South by Southwest Blog

South by Southwest - by Carol Gee

The logo is "borrowed" from the masthead of a Community College, airbrushing out the original "online education" tag at the bottom. I try to provide online education, but not the kind the college does. I borrow quite a few things, but I try to be discreet about it, and not harm anyone's best interests.

My primary blog description at South by Southwest - my "main" blog -reads:

"From my current vantage point: IDEAS, reflections, the day’s thoughts, plus occasional impressions, and questions. I'll credit favorite writers and opinion makers, discuss things that bug me, and I'll comment on little lunacies characterizing current events. My bias is towards the Progressive end of the political spectrum. My view is grounded in the existential questions of finding meaning in suffering, maintaining purpose in life, and defending sanity in our occasionally insane world."

I have been blogging since March 29 of last year (265 posts), almost every day when I was in town. So it will soon be a year. There were several days when I did not want to continue. But I eventually found something I wanted to say. I generally write about politics, current events, thoughts about holidays, or other things going on in the world. I have had relatively few comments, probably because of the low readership. Rarely do as many at twenty people come by the site.

I have added lots of "bells and whistles" to the blogpage, such as SiteMeter, a long Bloggroll, Technorati, Pingomatic, etc. I am able to see who has linked to my site, and also a few things about who has visited. I have a little "notes" section called "Sideblog." And I have learned a certain amount of HTML, just enough to get by. I can link to other sites, include "tags," and I have started to include at least one image at the beginning of each blog post. I have learned to use two different browsers at the same time so that I can write and do research at the same time.

Has the blog met my needs? Probably so, though I would like to increase my readership. I have not figured out how to do that with out "pimping" the site. But I will do a little more reading about that and make a little more effort at some point.

What have I gained by blogging? I have improved as a reader and writer. I feel like I am really keeping up, at least with politics and world affairs. I have had some interesting dialogues with other web surfers. Perhaps I have made a contribution; I don't know about that. But it has been a great deal of fun most of the time. So I'll keep on keeping on!

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