What’s this blog for?

Honestly, I’m not sure yet. We’ll just have to wait and see how it turns out. I have a suspicion that the best blogs are either focused on a single issue — the explosion in wonderfully crunchy leftish political blogs being the best example — or deeply personal, like an intra-cranial webcam. Not sure how personal I’m either willing or able to make this, but I think I’d like to try.

Here’s my outlook for the moment. There’s something about carrying a camera that makes me more aware of images around me. I suspect that’s true for a lot of people. Even if I don’t take any pictures, the time and effort taken to notice the world is paid back in, well, in the time and effort taken to notice the world. Blogging is a bit like carrying around a camera for ideas, thoughts, whimsical nonsense.

And like taking pictures, there’s something to be said for not obsessing too much. Take lots, and pick out the good ones later. Because I tend to write very slowly, and am typically obsessed with structure, I’d also like to work on loosening that up. Write lots, and pick out whatever good stuff there might be later. We’ll see how high the crap:interesting ratio gets.

So what am I going to write about? Probably some politics, definitely some geeky techie stuff, without question some musings and rantings on linguistic matters — I’m one of those tedious people who sees the gradual drift towards using the word ‘kudos’ as the plural of some invented word ‘kudo’ as the beginning of the death of civilisation. Also some ramblings on American culture. I’m a recent immigrant, and continually delighted and/or bemused and/or appalled by differences between society here and in Britain, where I grew up.

Okay. Let’s turn this big valve I see here labelled ‘unedited babble’ and see what comes out.