Yes, you read correctly. I started this blog a little over 5 years ago. Of course, it was much different back then and there have been some periods of inactivity, but the blog in it’s current form pretty much began about 2 years ago. It was about that time that I resolved to post at least once a week, a schedule I’ve held to pretty well and even exceeded for a while. Unfortunately, I’ve mostly regressed to the once a week schedule, which is part of the reason this blog has never really caught on (in terms of readers and links), though I have built up a small and loyal following (which I’m grateful for).
One thing that’s become more and more prevalent here is that I’ll latch onto a concept and explore it from several different angles. Over the past few years, a few thematic threads have been consistently drawn, notably including the need of moderation and tradeoffs (which is part of the reason I identify with Bruce Schneier’s approach to security as a series of tradeoffs) and how self-organization can aid in information aggregation. Naturally, there are some topics (movies, in particular) which I can usually fall back on when the idea well runs dry (or when I lack the motivation to produce something more weighty). In fact, one of the things I wrote about this year was just how difficult it is to run a popular blog. Never having written for a popular blog, it’s mostly speculation, but I suspect that I’d have a reaction similar to Steven Den Beste‘s “Screw this, I’m only going to write about Anime from now on!”
Anyway, since one of the major frustrations about running a blog is that all your hard work essentially smolders in the largely unvisible archives, here are some of the best entries from the past year (all of my best entries from the past 5 years are collected here, and of course the archives are also worth pursuing as well if you really enjoy what you read):
- Probably the most cohesive series of posts this year was the one that started with an examination of Reflexive documentary filmmaking and the lessons it held for the media. In later posts, I applied the same lessons to computer and national security. The post on Polarized Debate also seemed to strike a nerve, as it was posted just after the US elections, when many were happy/despondant at the outcome.
- Arranging Interests in Parallel was a post that pointed out another theme I’ve been developing here…
- An Epic in Parallel Form and Stigmergic Notes examined the concepts of self-organization and stigmergic learning as it relates to the blogosphere. These were followed by a series of other posts looking at what other people were working on that touched on similar concepts.
- I covered the Elections in Iraq by posting almost every link I could find, and then observed the strengths and weaknesses of this particular attempt to aggregate information.
- What is a Weblog? (and Part II) examined the common definitions and conventions of weblogs, forwarding the concept that blogs aren’t a medium so much as a genre.
- Time Travel in Donnie Darko and A Village of Expectation were the best posts about movies…
- Sharks, Deer, and Risk is one of my favorites of the year…
- Other highlights include The Stability of Three and a post about Benjamin Franklin and Blogs. I guess you could say that both Neal Stephenson and Benjamin Franklin played a big part in driving my writing here, as they both figure into several of these best entries…
It’s been a reasonably good year, though I feel like the good content has been declining a bit recently. Motivation isn’t especially high lately either, but blogging is all about ups and downs, so I expect to come out of this soon. In the meantime, feel free to peruse the archives and let me know if I missed anything…