is no guarantee that currently free web page will not start asking some money tomorrow; I will rather pay now and have a full freedom. Free software is a nice thing too, but after installing it on my web I would have to watch for updates, and install them every month. And if I modify something, it will be more difficult to update. Anyway, for doing some significant changes or additions, I would have to study the system so much, that maybe it is easier to program my own. The situation would be different if I were a professional webmaster working for many customers. I would have to study the system anyway, but only one, and then twenty customers would pay me for doing it. But my own web is done in my free time, for no pay.

So in the middle of July I took a week of vacation to start my blog. To do required technical changes to add and display articles, a minimum design, and try to write at least one article (in Slovak language) daily. The last one I did not succeed even in perfect circumstances. My writing frequency seems to be each second day during vacation, once a week during work week. The popularity of the article is not related to the time spend writing; it actually seems like opposite. Most popular so far was an article "Controversial blogger law proposal", describing a fictional (but unpleasantly realistic) law about writing blogs; the basic idea came to my mind while waiting for lunch in restaurant, so I immediately wrote down the idea, and expanded it at home at computer. Maybe the right strategy is this: go somewhere away from the computer, relax, and let your mind flow; in case of inspiration have a pen and paper to catch the idea. I will try, and write.

Before this, I had a blog on the web page of Slovak newspaper SME. Now I will write to both of them, because each of them has some advantages and disadvantages. The blog at SME has a nice professional content management system. The content management system of this blog is... better not seen by anyone else. On the blog at SME their system will automatically bring me between 1000 and 3000 readers to each article, without any additional work on my side. And this is important. If I would want to write for five people, it would be easier to send them an e-mail (and I sometimes do it). But sometimes I want to share my ideas with the whole world, because I have this so called blogger syndrome which gives me illusion that someone wants to read what I write. The advantage of blog at SME was an existing discussion system; but today I have one here too.

The advantage of having my own blog is being able to do whatever I want. After I program it, of course. The most important feature is multilingualism: Slovak, English, Esperanto. Each of the languages is for other group of readers, so I expect different kinds of reactions. However so far I wrote most articles in Slovak, and then I do not translate most of them, because they are too long, or I find some other excuse. Another advantage is having advertising, which could someday help cover some expenses related to my internet activities. If you do not like it, use Adblock. And while my blog at SME is in my mind connected with newspapers, so I try to keep some quality limits, my personal blog is just a personal blog, I feel more free here. And the discussion will be more polite here, because otherwise I will just press the red button and erase the comment. Hey, if anyone has a different opinion, that is OK; grammar mistakes I bearable (I surely make them too); but there will be zero tolerance to dirty speach, personal attacks, and other disgusting things, which are unfortunately pretty frequent in some internet discussions.

So this is the first article in English language with possibility to write comments. I hope the program works OK. So if you are here and would like to write me something nice, be welcome!

Comments: 0