The final blog post. Sometimes I think the best way to approach a "final" or "last" anything is to just acknowledge the difficulty in doing so and be on with it. This is likely the last post I will make on this blog as it stands, though it is very helpful of Google to allow users to change both the title and web address of blogs even after creation and use (subject to availability, of course). That being the case, maybe there is a chance this ol' guy will see further updates down the road. Who knows.
To make and update this blog, I have been using Google's Blogger software, which really makes the whole process very easy, and yet there is also plenty of room for customization. I can change the layout and theme of my blog without headache, and I can add all sorts of little widgets (like the Google chatback badge, which actually works occasionally). I chose Blogger because I was familiar with its layout, which now seems somewhat misguided as it would have been nice to try out a new application like WordPress, which I have never used. In the end, though in the future I may decide to try a new content manager, I think it is also very likely that I will continue using Blogger for blogging because it works and works well.
Playing with this blog has been a nice experience, though I have had experience with blogging prior to this course. For the past six months or so, I have been updating the Wells' English & American Literature Collection blog semi-regularly (more on that to come) with links, collection news, and interesting literary happenings. I have enjoyed working with that blog mostly because I have a certain liberty therein (basically anything to do with humanities is fair game), but it is also good to know someone (at least) is reading what I write and might comment (admittedly most comments the blog gets are either in Chinese or link to porn, go figure). Both of these experiences have helped me see the utility of blogging and the attractiveness of being able to reach people so quickly. It is nice to feel like you have something to say, and an even better feeling to see your thoughts translated into text and in some sense permanently extant in a space outside their originating mind. It's almost ridiculous. In the world of web 2.0, more people than ever can come online and publish their thoughts, and despite how scary that sounds to some (certainly there are problems) I think it does much more good than harm. And hopefully it, along with all other social technology, merely extends, not replaces.
I definitely agree with Laura that the blogging aspect of this course was by far the best, but I think I enjoyed the actual blog-writing less than reading classmates' thoughts, be they responses to assignments or class topics or more personal. This seems to be one of the points of blogging, connecting with other people, and it was interesting to see how we responded to each other's thoughts and things already posted, sometimes without even realizing we were. There have been a number of studies and essays written about this blogosphere business, that social space created by the strangely interconnected thoughts of thousands (millions?) of people typing away into a web editor like this one, and I have really enjoyed seeing that unfold in our little microcosm of 11.
Long story short, blogging is fun and I think I'll keep it up in one form or another, here or somewhere else. I definitely intend to remain subscribed to y'all's blogs in Google Reader, so hopefully some of us continue writing and contributing thoughts to these spaces.
P.S. Who's up for doing bourbon flights with me at Irish Lion on Tuesday?
No comments:
Post a Comment