On Blogging

I like how this picture effectively goes “blog. people. think”. Picture source

So CS3216 is kicking off again with the first lecture starting today and yes, I’m tutoring again. I was just down at the prof’s blog and part of his kick-start post addressed his motivations for emotional-blackmailing asking his students to blog the course. Here is an excerpt:

The thing about blogs is that there’s some ownership. When a student blogs, it makes a statement about who he/she is. Very few people want to make a statement to others that “I’m a loser”.

In this light, when “forced” to blog, students will spend a lot more effort thinking about what to say and how they want to say it. It is not so much the blogging that the learning takes place, but in the agonizing over what to write where people will learn something.

They are forced to take stock of what they have heard/seen and draw conclusions. That’s important. Many people go through life not thinking hard about what they have see or heard.

I’m just gonna muse a little on that here.

Much of what the good prof said applies quite directly to why I continue investing my highly competed for time maintaining Between Linux and Anime. Okay I didn’t mean that quite in the self-important way it might sound – I just meant that I have so many things that I have to do, and so many more things that I want to do, and sadly much of those two sets don’t intersect. I had been thinking about it back when my old blog first vaporized, and that you are here gazing upon this page is evidence that I had decided that blogging is an endeavor worth keeping.

As the good prof notes, I have found that there is a profound difference between merely seeing/perceiving something, and writing about something. That something can literally be anything, a lecture, a text, an anime episode, an idea. You just wouldn’t think about it quite as much if you didn’t have to write about it. I should know for the countless times I had seen something, thought I had it well and nicely through my head, only to find myself later staring dismally at my screen, hopelessly stuck in my attempt to print it in language.

Almost universally, I end up being forced to kick back and think a little more. And yes, that goes for the post you’re reading too.

You could naturally go on to ask after the subject matter of those musings. Although this blog is called Between Linux and Anime, it is perhaps an open secret that the larger body of my writings are dedicated to the latter. So the question becomes, is anime a worthy target for blogging? I think so. When it comes down to it anime is a form of expression, and despite it being powered largely by the ludicrous purchasing power of the moe otaku horde, its fortunate that most studios still to varying extents acknowledge their more sophisticated audiences. And thus we still get anime that do make very interesting statements about larger things. And here’s the thing – most of those statements are really subtle. You need to think about it, and the milk is well worth it when you do. It is a very geek-gratifying thought I know, but I will allow myself the audacity of stating it this time: blogging anime gives me a nice way of spending time sailing my mind through finer things that lie outside the technical realms that I am presently naturally immersed in.

Before you pounce on me though, I’ll be first to own up here that I watch and blog brainless material too. Well, I don’t have any real excuse except that anime also doubles as my stress relief therapy. Read around those if you must ^^;

I’m not all that sure about not wanting to sound like a loser (since I probably sound idiotic half the time in here anyway), but another notable facet with blogging (as opposed to just writing), is that you know people will end up reading what you wrote, and you know that people can very easily respond if they want to. After some time you start to write while anticipating protest. And after some more time you start doing that in your head whenever you see things and start forming ideas and arguments. I think interaction is a key part of the experience and makes blogging a unique form of authorship. It helps to remind yourself that your head isn’t the only head in the cosmos.

Put in another light it means the readers, ie YOU, are indispensable :) So to end off this tl;dr post I’d like to again express appreciation to my readers. Thank you! And if any of you out there do not blog, I’d like to encourage you to consider it. It takes quite a bit of time and effort, yes, but it may well be worth it in the end.

And even if it is nothing else, let me tell you. It is fun.