Some Random Dude

So it is looking very likely that there will be some guest posts while I take care of business (no pun intended). The two folks that will hopefully be writing articles will be a significant upgrade in quality from the content you have come to expect here. I would not be surprised if I come back to emails asking me to just let them write from now on…

If anyone else is interested in writing some guest posts for this blog, please let me know. If possible, please send me some examples of articles you have written and I will get back to you as promptly as can be expected from a person with horrible time management skills.

This subject actually brings a large issue… Are you as readers interested in seeing posts from other writers on a permanent basis? I feel, at times, that this blog is a study in megalomania - perhaps other voices would add to the quality and diversity of this blog. Lend me your opinions.

After a relatively brief but substantiative discussion with Kellie and a lot of thinking on my own, I have decided to shake things up a bit. I made the decision to write in a format that allowed a more steady stream of content to come in on a daily basis. That format has unfortunately sucked me dry while arguably adding very little to the quality of content on this blog. In my opinion, this led to a much dumber Some Random Dude. Sure, it updated frequently, but rarely were the updated truly inspiring.

All that being said, I feel there is a lot to be said about weekly features, regimen and structure for a blog. The audience knows what to expect and the constant content keeps them continually engaged. However, as a one person show, the number of posts per week definitely has an indirect relationship on the number of serious articles per month. If I could keep this format while keeping quality up, I would not think twice about doing so. However, there are only 24 hours in a day.
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I have been writing this blog for close to two years now and reading blogs for nearly twice as long. There is no shortage of great writers and great blogs on the internet, but to me, these either represent my favorite content or are special to me for other reasons. Either way, I highly suggest all of the blogs below - not a day goes by where I do not wish I could incorporate the quality of writing or type of content in each of these sites. I do not spend enough time on this site giving my respect to what I consider good work, I thought now was as good of a time as ever. If I were to list all of my favorite blogs, the list would be in the hundreds and it would literally take me weeks to finish the article. Perhaps I will begin briefly talking about my favorite blogs on a monthly basis, but for now I will leave the list at this.
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This blog has been going through quite a metamorphosis in the past few months as I continue to look for that “right place”. I am personally becoming much less interested in the nuances of front-end programming and much more fascinated with the 50,000 foot view of design on the web, the inner-workings of web communities and the future of media in the internet-age. I will begin to focus much more thought and writing towards these sorts of subjects and spend much less time on subjects such as web development and even Flash to a certain extent.

I have been putting a lot of time and thought into web community, media and how people interact with them and I feel I have a lot to share. In addition, my hope is to begin moving out of the trenches of design/development and start becoming more involved in these subjects in my career as well. This shift is fairly easy to do in a blog, but not so easy to do in my career. My hope is that this thinking and writing I do on the subject will act as a catalyst for my own personal growth.

This blog has been an unbelievable channel of learning for myself since day one. I cannot wait to see what people teach me in the upcoming months. I am really looking forward to a change of topical venue - I hope you are as well.

In the last week or so, I have been hearing a lot about tumblelogs. The concept of the tumblelog has been around for quite a long time and I have seen many examples of sites that fit the bill. I have always liked the idea what is now called a tumblelog because the content is easily digestible and content is usually updated much more often. Ironically, this very blog has taken on tumbleblog-esque traits with smaller, daily posts to go along with a longer, more in depth weekly article.

What really interesting here is that there seems to be a trend moving in the short-format direction. In a sense, Twitter is the world’s large public tumblelog. This stream-of-consciousness style of writing is obviously less substantiative, but the format is quite beneficial in its own unique way to both the writer and reader. To the writer, with less time commitment for each post, there is more time to write many more articles during the same span of time. More topics can be covered and current events can be touched on much more quickly. For the readers, they can get the gist of potentially many different topics and then go elsewhere for more in-depth content if they so desire.

The differences in format between blogs and tumblelogs could potentially create a strong symbiotic relationship between the two. Long format, in-depth blog articles are always going to be necessary for readers to get a thorough understanding of a concept or opinion. Still, many people many not be willing to commit to such long articles for various reasons. Tumblelog formats have the potential to whet the appetite of an otherwise unwilling audience. I myself would like to incorporate even more small-format content into this blog - I mean, who has time to read my long, boring articles?