Tumblelogs are, apparently, stream of conscious blogs where folks unload their brains without worrying about formatting, links, or any of the structured stuff that makes up your traditional blog. I’ve been thinking of starting one of these for a little while now (so I’m somewhat annoyed, in that petty pissing-up-the-wall way, to see them breaking out like this) and the only thing holding me back was how the hell I would squeeze yet another column onto the page. That and that most of my brain-fart ideas come to me while on the bike or in the kitchen, never when actually on the computer.
Quite often I’ll start a post that never makes it on here because once I’ve sat down and thought it through with a few Google searches I realise that I’m not saying anything new and that my argument or observation is cliched, pointless and glib. Which is all well and good but I think there’s a place for the cliched, pointless and glib because it gets you thinking. A good example would be how Wikipedia considers bad edits to be a good thing because they’ll prompt someone to correct them resulting in an improved article. In the blogging context if I spout off some ill-thought out rubbish about something you haven’t really thought about it might make you think about why I’m wrong.
It would also balance out my blogging activity nicely. The Linklog reaches out, the Weblog is my public face while the Tumblelog reaches in to the mass of ideas and thoughts bimbling around my brain. Kind of an Id, Ego and Superego approach to blogging.
(naturally having thought about it for a while I don’t like the term “tumblelog” preferring my own coinage “rambleblog” but that’s by the by as any term will be somewhat stupid.)
So, once I figure out a way to record this stuff and then to display it…
You’re losing your touch with neologisms. Rambleblog has a stumbling double-b sound in the middle. I initially read it as ramble-og, which is much more euphonious, but impossible to sensibly spell in English.
Funny, I think Tumblelog is wrong because it doesn’t have the double-b. Without the hard b it’s Rambluurugg rather than the much superior Ram-ble-Blog. But then I do like my 4/4 time sig.
On the bus today I came the realisation that Ramblog is a keen name, being as it is a portmanteau and everyone loves a portmanteau. However looking at it on the screen now it looks a bit rude…
Already discarded it by the time I’d typed the first sentence above. It’s entirely open to misinterpretation :)
You’re reaching the whatever-they-call-it point with the blog format. Where the next change you make will necessitate a complete makeover with a new, more magazine-like layout - and this so shortly after introducing the new and still-liked cream/magnolia colour scheme!
Now what’s that point called? Isn’t it the same with Black Holes, at the boundary of inescapable gravitational pull? Is it the Event Horizon?
I like to think of blogging (or at least running a blog) as like gardening. A tweak here, a new bed there, a fair amount of compost…