On Vanillogging...

To blog or not to blog? Is that really the question? Apparently it is... assuming you've already answered the question of whether to sign up with Facebook (yeah, I recently got sucked into that vortex, too). So, with the dawn of a New Year, I've finally decided to take the plunge (welcome to the ohties, Kenn!).

Given my bias toward metamodeling, it seemed appropriate for me to start my new endeavor by metablogging - blogging about blogging. First of all, what is a blog (other than a portmanteau of web log)? Upon diligently searching for the term "blog" on Wikipedia, I became aware of several aspects of blogging which I hadn't previously considered.

For one, I hadn't realized that there were so many types of blogs. Who knew blogs were categorized by media type, device, genre, and legal status of their publishers? I suppose if I'm going to have a blog, I should probably decide what type it will be. Initially it seemed that my blog would be a photoblog, seeing as I'd like to start posting pictures to my blog at some point... but apparently a photoblog is supposed to place more emphasis on photos than text. Looking through the other listed types, I couldn't find one that felt quite right, so I've decided that mine will be a plain old blog (at least for now). I thought I'd be clever and coin a new portmanteau for blogs like mine, but it turns out that the term "poblog" has already been claimed by podcasters, poets, and poker players, to mention a few... so I've settled on vanillog - welcome to my vanilla blog!

The second thing I discovered about blogging is how the popularity of blogs is measured - by citation or by affiliation. Seeing as I haven't started blogging for the sake of increased (nor decreased!) popularity, neither of these measures concerns me, although I suppose I should consider adding a blogroll page element to my blog. One step at a time...

Finally, I had no idea what a reckless bunch bloggers are. I hadn't given much forethought to the consequences of blogging, but apparently I'm now at risk of becoming a slanderous, unemployed felon. I considered adding a disclaimer ("the opinions expressed here are mine, yada yada yada") to my blog's header, but then I thought, "Wait a minute! This is my personal blog... shouldn't that be implicit?" I guess not. Oh well... nothing risked, nothing gained, right?

So, for better or worse, here I am, willing to play my part in contributing to the dotsam and netsam of the Web!