Thursday, May 31, 2012

Me the blooger....act # 2

I started my first blog in 2004. It is still there at - maheshuh.tripod.com/blog/ . Close to 8 years now.

Blogged quite well in 2007 and 2008. Averaged 1-2 posts per week. Mostly book reviews, my take on certain quotes I liked, some helpful info on situations like buying a car, dealing with auto accident etc. 

2004 to 2006, I think was more of trial and error. So you may see some naive, irrelevant and lame posts in my old blog which may sound like a diary. Like - Went there, saw this move, some random joke etc. But, it has been all part of the experience to discover what I like to blog about. 

In 2009, got my most favorite gadget - Amazon's Kindle - ebook reader. I like to read. I do read a lot.  Kindle device, availability of large number of books at very affordable prices and kindle.amazon.com website got me hooked to reading even more than ever. Happy for that.

Kindle helped in several ways. Find it much easier to read due to limited screen size. Speed reading is  real option and possibility on kindle device. Speed reading emphasizes scanning a group of words at a time and not reading word by word. With limited view area of Kindle, it is easier to practice and perfect speed-reading.

With some books, the subject matter is interesting but you do not like author's style. In olden days, I would not finish the book after making several attempts to complete it. Now with many ebooks with text-speech-enabled, I will have kindle read it for me and I make notes as needed. This is one wonderful feature in kindle. I hope every publisher enables text to speech on their books.

Kindle literally increased the number of books I read by 2-3 times in no time. It just made reading so much more enjoyable. Since most of my spare time is spent on reading, no wonder I am happy to have read so much in last 3 years. Big thanks to Kindle.

But, my other hobby blogging took the back seat. I do not claim that I spent a lot of time writing blog post even when I blogged actively before. I usually wrote whatever came to mind, whenever felt like writing and put it down on a blog post. But even to write a simple blog post, you need little more active participation than lying down comfortably and read away to glory on kindle. To blog, collect your ideas, question what you are writing, see if you can get supporting information, spell-check (minimum), edit (if possible) and post. But, hey ice tea and kindle is far more enticing (at least till now)

But, I do miss on thing. When you write down something or think in concrete terms using pen and paper (or keyboard and screen), ideas become clearer. It is no wonder they say, when you start inking, you start thinking.

So starting to blog again. Hope to post 1-2 posts per month. May be more.

Few things to keep in mind:

1) I do not claim to know much about anything. If I have blogged about something, it is based on something I have read somewhere and probably my knowledge on that subject is limited to that. I am saying this because if you want to engage in a discussion on anything I have written or will write, I may not be knowledgeable enough to engage with you effectively. Feel free to comment, ask questions, may be we can together learn more.

2) I do not believe I write that well or even correctly for that matter. Also I do not edit my posts much at all. So please excuse my writing. Feel free to point out mistakes so that I can improve my writing.

3) Feel free to share.

4) Feel free to let me know about your blog(s). If you read my blog, may be we have some common interests. It's always nice to connect.

This post - how it happened - is  sort of interesting. My cousin, Vikas Hegde (vikasavada.blogspot.com - in Kannada language) expressed similar feelings about him having not blogged for a while. I had similar feelings and started blogging little more regularly starting in the beginning of this month.

But, his post made me think - hey, I should write and intro post to my act 2 as a blogger.

Cheers!

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