Bring Back the 80's!

Blogs

I love blogs. I never really read the news before RSS came about. Yeah, sure, I worked at my high school newspaper, and the only time I've shown up in photos in yearbooks aside from the student listings was in every photo on the journalism page that year. Sure, I sysadminned a news website for four years, I was production manager and eventually layout editor for a newspaper for two years, but all of these jobs can be accomplished just fine without actually reading the news. In my case that strategy worked fine.

My problem is that news has always been the same. Since I was a kid and my grandparents flipped the dial over to ABC every evening at six, some detached monotone has been droning about things that haven't mattered to me. At the time I figured it was an acquired taste, that by the time I left college, I would be listening to the news on the radio, watching it on tv, and/or reading the paper every morning. But no, I didn't. I also didn't stop watching cartoons or listening to 80's music, so maybe it's just me.

One way or another, news and I just didn't get along until one day when Jon challenged one of the few shreds of ego that I posess — that of being the best coder in the room — by saying that if bend.com didn't put up an RSS feed soon, he would just open up a can of skizzle and make one himself. So I jumped into the world of RSS that I had only a slantwise view of before. (hey, in '95 I used to argue with Bob Dorr that this "webpage" thing was crazy and unsustainable, and gopher was the way to go :) Soon I had hooked up the blogs of all the local rabble-rousers, and Wired and Slashdot (which I later boycotted) and was reading the next generation of news religiously every day.

It has actually gotten to the point where I've wound up with more time/interest to read news than news to read. Gmail likes to plug Google News when I empty my inbox, but that's the 6 o'clock variety that holds no interest for me.

One thing I have heard more than once about blogs is that they are a great way for people to publish things, and whatever you want is out there, but the greatest challenge is to find what is worth reading in the millions of personal outlets available online. My tack will be the same as it is for any media — books, movies, tv — I always trust the sources I find reputable to deliver the content I will be satisfied with.

I like certain authors so I read all their books. I like certain directors so I watch all their movies. I like certain channels (spike, comedy central, cartoon network, sometimes abc family) so I hover around them looking for tasty morsels of show. I intend to do the same for blogs.. but where do I find the good blogs? I'm not looking for the good entries among all the blogs, I'm looking for the good blogs and trusting that that's where I'll find all the juicy entries.

I currently have all of the local blogs who have feeds and a few non-local ones (because I know you all and you all rock and if you didn't I would bitch about it until you did :) and Wired. Outside of locality I would look for some shared interest or subject matter. Are there, like, blogrolls sortable by category or any such beast out there? I would like to be able to trackback something that scoops Jake every now and again.

Thanks in advance :)

Posted by jesse at August 25, 2004 02:44 AM