first off, welcome to the first actual blog post of mine on here!!! :p
second of all, let me point out that this post might not really be interesting or give a whole lot of any particular insight to you, and i really don't want to waste your time, so feel free not to give this a read and instead go spend time on something or someone you care about!
otherwise, here goes
the (previously) in-progress posts
it's been about half a year since the first blog post should've gone up, but alas, things went a bit differently than expected (as usual), and now i find myself writing a meta-post about the blog itself.
because i've come to realize
the blog posts i've had in store
weren't really all that amazing
i was still writing them for real reasons with good and meaningful intentions, however, the problem is that they were all kind of just... complaining about things in long ramblings, rather than showing anything cool or interesting.
i know that a bunch of people read the drafts of those posts and still liked them, but personally, the posts were kind of impulsively written (which is funny to say given this post is essentially a recent shower thought). the motivation usually came after i got discomforted about something and felt like venting about it, which sort of gave these things this short-term emotional attachment that skews the overall perception of things.
now i don't think there's something inherently wrong with venting, but by the time i got anywhere with the writing of a post, i would get second thoughts about it and whether it'd be really worthwhile and enlightening for someone to read it. the originally first post might still go online someday because it's something that actively bothers me (the topic being ewaste and how ridiculous software engineering for even critical infrastructure has become).
but the second planned post would've been about analogies and how they might hurt a person's understanding of a topic, which originally stemmed from a misconception about cryptography that i saw on discord, and while it's definitely something that occurs relatively frequently overall, the way the article ended up being written was honestly really petty from the perspective of a blerg after a couple nights' sleep, so if anything, i'd revise it entirely.
other planned posts were also more or less impulsive reactions to discord and/or social media stuff, and while the truth of the matter would still have been to speak my heart on how awful and disingenuous people treat each other a lot of the time, the posts would've probably ended up being more or less just blabbering and venting about it rather than being a good post to a reader, so i might hold off on that type of writing for now at least.
in the end, these post ideas all lacked a true meaning to the reader, because anyone i'd expect to visit my site and read these articles would already be sensible enough, in a way that my posts wouldn't really change their mind about anything, just fire on like-minded thoughts and views. on the other hand, anyone else would probably not care to read them for it to change anything. i'd only be creating yet more polarization about a topic (and maybe giving people something to reference but yeah), which is actually what i wanted to avoid and fight against in the first place.
what makes me go "whoah, waow" about a blog post
while i do read people's vent posts from time to time, the really memorable blogs to me are those that are a sort of story, summary, or explanation about a topic or research, maybe even with interactive doodads and stuff to play around with. something that doesn't end up joining the big milking of the same drama content and discussions over and over, instead, something actually substantial that gives new insights or shows me something interesting.
one such great example is lyra's blog (looks are deceiving). it features hand-crafted pages with insane css gimmicks and tons of fun interactive content (just like all her little toys and presentations you can find on her home page). the content itself talks about interesting research and nerdy stuff with easter eggs everywhere.
or even bob's blog, which is also always based on some specific interesting personal topic (mostly ntm), with references and blurbs strewn throughout.
this is what i'll be writing
thus, i want to post about silly hacky stuff or nerd shit too, instead of ending up with a collection of rather depressing text that hits a nail yet again that's already half a meter into the wall.
for some reason, the latter type of content still seems to sell quite well if you look on (a)social media, because people have seemingly gotten used to getting angry. craving it, even. it's the type of content i might get a youtube recommendation for and simply scroll past while thinking "guhhh so much slop". i don't want to contribute to that.
instead, i might write about something like my journey with the ntm radio and the countless hours i spent researching audio technology, codecs and software to get very specific things working. or i might write tutorials for things i used to struggle with. or just plainly talk about stuff i appreciate or find interesting. either way, i'll make sure to make these a bit more impressive and interesting than just basically plain text :p
hopefully you can expect mostly cool posts here and feel a bit rejuvenated after reading them, in face of the current political sphere and how people tend to act online these days. it gets tiring, i don't intend for my stuff to in reality be soul-draining as well.
sorry if this is not one such cool post yet, but thanks for reading my first post still!
~blerg
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