First Post!

First post from Windows Live Writer: http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/

Although it was designed to work with Windows Live Spaces, Live Writer supports several other blogging services and packages including Community Server (the blogging package I use). Live Writer is basically a compact word processor for blog posts. Some of the features include: previewing posts before they go live, editing entries that have already been posted, support for inserting pictures and maps, spellchecking and an SDK for developing plugins. The only missing feature I would like to see at this point is the ability to edit categories or "tags", however I believe this may appear in a future build.

One of the biggest barriers to frequent blogging, for me, seems to be the hassle of having to login to the blog's website, create a new entry, wait for pages to load, etc. With Live Writer I can casually write my entries without having to suffer through the annoyance of a "web application". So now I have no excuse for not blogging!

Are you on MySpace?

A while ago I was at a party at my brother's place. I think it was his birthday party. I was out on the front porch smoking and talking to his girlfriend about computers or something and at some point she asked me if I was on MySpace. I sort of laughed and said something like, "I'm not quite sure how to answer that."

A good friend of mine was listening and thought that was funny. I didn't really think much about it at the time but that pretty much sums up how I feel about "blogs" and "blogging" in general. "No I don't have a blog" was pretty much a canned response for me.

Then one day I was thinking about that conversation. Why don't I have a blog? Its not because I don't have anything to say. I'm constantly pasting links to people over Messenger and I used to write insane rantings on mailing lists and usenet. But I haven't done much of it lately really. And the thing is, I read a ton of blogs. Like thousands...

Blogs in themselves aren't that interesting. Sure there are some with decent content. The really cool thing about them is that they're readable by systems other than web browsers. And the ironic thing is that I was working with RSS feeds, which are the same type of systems that syndicate blog feeds, way back in like 2000ish. Back then there were only a handfull of sites that did RSS and I was parsing their feeds with primitve XML processors and other tricks.

Now RSS and blogging are amazingly popular. Heck, even IE7 is going to embed an RSS delivery subsystem into Windows. Why haven't I been keeping up with this stuff!?

Well there are a few reasons...

The first is that I refuse to use systems that are overly supported by ads. Heck I even go to the trouble of removing the ads from Messenger. I used to run an ad blocker for websites but that ended up being too much of a pain to maintain so I currently tolerate web ads.

Since all commercial blogging systems aren't viable options, that means I would have to maintain my own blogging system. And since I run Windows exclusively, there weren't too many options available until Community Server 2.0 came out. The older versions worked but I feel that they were too cluncky. This version is pretty suave so far though.

The next reason is that for a long time I really felt like I didn't have anything that I wanted to say. Now what kind of excuse is that when I'm constantly jabbering with people on Messenger? Its one of those excuses you make up to avoid having to do something.

That brings up a good question: Why was I avoiding setting up a blogging system for so long? Actually, I think this is going to be one of the topics I explore on this blog. Why did I avoid blogging for so long? I don't have an answer right now. I know a few of the reasons but I don't have a solid answer.

I do have an answer for my brother's girlfriend's question though. "No, my blog is hosted on my own server..."

So that's the official introduction to my blog. Hopefully I'll eventually get organize enough to start complaining about coding and work and stop lights and going to movies during the day because its cheaper and taking over the world with Hired Goons...