About blogging ...
Blogging is a bit like writing a diary, and in fact many people just use a blog for exactly this purpose these days. Why don't I ?
Strangely enough, although I'm what most people would comfortably call a "computer geek" I'm still very conservative in my own use of technology. I do positively hate mobile phones, for the simple reason that they're providing so many features that I don't want to use, with no simple way to reconfigure the menu structure in such a way that it suits my taste and shows only the options/menu items that I actually want to use. In that sense, I do understand Apple's success with the iPod - and I'd never get a video iPod or a mobile phone with integrated radio and media player. I want a dedicated, targeted device that's efficient and simple at what it does (if it's shiny - the better), not an egg-laying, milk-giving woolly flying pig.
It's a bit similar with blogging. When you meet me, you might well find me chatty and openminded to a degree that it may seem embarrassing. But I'm not extroverted enough to put the story of my daily life online, for the simple reason that there are thoughts in my mind and things that I do which are, quite frankly, completely unrelated to work and not suitable for the general public to know. It's called "having a life". Some people are able to pursue computer-related activity, work or spare time, with an amount of dedication that I admit I admire, and who seem to be able to play the publicity card to the gain of both their crowd and themselves.
That's positively not the case for me. I'd rather be a wallflower. Yes, it's kind of stage fever, the thought that stepping out and becoming a messenger, a leader for something, and - gasp - a public figure is paralyzing to me.
So you know now why this blog isn't growing frequently. It's about things at work, and therefore bound by the constraints of "spare time at work". I do keep an old-style written diary for hobby, fun and things dear to me, but I haven't chosen the blog name ambiguous for no reason. Blogging for me is about letting people know the interesting things I work on, if time allows. My blog will never become an encyclopedia of sorts, as I think, like the iPod/cellphone example, blogging misses the point there. And my private life is that - private. I'm not really expecting this to change significantly. Some of the things that I do, like for example this article series about how to write Solaris Filesystem drivers, or the Crashdump Analysis book I wrote, or my activities with the Czech OpenSolaris users group are therefore not featured here but in other places - it's far easier working with the community directly, using mailing lists and wikis, than trying to attract people to your blog and telling them "watch this for the latest news on ...". I might incidentally braindump here about things noone asked for, but rather normally will do that in a targeted fashion, via interactive channels.
I rather want you to participate in the community, talk to the community, not to cheer (and/or bother) me ... so go to OpenSolaris.org, register yourself for the discussion lists - I promise you we'll get along very well there !
So why do I even tell you that ? Well, I was surprised today when I put my name (which isn't _that_ unique) into google.com, my blog came up at #3 - and that for a page that has been stale for a year ? My sense of duty kicked in to give a little explanation those who obviously read it about what (and what not) to expect here. Maybe more than there was in the last 12 months, but no promises ...
