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Andrey “Rarst” Savchenko —  — Thoughts, Web — blog, list

Two things that make tech blogs awesome

According to comment by Klemen of brumec.org made at chain reaction to post of mine lame follow-up is expected for sarcastic posts. :) Last time I ranted what makes me skip and drop tech blogs from my reading . This time I am sharing my thoughts on what makes me read them in first place.

Like-mindness

I am techie. Not too close to a TV-comical image of high nerd standards (even if some people are fast to put that label on me). I like things that interest me and dislike things expected and forced on me with “it’s proper” reasoning.

awesome_reading_nerd

awesome_reading_nerd

Photo by pipeapple

Tech blogs are made by people like me and for people like me. Some of them at least. I could dig up some deep psychological passage from my memory or bookshelf… Is anyone going to argue that having that “not alone” feeling is important to humans?

Match my thoughts and I am hooked.

  • Post stuff I like and I will live in your comments and spend as much time replying there as at my own blog.
  • Start a project I like and I will sacrifice my weekend evenings to contribute.
  • Offer me service I want and I will be first in line of beta-testers with hungry look in my eyes and willing to send ton of feedback and ideas your way.

Try to hype some corporate crap and you will get yourself fanboy army… But not me.

Optimism

As I said I don’t care about “proper” life much.

  • Couldn’t care less who is next president of whatever going to be (hint - it’s safe to take down voteobama banners already).
  • Or economical crisis - this planet is in freaking permanent economical crisis.
  • Or how is school/college/university/work life is hard.

Tech blogs don’t share a story about bad neighbor without recipe how to take your revenge with camcorder and motion detection software. I am not looking for bitching about problems, I am looking for solutions .

awesome_reading_positive

awesome_reading_positive

Photo by erix

  • for software that makes something easier;
  • for gadgets that will be good replacement to ones I have;
  • for hobbies I might pick up;
  • for books I’d want to read;
  • for sites I’d want to visit;
  • etc, etc, etc.

See a pattern? These are interesting and positive things. Tech is (mostly) about new ideas and progress. Not sad crap .

Way shorter list this time. And things much more important to me. What is important to you? What makes you read?

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13 Comments

  • Klemen #

    Humour and opinion are different things. Humour is often trying to make post funny for the sake of success with social traffic. Opinion is adding own experience to the story like comparing to similar stuff or sharing usage history. There can be both but you won’t find good blogs that repeatedly stick to mindless sarcasm. And sticking to pure tech is simply boring, it’s not what blogs are.
    I hope you don't mind answering your comment from ghacks here =) Humour is indeed a good thing, when it is not just purely sarcastic. Maybe I should tell you a little story :) I love in Slovenia (find it on a map, if you can!), and we don't have many tech blogs. Somehow all the people can read in English, and we just stick to that, mostly. There are a few tech news sites, but they are mainly a front-end to a tech forum, if you know what I mean. So this few tech blogs or news sites actually look lot alike, and since there's no other (good) inspiration and no-one to look up to, they (well, not all of them) use the same kind of intense sarcastic "opinions". For example: we read about the security breach in the British government, and the author's comment to this would be soooo obvious - like "don't go to britain" or "thanks god i'm not british" or "ooops.. they did it again"... Which adds nothing to the story. We all know they are sloppy, but c'mon, you could (and you would) come up with something better, something informative, like "this happened for the eleventh time this month" or smth like that... Maybe I'm just frustrated with the tech news authors here in my homeland and I should start my own tech blog =) Thanks for reading this internal rant and thanks for linking. Have a nice day.

  • Rarst #

    @Klemen I edit your comment a bit so quote would be more obvious. >I love in Slovenia (find it on a map, if you can!) I am slightly farther to the east, hardly a problem. :) Yep, pure sarcasm just because you don't want (have?) anything to say sucks. Still plenty of blogs can manage great post while being completely sarcastic. It's not really humor anymore, more like differentiating from crowd. I am greatly enjoying reading newish tech blog with such style recently, have to do a post on it. Personally I use sarcasm as personality warning. If I stay shut I can pass for something harmless and exploitable. That provokes some people. So bit of negative attitude is my "do not disturb" sign. Thanks for your visit and extensive comment, hope you don't find my blog too boring. :)

  • Rob Dunn #

    Amen, brother!

  • Klemen #

    So it is Andrey... So that's like Russian or Ukrainian? Maybe you'd be so kind and point me to some of this interestingly sarcastic blogs you're talking about, I'd like to see their style. And so far I am not bored, but it's my first day here... +1 for the RSS, and we'll see how it goes in the future =)

  • Rarst #

    @Rob Hey! Hadn't seen you in a while here, how is it going? :) @Klemen Around that. :) And I like teasing about upcoming posts so not saying. Thanks for subscribing!

  • Blog for Beginners #

    That's the reason why you stay up late on wprecipes.com and "live in its comments".... must be one of your favorite blogs I figure. Jean did very well on his first month. Yan

  • Rarst #

    @Yan I like wprecipes form a lot. :) Easy to get snippet I need personally as well. Also need to get a clue in PHP overall, it's not one of my tech skills and I could use it for my blog. btw I don't really split blogs to favorite and not, I read everything that comes into my RSS reader and comment as long as I want to say something and in the mood to do it. Strangely I am less likely participate when there is ton of comments already like at your blog. :) I like to read every comment if I start and when there are dozens of them it's no longer manageable.

  • Nihar #

    I agree with Yan. I have see you at wprecipes. I also like that blog very much because, it come up with lot of new tips on wordpress every day.

  • Rarst #

    @Nihar Well wprecipes posts stuff bloggers like and sticks to providing useful content. Obviously fits my formula of awesome. :) Its growth was simply explosive because of that.

  • software developers #

    Interesting, great post, i love the dog pic lmao Thanks for bringing this up

  • Rarst #

    @software developers Yeah, I should do something like that with cat of mine one day. :)

  • The DataRat #

    "Tech blogs are made by people like me and for people like me" To which I'd add: Tech blogs are by people I like. Blogs, generally, are ~very~ personal. Ask your readers. I bet most of them feel they have some kind of personal relationship with you on some level. Perhaps this ought to be surprising for tech blogs at least. I mean, technology is only one step below science ! However readers develop a personal affinity for tech blogs that's based upon the owner's/writer's disposition, predilections, and -shall we say- charisma. Content being critical. As well as the manner content is managed. But presentation is at least half about the personality of the presenter. The DataRat .

  • Rarst #

    @DataRat Blog's personality is interesting matter. Some blogs are openly non-personal and still interesting. Some have more of collective image with multiply authors blending. And feeling of very personal connection is widely spread and just as misleading. :) You can't really know a person reading hundred or two words he wrote today.