So finally I’ve started blogging!… after years of courtship with various mediums… With so many great starts and not so great follow-ups…Hope I keep up this time around.
I’d always wanted to put out my thoughts on the web, not only for getting them heard but also show up on the Google….After all if you don’t appear in Google, you literally don’t exist!
Hmmm so what was it that kept me away from this wonderful medium for so long time. I started pretty early, the time when blogger was in the rage (before Google bought it), created a blog and wrote a post and waited for days for it to show up on Google Search! And it never showed up
Then wondered if I can start blogging under a pseudonym about stuff that really don’t matter to anyone…That was the time when I was enamoured by the cartoon series: The Mummy & The Secrets of the Medjai. So when I was looking out for a title for my new blog, I dint think twice to name it after the same series. Don’t even remember posting anything on it though… And finally blogger deleted both of em.
Played around with few other domains including Geocities, msn sites and all for a while…But none really stuck out. It was at that time that Google came up with the GooglePages. Jumped at the opportunity, created a site, put out content (copy paste from some good mails, actually) in multiple tabs and in a day or two had a complete website with around 7,8 pages including a few original content. I’d even posted a few books in the public domain for the benefit of visitors. Added stat-counter and set its initial count to somewhere around 10000 (common anything less than that would give away me as a newbie!). And there it was! Finally a page that will show my name on the search engines. Got it registered with Google webmaster thing and waited for it to get indexed. A week went by, then a month…My site never showed up in their engine for the first 3 months and the initial enthusiasm weaned off (Offline life was a little hectic then!). Then finally it did show up. Now the page is no more as I seem to have opted out of migration to the Google Sites by mistake
But one good thing about the Google pages was that it offered me a way to host media files on the web. So started using the site to write media-rich scraps on friends’ scrap books…That made me look a bit of a techno-wiz in the eyes of so many people
And I thoroughly enjoyed it…Once people were made to understand what I really did, the magic & the admiration went off…Just as they say in The Prestige – People will clamour for your secrets. But once they know it, you are worth nothing to them. But dissemination of knowledge is also important right. And this stuff was not a ’secret’ in the Prestige’s sense and I don’t have to make living hiding things from people. So no harm done!Ok I’m just veering off the topic. Lemme get to my next blog. It was a Knowledge Management initiative for the employees of the company and was closed to the outside world. But when you have 60,000 potential readers, this ‘closed’ thing is no longer an hindrance for any. Even there, I was a pioneer…Among the first few 100 bloggers. Put in some good content. Got some points for that also. In those days of initial euphoria, serious contents were frowned upon. People after all, turn to blogs to relax from their stressed lives and they wanted perfect ‘masala’ posts with all those lame jokes scourged around the net & comic strips. Had some success following this strategy and I was happy getting comments (they were my friends though…But commentators nevertheless)…Ad when I started putting out some serious stuff, those comments dried up and my posts with them…Started a series aimed at simplifying Science topics but dint go after the first post cause of the wonderful response I got.
Then jabbed around blogger for a while, trying to get paid by the AdSense stuff. There I found that I had to literally plagiarize stuff to get the eyeballs. Decided against it and surrendered all my interests to a friend of mine, who continued it for a while and stopped after looking at the returns from the AdSense which never went above a few dollars.
And now I’m finally back at blogging. This time I’m in for a long term. Yes, back then when I was a student and a fresher, I was impatient at getting results. Was frustrated at times looking at why some sites captured so much attention while some got completely ignored. Then the truth dawned upon me that it is the content that rules. And when you are doing something with an end result in mind, you end up becoming frustrated and dis-illusioned when the end is not something that you wanted.
Now I’ve started blogging, not for getting those mentions in Google Searches, Not for scoring those measly points for getting a branded coffee mug, Not for all those dollars and pounds from the AdSense system. I’m blogging for the joy of writing, for the joy of putting out what I think, for the pure joy of capturing my thoughts for eternity. I plan to follow a disciplined approach this time. At least a blog a week while starting and increasing the frequency as the momentum builds up until blogging every alternate day becomes a habit!
Ok so this has been a really long post for a ‘Hello World’. But this no longer is my first Hello World. Hope I don’t have to write an Hello World in another blog at another time…And because of Ken & Dennis, we still have to put up with this Hello World thing, every time we start something new in the computer field!
And as Sir Francis Bacon said, writing maketh an exact man…Making the leap from a full man to an exact man…Hello World, Here I come…
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