The Death of a Blogger
While I was browsing twitter today, I happened to stumble across this “post” from Ted Winder. Basically, he was expressing his frustrations with the blogging medium, and has decided to quit. In his final farewell, he makes a couple of statements that I disagree with, and were blatantly targeted at myself. Let’s tackle this one Gruber-style.
I accidentally deleted my wp-content folder. You know, that essential folder with your design and plugins in? Me, being me, I didn’t have a backup – I don’t actually have backups of anything. Yeah, stupid.
Hey, don’t sweat it. I still remember the day that I accidentally deleted everything on my computer. I wasn’t a believer in backups then. Now I am.
The second reason is that blogging is overrated. What’s the point? A lot of the stuff I read on personal blogs now is stuff I already know – really simple, obvious stuff put into some exaggerated context by the blogger in question.
Woah, big statements there. By calling blogging in itself “overrated”, you are in fact saying that any medium that people use to express themselves is overrated. On the contrary, I would say that blogging is underrated. It is now possible to make your voice heard even if you aren’t a celebrity or a multi-millionaire.
Now for the sake of argument, I’m going to assume that you are talking about the content on these blogs – specifically “personal blogs”. I, like yourself, feel that there is a lot of junk content on blogs today. Spam, plagiarism, repetition, you name it. In fact, that is the very reason I abandoned that path, and wrote a letter to the blogosphere concerning it.
And recently, more and more people are writing on their blogs about ‘journeys through life’, about how blogging is all one big journey. Now, forgive me if I’m being rude, but no-one honestly cares about some random persons life, and blogging is most definitely not any kind of journey.
I used to think like that too. Blogging was just a way to get information across. But after I began to subscribe to personal blogs, I started to look at blogging through different eyes. There was an emotional connection. I enjoyed sitting down and reading through a long blog post. I wanted to know about “random people’s lives” and what they are doing. That is the very reason I use twitter. To connect with others. If you don’t care about that person’s life, just click the unsubscribe button. No need to complain.
And I’ve said it before, blogging is a journey. A journey that I enjoy taking, and enjoy watching others go through. I’ve watched people (including myself) change and develop over time, and grow into a much better blogger the more they perservere.
Many people consider “tweets” and blogs to have no lasting value. I have to strongly disagree. There have been tweets and blog posts that have been moments of realization for myself, and have indeed changed my life.
It’s typing. That’s all it is. Typing, combined with the uncontrollable want to be popular.
Nope. It’s genuine thoughts that are being expressed through typing. Look beyond the words, and you may actually discover a deeper meaning.
And about the “uncontrollable wanting to be popular”. I write about my interests what’s going on in my life. If people think that’s cool, by all means, give me all the fame and fortune. I’m not going to change the way I blog because of it though.
I really do no have time any more to be churning out content, and it’s not worth me re-designing my blog. So I’m going to say thank you to all of my ex-readers, and leave it all behind.
RIP Ted Winder. The blogosphere will miss you.
Learning by Not
It’s funny how we learn sometimes. Strangely, I find that I don’t learn when I do things flawlessly. I learn when things go wrong. I learn when I see something that disgusts me, and I say to myself, “I never want to be like that”. In a way, I am a product of mistakes and bad experiences that have repelled me into who I am.
The more I think of it, the truer it is. Sure there are people in my life that I admire and look up to, and strive to be like. However, there are far more people that have disgusted me and turned me off to their way of thinking. It is those people who have been far more “influential” in defining who I am and who I will become.
I have begun to ask myself which method is more effective. To be influenced by great leaders and role models, or to be driven away by hypocrites, and forced to create my own path for my life? In order to succeed, I believe that you must strike the perfect balance. To have the influential people in your life that help you lock your mind onto your goals, while not imitating or obsessing over them (which is something I’ve done many times). While at the same time being driven from all the world’s evil paths, and forced to create for yourself a new path; a new journey to tread. Something that you must create for yourself in order to reach that goal – that dream that you’ve envisioned.
If there are too many people you look up to if your life, you will waste your whole life trying to be an exact replica of them. On the contrary, if you are around too many people that pull you down, you will fall short of your purpose, and live your life to the world’s standards.
Sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint one personality trait or flaw in a person that you want to learn from, but you know that you would dread to have the same trait linked to your name. Experiences like that keep me on the path. Keep my eyes on the goal.
Don’t settle for an ordinary life. Tread your own path.
The Journey
I’ve figured it out.
I’ve figured out what it is about blogging that makes it so intriguing. What makes it so frustrating. What makes it so challenging.
It’s like photography in many ways. Actually, come to think of it, it’s a lot like life. Always aspiring. Always dreaming. Always falling short of your dreams. And then getting back up and trying again.
I’ve figured it out. Blogging is a journey. That’s been my mistake all along. Believing that one day I would “make it” as a blogger, and get all the success and fame that comes along with it. That I would reach the finish line, and be called a winner. I looked and drooled over the stats. I tried copying other’s dreams. Little did I know. You can never reach the end of blogging. You can never reach the finish line, and call yourself a winner. Much like life, you just keep going. And learning. And failing. And trying again.
And that’s my problem with blogging. I can’t setup a finish line in my mind that I am running towards. No. Instead, I am running head-on into the unknown. Not knowing where this journey will lead me. Not knowing where this journey will end.
For the longest time, I thought blogging was about you. That’s what everyone told me. “Blogging is a conversation”. Not my blog. My blog is a place where I share my thoughts. Where I write what I want to write. Not for you. For me.
I may have fallen, but I’m getting back up. I’m continuing the Journey.
Why I Love Craigslist
Me: I’m selling a pair of Shure e4c headphones for $199.
Buyer: I saw those on Amazon for $170. Will you sell for $125?
Me: I’ll sell them for $150.
Buyer: $140 and I’ll pick them up right now.
Me: $150 and you have a deal.
Buyer: I’m looking at a couple of other models also. If you decide to sell for $140, let me know.
Me: There’s a Wendy’s right outside my house. If you pick me up a combo, you can have the headphones for $140.
Buyer: I have to drive 30 minutes on the highway to get there – you should be buying me lunch! Whatever, I could go for Wendy’s today too.. $140 and a combo it is. No gigantic-sizing anything though! Where are you located?
Liked this post? Check out my in-depth iPhone 3G review, or an Introduction to Pro Photography. If you’re interested in Apple, there are also posts on Snow Leopard and MobileMe. Enjoy!
How the iPhone SDK Changes Everything
Apple has done it again.
They released an under-featured, 1.0 product into an over-saturated market, and managed to dominate the competition. They saw the junk that was coming out of the phone industry. They saw the feature bloat. They saw the hardware developers that didn’t know a thing about writing good software. And they said, “we can do better”.
And they did.
With the iPhone, they have done in 8 months, what Microsoft or RIM or Nokia or Palm did not do in 10 years. They didn’t just reinvent the phone, or revolutionize the iPod. They created the next-generation of the Internet. The internet that lives in your pocket. Already, they have garnered over 70% of the mobile Internet-browsing market with only 4 million phones sold.
On March 6th, Apple did it again. I think Fake Steve said it best:
I mean 29 June 2007 might be the day the world changed, but today it just changed again. BlackBerry is dead. Microsoft is dead. Windows Mobile is dead. Amazon is dead. Kindle is dead. Nokia is dead. Motorola was already dead but now they are even more dead. Google’s Android is dead. Samsung is dead. LG is dead. Sony is dead. UTStarcom is dead. We’ve thrown $100 million into an iFund so people can build iApps to sell on iTunes and give us 30% of their iMoney. The coming onslaught of new applications will make iPhone the only smart phone that anyone in the entire world will ever want to use.
With the iPhone SDK, Apple did everything right. Through classes like UIKit, Apple has given developers access to every aspect of the phone – wifi, camera, and EDGE – as well as providing them with technologies like Core Animation and Core Location to help them create the best possible applications.
Apple could have just taken the easy way out. They could have kept the iPhone a proprietary phone with a heavily crippled SDK, and lackluster developer support. On the contrary, they provided a full development kit with all the applications needed for designing, coding, analyzing, and testing iPhone apps.
They even created a whole new framework known as Cocoa Touch, that will allow developers to create applications that integrate with the built-in iPhone apps, and respond to a slew of multi-touch gestures.
They managed to give developers all this control, while ensuring a safe and sandboxed environment. It sure took Apple a long time, but it was definitely worth the (very long) wait.
Before the SDK, the iPhone was simply a phone, an iPod, and a mobile Internet browser. With the SDK however (which is a free update to all iPhone users), the iPhone now becomes a powerful computer in your pocket. It is a killer gaming platform. It is a medical research assistant. It is a business communicator and organizer. It is a digital communicator. It is iPhone.
Imagine apps like Skitch and Delicious Library and PhotoBooth and GarageBand for the iPhone. Suddenly, the iPhone has an infinite number of uses. Businesses will love it. Universities will love it. Consumers will love it. In many ways, the announcement of the SDK is almost bigger than the actual iPhone itself.
Why?
I’ve written about it before. It’s a growing trend this year. Software is more important than hardware. We saw it with both the AppleTV and the iPhone updates at Macworld. Apple added functionality to both of these devices without actually changing the hardware.
And now with the SDK, this is truer than ever. The hardware of the iPhone has had the ability to do all these things the entire time, but just now the software is being released that will make that possible.
After watching the apps get demonstrated I had this “my iPhone is a sleeper agent” sort of feeling. Realizing there is way more under the hood which I, as a user, haven’t fully had the chance to experience yet. [...] I don’t have to buy another $500 phone.
The first version of the iPhone may very well be the greatest 1.0 gadget released in history.
This is an ongoing trend that I think we’ll see more of in the future. The software is simply catching up to the hardware.
The single biggest realization I had while watching the SDK event was that Apple listens to their customers. Although they still love to keep secrets and build up rumors, they are listening to their users. They gave businesses all the enterprise features they wanted for the iPhone – even Microsoft ActiveSync compatibility. They gave developers an entire development kit with APIs and classes that will help to make the absolute best third-party iPhone apps. And they gave all of their existing costumers a free upgrade to version 2.0 of the iPhone (which, I’m sure will include even more, great new features).
The iPhone SDK has changed the state of the iPhone platform. Now, the iPhone has more potential than any other device on the market, and is positioned to take over the mobile landscape. The only question left in my mind, is when can I get one of these in Canada?
“It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do.”
Fortune has published 15 excerpts from an exclusive interview with Steve Jobs. Steve talks about the keys to Apple’s success, and what drives Apple employees and himself. Very inspirational read.
Backup Everywhere
If you’ve been following me on twitter, you’ve heard about my newest toy – a 500GB Time Capsule. My initial impressions of the device are very positive, and I will hopefully have a full review up by week.
In the meantime, I decided to test this device to it’s limits. I attempted to initiate a Time Machine backup from the mailbox at the end of my street. Watch the video to see what happens.
