Sunday, October 26, 2008

Yep, I ditched my old blog. It ran surprisingly well, considering that I wrote the software behind it when I was in high school, but now that I want to actually start blogging again the cost of fixing it up really outweighs the benefits of maintaining my own custom system.

Since this is my first post, I feel obligated somehow to explain this blog's title. Beginning at the end: I refer to myself as a hacker, not because I go and do rude things to people's myspace profiles (like some idiots that call themselves hackers), but because there's not a better word yet for what I'm trying to convey. When I say hacker, I maen it in the sense that Eric Raymond uses it: a person that does interesting and unexpected things, mainly with computers.

'Lazy' comes from the simple, incontrovertible fact that I'm pretty darn lazy. Oh, not always - if I get a really neat idea, I'll run with it for hours without realizing it - so maybe a better way to phrase it is that I find it hard to focus on work that bores me to death. That really doesn't fit at all in a title, though. :( Many people think that laziness means laziness just means lying around on the couch watching TV or something; clearly, they're not doing it right. Laziness doesn't have to mean 'doing no work': I take it to imply 'doing less work', which in the long run, ends up being far more useful. For instance, nearly everything related to programming can be thought of as a form of laziness - but that's a topic for a future post.

This is really the most important reason that I started a blog here, rather than fixing up my old blogging system. There is one common thread that runs through this blog's title, and it is a deep-seated distaste for reinvented wheels. I could make my own blog; I could do a lot of things. The real question is which of the things I could do are most worth doing. Maintaining software that only I would ever use isn't a terribly useful or fulfilling way to spend my time. Laziness simultaneously drives and is driven by this; if something doesn't seem interesting or useful, I just won't do it, but by reducing the amount of time I spend doing it, I open up time for other, more interesting things.

Next, why did I start blogging again? Every once in a while, I feel the need to blather on for a while about something which the majority of people I know wouldn't care at all about. Now, my options are basically as follows:
  • Grab whoever's awake, and talk their ear off, boring them to sleep halfway through - then rinse and repeat
  • Write it down somewhere where nobody will ever read it, wasting a good chunk of time for my own peace of mind
  • Start a new blog already
Needless to say, the third option has been looking better and better.

So, what can you expect from this blog? Don't really know at this point, but probably anything that I find interesting enough to actually write about. Here's to the new blog; hope it fares better than the old one.

3 comments:

Kiriska said...

You know, I find you to be far, far too eloquent to be a mere programmer. That isn't to say that all programmers are monstrous, grammar-murdering idiots, but as you say, it's all derived from laziness on their part, but I see you at least find expressing yourself in a clean and admirable rhetoric to be of interest and worthy of your time.

But I also find your definition of "laziness" to be disputable because "doing less work" is also synonymous with "efficiency," which is what all the technology people probably prefer. After all, often is the case that quite a bit of work must first be put in before efficiency is achieved, so that seems a bit paradoxical, right? I mean, a heck of a lot of work was put into a computer before it became efficient for anyone to use it.

But heeeeey, what do I know? I failed logic. :P

Anyway, it's good to see you blogging again because I don't have enough friends that blog -- decidedly lame on their part. Rock on.

Kiriska said...

Oh, by the way, for future reference, I suggest giving your blog posts titles -- it makes linking easier for anyone who might find that they want to link your post, and besides, the first 30 character string of your post doesn't always make a good permalink or archive title.

P. Static said...

Eh, you can put titles on posts? Thanks for the tip :x

re: laziness, yeah, it's debatable. Even in the early days, though, computers saved a *lot* of effort - they did arithmetic really well, they were just kind of a pain to use.