Pressure of Posting
When I first started my blog I had two sections, one for the blog and one called articles, it was maintained until the most recent update of TDP. The idea was that the blog section would be for any old article, while the articles section was for short stories and in-depth write-ups, longer articles with more research. It sort of worked, to start, but my blog posts became longer and my articles dried up. I put a fair bit of time and effort into my posts, I generally won't post in favour of simply posting a link up, I generally think that most people can find the things I would link to on their own. So I tend to focus on giving my view, maybe more general information, maybe doing additional research and other insights into articles or links I find on other blogs (I have a particularly fond article I finished yesterday coming up on A Screen Near You about James Cameron and The Abyss all started by a link from a Binary Bonsai post). I do, however, find things which I would just like to chuck up, maybe with a line of comment, in the same way Kottke uses remaindered links and Matt posts stuff. The only real place on my site is in the asides links. I don't generally bother. Partly because logging in to WordPress, navigating to the right section, creating something with a title and text and assigning a category and all that seems like a lot of hassle sometimes.
Counter to this I am always trying to find some software to keep track of to-do lists, story ideas, birthday present lists and ideas, snippets of information and other things. I was using MediaWiki, but it's ugly and not very intuitive to use. Never underestimate the need to make your products look nice, it makes them easier to bear and, therefore, more likely to be used. I now use a customised version of WordPress, partly because I was used to it, partly because it was easy to change, but it's not ideal. Essentially, I want something that I can update without needing to login (it's run on my PC only so no need to control access), allow quick and easy posting, with the ability to search (I can't be bothered with tags and the like). I'm still searching for perfection.
Back to The Digerati Peninsula and I saw an article in the Lifehacker feed today about Tumblr. I knew nothing about Tumblelogs before today, never heard the term. Wikipedia has this to say on it:
A tumblelog is a variation of a blog, that favors short-form, mixed-media posts over the longer editorial posts frequently associated with blogging. Common post formats found on tumblelogs include links, photos, quotes, dialogues, and video. Unlike blogs, this format is frequently used to share the author's creations, discoveries, or experiences without providing a commentary.
The term "tumblelog" was coined by Why the lucky stiff in a blog post on April 12th, 2005, while describing Anarchaia.
This sounded the sort of thing I was after, so I've set up a Tumblr account and hope to start posting a few links and other stuff. If someone produces a WordPress plugin or a tumbleblog bit of software I may move it onto my domain, for the moment I have a subdomain pointing there.