Blogs, blogging, bloggers

After reading a post on the excellent Over The Ages Wisdom blog where the question was raised about why commenting wasn't so popular, I decided to comment with my take on the phenomenon. However, having done so it actually made me think more deeply about why I create this stuff and why others might too.

To be honest, it was the starting of the above blog that got me thinking why didn't I do it? I had done some writing previously but mostly as a sort of therapy when I was hacked off with something. It was created on a blogging site but I never promoted it.

So what changed and why start again now?

I guess that a certain amount of vanity was involved in that I felt I could still write creatively and also there were things rattling around in my head that I perhaps wanted to get off my chest.

Seeing Carol's blog take shape, I realised that if I did do something, it wouldn't follow as disciplined an approach of trying to create something each day. I preferred to only create a post when I felt the need to do so.

Taking that as read, I accepted that even if my posts were sporadic, they might cause some debate and I feel that is always good.

Bloggers?

As I've explained, there is probably a certain amount of vanity involved in why bloggers do what they do, a feeling that they have something worthwhile to say along with an arrogance that other people should know what they think.

In addition though, there is a perverse pleasure in seeing if what you write gets a reaction. This might explain why a lack of comments becomes a little frustrating. For me though the proof of the pudding is not the comments but the page view statistics that I believe most of the blogging sites happily provide you with. Not having created that much so far I can't claim success in the last measure but you never know.

What do you think?

As you can imagine, I don't expect much in the way of feedback from this article even if there is a comments button, but hopefully it will get fellow bloggers thinking.

Well what do you know

I've managed to recover my old blog so if you are interested, you can find it at The Loneliness of The Long Distance Drummer and see if my writing style has changed from the time between 2007 and 2011 when I created it and what I'm waffling about now.

The title of the blog will definitely surprise Carol.

Guilty pleasures

Musical snobbery is everywhere but someone once said to me that there are only three kinds of music, music that you like, music that you don't like and music that you haven't heard yet. As a result I try not to be dismissive of what other people like but I have been guilty in the past of not owning up to some of my guilty pleasures. So for now here's the first of mine.

It's a classic song not done by the original artist, which was Marc Bolan and T Rex, in case you had forgotten, but it is by The Power Station.

The Power Station were perhaps a typical 'supergroup' but then again perhaps not in that they consisted of two members of Duran Duran in Andy & John Taylor, with Robert Palmer and in my view the undisputed star of the outfit, Tony Thompson from Chic. Who would have thought that a drummer from a disco band could play with such power and aggression and also to have such a drum sound. I would love to be able to groove with the same quality, tone and feel. Simply awesome.

Enjoy the video

Stargazing Live

I have a certain fascination with space and astronomy so it was with some anticipation that I started watching the BBC programmes this week. I'm really glad I did. The series, short though it was, contained plenty of interesting learning and no small measure of entertainment.

The combination of Dara O'Brien and Professor Brian Cox make the show what it is with their combination of informed humour and passion for the subject but the highlight for me was one of their guests. Carolyn Porco was passionate, informative and humourous all at the same time and it was infectious. She made you feel passionate too and that set me thinking about what makes a good teacher so watch out for a blog post about that because it has a resonance with what I'm involved with at work.

If you have the slightest interest in anything space related, if you didn't see it and can find it on iPlayer, I'd recommend watching it.

So why this name for the blog?

It's quite simple really if I think about it!

I like loud, often bizarrely shaped electric guitars played through large amplifiers. I play normal acoustic drums which can easily drown out guitarists with small, underpowered amps and where would bike racing be without the screaming noises coming from the bike engines.

None of the above require much effort to be loud and proud so that accounts for the effortless bit and to an extent the noise too but sadly the version with the correct spelling was already taken on Blogger so I needed to change it.

With it all being just typed randomly from my brain it's effortless in that regard too.

In the words of Alexander Orloff from CompareTheMeerkat 'Simples!'

World Wide Waffle

Well, here it is, the collective wit and wisdom of a chap of a 'certain age' who has a passion for noise, power and general excess. I can't promise much by way of an overarching theme, that's why I've called this first post 'World Wide Waffle' because it perhaps illustrates the likely meandering nature of what you might find here.

For my sins, and as I have alluded to already, I have a passion for guitars and drums as well as most forms of road based two wheeled motorsport so there will no doubt be content along those themes as well as no doubt other random subjects that pique my interest.

I'm going to try to update this thing but make no promises of a regular schedule because there are other things in life that float my boat more.

Hope that you enjoy it.