Category: Blogs

We’ve lost power in a major neighborhood calamity. All the pole pigs were showering sparks like it was PECO’s own personal 4th of July. We don’t have all that much battery left on the UPS. I will try to arrange alternate power generation.

UPDATE: We now have a 5500W Portable Generator. Ran it for about an hour before the power came back. Now when we lose power (and I’m home) the blog will remain running, along with my Internet, and probably most importantly, the fridge and air conditioner for my office :)

SayUncle speaks of blogging while being busy. He’s been busy starting a new business. Blogging can be difficult thing, and the circumstances that made you start blogging aren’t necessarily what keeps you doing it. Motivation can be difficult, and there are times when there’s just no time, and you have to phone it in. It can feel like a waste sometimes, especially when you look at what you give up by spending time doing something that barely covers what it costs you to do it.

I’ve toyed with the idea of a group blog a-la The Volokh Conspiracy, with multiple contributors and more diverse subject matter (but probably still 2A topics). But there are sticking points. For one, there needs to be a fair way to share in meager revenues once the blog covers costs. In addition, willing contributors that have strong expertise to share, can write, and have a good editorial sense also don’t come along every day. It would be easy to find co-contributors, but keeping the quality of the product high necessitates the use of much rarer, high quality co-contributors. Co-contributors who are willing to blog for essentially no money.

There is no getting around the fact that finding material to write about nearly every day is draining, and that is a necessary, nearly daily task if you want to be successful. Readership is a function of posting frequency. Too little and people don’t bother to check as often, or get bored with you and wander off. Too much and people can’t keep up, which as a reader I always find frustrating. But you have to be consistent no matter what you do, and for one and sometimes two people, that’s hard. I’ve always envied the folks over at Volokh, who can get busy, drop out for a few days or weeks, and count on the other contributors to keep the conversation moving. Phoning it in, I can do five posts or so, spending less than an hour a day. Ordinarily it’s more like two to four hours a day, very little of which is actually writing. Most of it is hunting for material to talk about, and keeping up with things.

While there’s no danger of me quitting any time in the near future, I do question how long I can keep doing this. I am a fairly restless person. If I gave up blogging, I’d have to find something else to do with my time. When I was unemployed, I had to start a side programming project to keep myself from going insane. If I ended up giving up blogging, it would probably be because I found a better (and hopefully more profitable!) way to occupy my free time, and not out of blogging fatigue.

I’m told I didn’t really create this blog, but that someone else did it. I’m going to do something else for a few hours, and see if someone else will come along with a post on some topic of interest. If not, I guess I’ll have to find something to write about then.

One of the disks on our server is acting up and will have to be swapped out at some point. I do keep both onsite and offsite backups, so there is no real danger. But if you notice the blog being slow, it’s because we’re having intermittent disk problems on the mirrored pair. Once I have some time, I’ll go deal with it.

UPDATE: I have swapped out the old drive and put in a new one. The mirrored pair is rebuilding.

House guests arrived late 4th of July eve, so I’ve been entertaining the past few days. I’ll have pictures and video. I took a subject of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II shooting, which sort of doesn’t really count since she’s lived in Texas for some time, but it was her first time on an AK-47 and an AR-15, so I guess that counts for something. Now to go meet up with friend and sometimes co-blogger Jason for some machine pistol shooting.

Clayton’s new book “My Brother Ron.”

Reading over a post of Caleb’s, I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest the whole girls with guns meme is precipitously close to, if not already jumping the shark. I say that not because I have a problem with women in the gun issue, quite the contrary. I think the shark jumping may be close or occurring because women in the gun issue is becoming more and more commonplace, and the schtick of using sex appeal to attract hoards of male readers has been wearing thin on me, and since someone else has written what I’ve been thinking for a while, perhaps others too. Most of the female gun bloggers I’ve kept reading over the years I’ve kept reading because I like their writing, and think they make useful contributions to the community.

Clayton Cramer has a new book out, My Brother Ron, about the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, and its consequences. You can get it either on Kindle or Nook.

John Richardson’s blog, “No Lawyers, Only Guns and Money” seems to have gotten blocked by Norton’s anti-virus software. I use ClamAV when I use anti-virus at all. It’s not as critical in the Mac and Linux world except to scan file servers for stuff deposited by Windows users. If anyone notices this blog on such a list, let me know. Let John know too. Could be that perhaps this is only blogspot. And stop using Windoze :)

A reader took some exception to my post previously on commercial blogging, and I just wanted to clear up some things. As a supporter of Capitalism, I don’t blame anyone for trying to make money, and therefore I don’t blame anyone for the mere act of making money off their blog. I’ve linked to plenty of commercial blog content, and I still link to The Firearm Blog, even though that is now pretty clearly a money making venture. So I don’t particularly have a problem with the idea of people making money off blogging, writing, etc. On balance I’d say that commercial blogs actually do a better job of generating quality content than the many if not most hobby bloggers. But the techniques one uses to optimize a blog for the purpose of maximizing monetary return is going to lead to a very different blog experience.

The main area of concern I have with commercial blogs, is that a core philosophy behind blogging, which is linking to other blogs and content, is in direct conflict with making money off running a web site. It’s never a good idea, from a money making standpoint, to give your readers a reason to click off your content and onto someone else’s. But that’s exactly what blogging is as a matter of core philosophy. There are commercial blogs out there that still make good money, and still largely follow the core tenants of the medium. Most of those started out as hobby blogs and went commercial. Many newer entrants into commercial blogging try to make their blogs communities unto themselves, which is great for keeping an audience, driving loyalty, and in the end, making money, but my fear is the community as a whole will suffer for it. For instance, I’d take Tam‘s advice on an old Smith or other curio any day over most of the commercial gun reviewers out there. I consider Tam’s expertise well and above most other gun writers out there on that subject, and most blog readers won’t get too far in the amateur community without being exposed to some of Tam’s writing. By the same token, Dave Hardy is my go-to source when I have 2nd Amendment legal questions. Clayton Cramer has forgotten more on early American history than most of us know, and I’m not convinced there’s much he’s forgotten. Being in the same community with these minds has greatly enhanced my own knowledge, and through the community of blogging, we’ve all been enriched. My fear is that the spread of commercial blogging will results in the dilution or destruction of the community that’s an important part of what Brian Anse Patrick calls “Horizontal Interpretive Communities.”

So my concern with commercial blogs is not that they make money. I have no problem with the idea of making money. It’s that in order to make money efficiently, your commercial venture has to make like it is the source for gun information online, and that by nature is going to weaken what has, I think, become a key part of our success as a movement.