This post is number 401. Over 3 years of my life documented. Wow, I never thought I would get this far. Things sure have come a long way since post number 1!
In fact, here is post number 1:
One of the best authors in the world is back and blogging:
Succinct!
I shudder to think how many words are in this blog in total. At least a novels worth. Why can I write this and yet not finish my real novel? They both require the same type or concentration and effort. My novel sits at 110 thousand words and needs another 30 thousand. This blog must easily eclipse that. I think perhaps it is because, with a blog, I have an audience. That is the attractive thing about blogs, you feel that you are talking to others. There is nothing as pleasing as having someone come up to you and say how much they liked your writing. I have had someone I never met before stop me in the street. Seriously. He was a fan, he said. I didn’t even think anyone was reading this stuff!
I started blogging because I wanted to sharpen my writing tools. I had read that writing was a vice, and must be encouraged like a vice or it will never be any good. The best way to become a writer is simply to write. All the time. I don’t worry too much about hitting a home-run every entry. I know that some will be caught and some will sail out of the park like shooting stars. I just never know which will be which.
In a world full of blogs and now full of facebook, I find my writing is moving away from “reporting” stuff that is happening on the web. I still post the “cool things” I find, but I get much more out of actually saying something to my audience that they might connect with. I also like righting wrongs (as I see them) and nothing gets my writing juices flowing like a poorly written or researched mainstream media article!
So, in celebration of 401 posts, here is my personal top 5:
5. Men, means what? Something I wrote on the way into work one day. It was essentially for my wife so that, perhaps, she can understand why I love airsoft so much and what it means to me personally. I posted this on the top airsoft forums on the web and received so many positive feedback points (known as rep points; given for good topics) that my points count went from 10 to over 100!
4. Weakened Goulbane Walkthrough This was a write up I did for a very tough quest in Everquest 2. I include it here because it was my first popular post. I have more hits on this post and more comments here and on the EQ2 forums than almost any other. This post was the defacto walkthrough for that quest and, if I say so myself, quite funny to read for me even now.
3. The Story of my New PC This epic three part post recounted the unmitigated nightmare that was ordering a very expensive PC from a completely terrible supplier. The horror of those weeks haunts me even now and I think I got more gray hairs from that than any other event in the last 5 years. Writing it, making it funny and laughing about it with my friends was the most important catharsis imaginable. If any post made the blog worth while for me, it was this one.
2. Ask Jeeves is alive! Jeeves was a ’semi intelligent’ search engine I used to use back before Google owned the web. You could query the system using simple plain English and the AI was supposedly able to discern what you meant. One afternoon, I came up with the idea of simply chatting to it. This was the result. An amazing afternoon and one, that if it had happened today, would have gone to the top of Digg I have no doubt. This was the funniest post I ever wrote.
and finally
1. V for vendetta, the ethics of terror This is the post that means the most to me. It actually came about because watching V for Vendetta pushed my mind over the limit. That film codified for me how I felt about the War on Terror that is even now being fought in all our names. I had suffered a terrible feeling of dread about the WOT, but wasn’t able to get a good handle on it up until this day. This is the post that has meant something more. I will not forget my Muslim friend who said that he had printed it out and shown it to his friends. It is a tirade against the current thinking, against the stupidity of our governments and the futility of their actions; the dishonour and suffering. If anything, such suffering is getting worse every day. The Internet will soon be the only place one can comment against what is supposedly a democratic action and it is up to all bloggers to keep blogging on whatever they damn well want. I know that rants are the easiest things to write, but still this post is my favourite.
Others could have included my recent post on procrastination, or my airsoft post about headshots. All ones I think are worthy are here:
What would your top 5 be?
Anyway, back to working on my novel. There is much one can write about in life, many ideas that you wished you had written down. Ideas are the most important thing in the entire world. Ideas are freedom. Without ideas, one can never be free. Ideas are the foundation of humanity, the seed of us all and ideas are bullet proof.
Here’s an idea, why don’t you write some down? You never know, you may even spark the next revolution of the mind.
Basho.
Basho & Cesca are traveling with:
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