In a comment on my blogging retrospective and ethics entry, Traci asked some interesting questions:

1. You know why you blog. Do you know why people read what you blog?
2. Do you care why they read it?
3. Would blogging provide you the same level of satisfaction if no one was reading what you wrote?

My initial answer was "Err, uhh, ummmmm ... I dunno." Giving it some more thought, it appears that the questions aren't as easy as one might think. The problem is, I don't know who is reading my blog.

Okay, thats wrong, I do kinda know. I know that Shell reads it, because I see it on her laptop. I know that Craig and Jen read it, because they live next door and we sometimes talk about what I have posted (hell, they both have given me suggestions on things to blog.). I know Traci reads my blog, because she write comments and also gives me entry ideas. There are other friends out there who read it, I am sure, but I don't want this to turn into Romper Room. "I see Greg, Kris and Rocky ...". Man. Speaking of Romper Room, when I was a tot, I wanted to kick that bitch to the curb. She Never saw me in the magic mirror.

But I digress. Beyond the close friends who have told me that they read my blog, I have no idea who reads it.

Why would people read my blog?

I'd like to think it is because I have something interesting to say. I mean, I really do take my time and try to craft interesting, funny and perhaps even edifying entries about whatever is on my mind and/or what I am doing.

Another reason why someone might read my blog, is that they want to check up on me, and see how I am doing. This is a horrible way to do it, especially if that is your only real input. If you were to try and judge my life through the lens of my blog, you would have a skewed and distorted view of me.

Finally there is the case of the reader who pops in because one of my entries answers a question for them. These readers are an interesting case because they only really stick around for one thing (the answer to their question), and they are the easiest to write for. Just pepper your entry with relevant search terms, and write explicit instructions.

Do you care why they read it?

I'd be lying if I said "No" but just think about how amazingly cool, hip and suave that would make me look!

I'm so hip and tortured that I dye my hair black, and I don't care why you read my blog because my art is PURE.... MAAAAAN.

Right then.

I am interested in why you are reading this entry right now. It would be like a big ol pat on the back. It would also give me the opportunity to make my entries better and more suited for my audience. On the other hand, not knowing, does in fact lend a certain purity to my entries. I just have to write what I write for myself, and hope that they are good and interesting to my audience without pandering to anyone in particular. It is a lot like finding a treasure chest in a forest while blindfolded. Or a really twisted game of Marco Polo. Fish out of water! Time for a spanking!

Would blogging provide you the same level of satisfaction if no one was reading what you wrote?

No.

But it wasn't always like that. I mean, I wrote entries for ages before I actually got noticed and someone *gasp* commented. I think it was around 6 months from the time I started writing till the time I got a comment. A little hint for you blog readers out there. Blog writers love it when you comment. It is like expensive white chocolate from GOD. Comments are mana from heaven.

So It would be hard to go back to a world of "No one is reading Jonnay" but not impossible. Because while I do write for an audience, I do ultimately write for myself.

The thing is, if no-one was reading what I wrote, I would get a different level of satisfaction out of it. I could express the ugly things, the twisted things, the truly weird things and not have to worry about how it would affect my friends perception of who I am. I could express emotions, thoughts and desires without the worry of it being used against me, or offending anyone. But that is why I keep an honest-to-god pen-and-paper journal that I just don't show anyone. I am a big advocate of not-online-and-private journal writing.

How about you?

Why not tell me why you're reading my blog? Common, gimme some Mana-From-Heaven-White-God-Chocolate...

MMMmmmmm...

Diety goo.

This is going to be a bit of a retrospective here. I will talk a little bit about why I blog, and what I blog, and compare it to a previous entry I made year and a half ago. It will be interesting to see what has changed and what has stayed the same.

Why I blog

• Communication - I want to be a better communicator. I want to be better able to express what is going on in my head to the outside world. I want to be able to do this effectively which means learning how to write. The best way to learn how to write is to write more often. This is an expansion on my previous goal of "Keeping my wife in the loop."
• Information - Along the years I pick up all kinds of information. Blogs are great brain-offline-storage... they're searchable and they're (mostly) available 24x7. I don't know how many times I have referred to my own entries as reference for something. When ever I am writing up an entry like this, I try to use as many search engine friendly keywords as I can. It seems to be working. A couple of my posts have comments from people that found what I posted helpful. Nothing has changed here.
• Wonder - The shear wonder of it all. Lets face it, the universe is a wonder-full place. One day the universe squeezed out of itself a piece of itself that can look at itself. It sounds new-agey-hokey-pokey, but we are all part of the universe. And we (as a collective species) spend time thinking about the universe. One of the big questions of life is "Why are we here?" It is literally a small piece of the universe that is asking itself that. Anyway, I've gone off a rant here. I blog because some things shock, amaze and/or amuse me enough that I want to share with my friends.
• REVOLUTION! - ahhhhh fuck it. There is no revolution, only Zuul.

What I blog

Now that I have been publishing for a year and a half, I have a fairly significant body of work. There is a disconnect between what I want to blog and what I actually end up blogging. Anyone can see what topics I seem to blog about most. What I want to do is to start writing more about music and design with the same level of detail as I write about code. I am still tentatively testing the waters with blogging more about my personal life and the important people in it.

for the record, as of today my biggest tags are: funny, meta, mine, music, perversion, politics and social software.

My Ethics

There is a page that has gone around and around, called A bloggers' Code of Ethics whose focus is on the journalism aspect of blogs. Now I haven't purchased a ticket on the blogs-as-journalism train. I don't think that most blogs—especially my own—fit that bill. I just don't have that much original news to talk about. Either I am commenting on a piece of news, which makes my blog more like an editorial or I am researching programming languages, musical and perverted DIY projects, server administration, sexual fetishes or design, which makes my blog more like a technical (or pr0n0) magazine.

That being said, some kind of codification of my personal blogging ethics is good:

• Honesty and integrity. If I didn't write something, blockquote and attribute it. If I am unsure about the validity or honesty of something, say so. If I am wrong, admit it. If I make a mistake, fix it. If I have an agenda, talk about it.
• What is written stays written. Misrepresentation of someone elses communication is a bad thing. If I wrote (and published) something, and someone takes me to task on it, then I should have the fortitude to either A) stand up for what I said or B) publicly admit I was wrong. Going back and changing an entry is unfair.
• Except when It doesn't. Personal attacks are not cool. I have never had to delete an entry on my blog because it got too personal. I want to keep it that way. This also applies to someones privacy. If I am talking about a sensitive topic (such as sexuality) then I should never out someone unless they have previously given me explicit permission.
• That includes public figures, companies, tribes and groups. I thought about this for awhile. If my ethical standard is such that personal attacks are wrong, this should also apply to politicians, celebrities, companies, and groups of people (conservatives, liberals, etc. etc.). If I disagree with what they say then I should respond to their arguments in a sane and well thought out rebuttal, not spewing vitriol. I am of two minds of whether or not I should delete previous entries that do not live up to this standard. On the one hand, public figures, collectives and companies are different from private individuals and on the other hand is it really fair to treat them with a different ethical standard? For now I am content to change the way I blog about them in the future. partially because I am lazy, I don't relish going though a year and a half worth of archives to weed out entries that don't meet this standard. If I do run across some though, I will own up to what I said and apologize if necessary.

It's not often that I do this. I reserve my blog for interesting things that I am doing, thinking about, and experiencing. I like to think that it makes my blog a little different from most. The kind of blog that people would want to visit because I have interesting things to say. If nothing else for answers to their CVS questions, or for looking for help on their next DIY music or fetish item.

So I try to "check my emotions at the door" as it were. Generally, the only two emotions that I let out on my blog are anger and my love for shell. The last thing I want is for this blog to degenerate to a LiveJournal of bad angst poetry, goofy little quizzes and personal politics.

However, this being said, I have been going through a particularly rough patch of emotions. It all started around Aug 27th. You might note that my posts since around that time have been rather sparse. Again, this is due to my emotional state. It's hard to write good entries when your mind is otherwise occupied.

So this entry is going to be long, and it's going to talk about my emotional state, but hopefully it will be a little different. I'll be talking about how I coped with my emotions, how they affected me, and what I did, and what I am doing to overcome them.

Some non back story

One of the biggest beefs I have about blogs (community and otherwise) is that they are frequently used as a clothesline for airing out dirty laundry. Nothing says lame like airing out ones grievances to the world in a starkly public forum. It's even less classy then airing out ones twisted sexual perversions ;-).

So the details of what happened, how it happened and why it happened are not forthcoming. Either you know the details, and you know the state I am in, or you don't. Feel free to ask about them, I'll let you in on as many details as I feel comfortable.

But to give you some context as to what's happened, Shell and I almost lost some close friends. This certainly hasn't been the first time its happened, but we seem to be getting better at it. There is less drama, less anger and less bitterness. My thought is that friendships just ebb and flow, and sometimes the ebb gets so low that things fall away.

Coping Mechanisms

Throughout this whole experience I've been listening to a set of 9 tracks, mostly trip-hop and Drum & Bass, with a bad 80's tune thrown in to boot. A name for this mix popped into my head one day, titled "Coping Mechanism".

Music has always been an excellent method to shift and change my mood. I've always been deeply affected by it. When I am going through an emotional period, I find it is important to choose music that adequately expresses what I am feeling, and at the same time also leaves room open for interpretation to my particular situation, and also leaves the door open for growth, change and 'the light at the end of the tunnel'. When I was younger, I would wallow in the mud of my own depression. Therein lies the road to bad angst poetry.

Another saving grace so far has been art. I've been filling my sketchbook full of art that expresses how I am feeling, either abstractly, or symbolically. I feel that by exteriorizing these emotions in such a way allows me to get a firmer, more honest look at what I am feeling, and more importantly, allows me to act on these emotions. Whether it be talking about how I am feeling to the people relevant to the situation, or by simply deciding that I don't need those emotions anymore, and releasing them. Maybe in the future, I will scan them in, and post them to flickr.

Healing Machine

There is a tired old saw that goes like this: "When life hands you lemons, make lemonade!". It is probably one of the hardest things to hear, and certainly one of the hardest things to do when you are in the middle of an emotional funk. Who really wants to hear that you can turn the situation around when you are in the middle of grief? But really it is the only reasonable thing to do.

Making lemonade out of this whole situation has been hard. In order to do this, it required extreme honesty, self reflection, and communication. Common wisdom says that honesty and communication is what is required in any relationship, and it sounds so easy, but it isn't. First you have to be honest with yourself, and what you are really feeling. Next you have to be honest with your mate. Sometimes being honest with your mate means telling them things that they do not what to hear, and things you do not want to say. It also means that they have to be open enough to actually listen to what is going on, and you just have to accept their reaction as it is, for what it is. Finally, it means being able to appropriately communicate with enough tact and politeness that they can actually listen to what you have to say. That is not to say that you need to crouch everything in analogies or diplomat-speak, but instead to squirrel the other person away in a bomb shelter, before setting up the bomb.

And that is how Shell and I got through one of the roughest spots of our marriage. We were both honest and open with each other. Sometimes brutally so. Sometimes we had to say things that the other did not want to hear. Sometimes we had to say things that we did not want to say to each other. But we did so, and in doing so, we each listened to the other and came out stronger and closer then ever before. But it was not easy. It was not fun, but as a result our relationship grew stronger.

And that is what it is all about.

This entry is posted to the entry posted by GoDaddy Bob. He has updated his Entry On Gitmo to be a lot less inflammatory, and posted something of a retraction pseudo-retraction. He is no longer calling for... *ahem*... stronger interrogation techniques.

Which is annoying, because now suddenly, I look like a (bigger) nutjob, instead of just responding to one. This brings up the ethical question... how should one handle updates? BoingBoing handles them by strike-throughing the old-text, and putting the updated text in bold, and red. If I remember correctly, they had some pretty embarrassing moments, and said as much in their updates. However, the original text was viewable. Their mistakes are plainly visible for all to see.

Bob on the other hand keeps editing down his post until it looks nothing like the original. So the calls for torture are now missing, you can only view hints of it in the original title of the article: "Close Gitmo? No Way! Think our interrogation methods are tough? Prisoners in the Middle East talk quick. Here's why!" which you can see in the url: (split by dashes due to length) http://www.bobparsons.com/CloseGitmoNoway- Thinkourinterrogationmethodsaretough- PrisonersintheMiddleEasttalkquick- Hereswhyt.html.

So what should I do, should I edit down my post, so that I don't come off quite so crazy? Or should I post yet another entry explaining the first? Guess which path I chose. It's hard to admit mistakes. It's even harder to admit that you made a mistake or overreacted in a public forum. It's even harder still to admit all this, and keep a trail of what you said, how you said it, and when you said it, so that your mistakes and your unsanity is there for all too see. I choose the latter, because I feel that I become a better person when I am faced with my mistakes, and I can at them and say 'Oops, I goofed.' and hopefully learn and grow and change.

This really explains why point 4 of the blogger code of ethics is so important:

4. I will preserve the original post, using notations to show where I have made changes so as to maintain the integrity of my publishing.

In general If I have edited posts in the past, I stick to re-tagging/categorizing them, fixing image urls, and/or fixing gammer and spelling mistakes. I fully plan on continuing to mark content-based updates. I'll probably even do the strikethrough thing too.

Expect a personal blogging code of ethics in the future.

Update: He still condoes torture, but dresses it up in nicer language: "In my article I said that I thought that the interrogation techniques used at Gitmo were mild, that I did not consider them to be torture and that I supported their use." Mefite FlamingBore had the good sense to copy a previous version of the text, and posted it here.

the IFTF is doing a study and want to know your personal video gaming history.

And without much of an introduction, here is mine:

I first got into video games when I turned 6. I remember the turning point quite clearly. My Uncle Brian tossed me a bag of quarters. This was one of those life changing moments that just never leaves your brain. From this was born one of my primary obsessions (just ask my wife). I quickly fell into Pac-Man. That Christmas, we got our very own Atari 2600 from my Grandparents, and that was it. We were lost.

Some of the memories I cherish with my father are when on weekends we would go to the Arcade: "Illusions". It was a dimly lit, smoky affair, and I often wonder what was going on inside his head as he followed his hopelessly obsessed 6 year old son. At this point, I was all about Pac-Man and Q*bert, because they were the ones most heavily marketed. But I wanted to play EVERY game, so I also got hooked onto Gyruss (where I almost made it to earth, and got a high score), Star Wars, Mappy, Spy Hunter, Roc and Roll, and Aladdin. I also got into the Raiders of the Lost Ark game, and through playing that, I got heavily into Ancient Egypt. I almost became an Egyptologist.

During the great video game crash, I still played but not nearly as much. In 82/83 Our family got an Adam computer, and I started to learn how to make it go. Once I learnt that I could ... make my own games ... I was in heaven. I spent a lot of my time programming in SmartBasic and SmartLogo. I never really finished any of my games, but It was fun. It was because of this I got into programming. I almost became a Game Designer.

As I grew older, so did the Atari 2600, but I would still play, but much less then I used to. I got more into tabletop RPG's (D&D and TMNT being my 2 favourite) then video games. When I was 11, I learnt about the NES, which had an exact copy of Super Mario Bros. I was so all about Super Mario Brothers... I had to have one. Lo and behold, I managed to save enough money for one, and I was in heaven. And then I found Zelda. At that point the trips to the arcade gave way to trips to the game sales/rental store. Same mall, opposite corner.

When Dragon Warrior came out, I was instantly hooked. When I found that one of the kids from my junior high had Dragon Warrior (Quest) 2, and Dragon Warrior (Quest) 3, I was In heaven. I quickly made friends with him, and we had this agreement where I was learning Japanese, and he was learning English, and we were hanging out lots. I still have all of the old Japanese video game mags, and my notes. Through this, I got a little bit into Anime. I almost became Otaku.

When I was 14, I got my own computer, an Amiga 500. I got into Psygnosis games (Lemmings, Killing Game Show, etc.) and Bullfrog (Populous, Powermonger and Flood). I also got into music. I became a techno musician. (All though, that road was long and full of interruptions). When I got a modem, I got on a BBS "door" game stint. 'Global War', a risk-play-a-like was my favourite. It was also through BBSing that I first got exposed to the Internet. It was mostly UUCP at that time.

I also got a super Nintendo, and played and enjoyed Super Mario World, Legend of Zelda: A link to the Past, Final Fantasy 2 and 3. When I was 15, I finally started growing out of Video Games. In fact, it wasn't until my mid 20's that I revisited Final Fantasy 3, and finished it. Between the ages of 15 and 22, I basically stopped playing video games. When I was 22 however, I got employed as a web designer, and started playing Quake at the Friday afternoon LAN parties, which I still play today.

Today my gaming diet consists mostly of romps through nostalgia, playing all those games I loved; with the occasional new game highly recommended by my friends or brother. With the birth of my baby daughter, I have purposely stayed away from new games (the only new one being Evil Genius). I just don't have time for a new obsession. A perfect example of this is World of Warcraft. All sings point to "you will love this game!". Most of my friends have a WoW obsession, but I just can't afford to take a hit from that crack pipe.

Memory Maps are the big thing hitting flickr at the moment. They are hella cool. Use Google Maps to get a sat photo of where you grew up, and then use Flickrs photo annotation service to write notes about the places you used to play in.

Unfortunately, the sat photo of where I grew up is in shitty shitty resolution, so my growing-up memory map will have to wait. However, I am able to post a memory map of Princess Island, where I spent my days as a dreadlocked busking tarot reader. If you click on the picture, it should take you right to Flickr, where you can view the various notes that I have added to the image.

Posted by Jonnay from Flickr.

Greg is making an effort to post more.. Good on him, I really do enjoy reading what he has to say. One of the things he is going to do to actually post more is to just write, rather then worrying about having a coherent thought, and I think that he is touching on something very important here.

How easy is it to write one, two, or even more posts on your blog, when it takes an hour to craft, edit, spell check, etc. Some people have a gift for writing, and they can whip off a cohesive blog entry while the first cup of coffee settles into their system... I can't.

Another thing that is a big difference is depth. The quality of blog postings that I am after (and that Greg produces for that matter) is beyond the usual 'Hey! Look at the sekrut intarweb meme du jour!' postings. Journal postings an certainly be full of content, but who wants to read about a trip to the supermarket? Liz and Michael are pretty good at journal postings, their livejournals don't put me to sleep with banality and ego stroking, and frequently there is at least a depth to the posting, and sometimes even a lesson... (That is, when Michael isn't being a quizwhore. ;)

But really, my point is, when you're busy talking about parameter patterns in lisp, or writing type systems, its hard to continually come up with content on a daily basis.