Mike English's blog

I am considering using this blog for topics other than technology – namely theology and music.

Should I create separate blogs? Separate categories?

I’d like to keep writing, but my interests are rather diverse.
Perhaps if I write consistently enough, a gestalt of the whole will emerge.

Watch this space…

Sorry, everyone. I had really hoped to keep this updated more often, but this semester has turned out to be a rather busy one. I’d like to write something about trust, privacy, and activity streams, but I just haven’t had time to read up on the latest developments. Would anyone care to explain foaf+ssl to me?

Also, when I have time I’m going to be changing some things with the blog to clean it up and make it run a little better. Consider this a heads-up that change is ahead.

I’ll leave you with a nod to Chris Saad’s post about Peered Data Portability.

I really like this graph:

Why am I starting this blog now? Why start a blog at all? Aren’t there enough already?

If my goal was to jump right to the top of the “A-list” heap, starting a blog like this would be the wrong way to do it. But that’s not my goal, not at this point. Right now my goal for this space is more personal than that. I’m exploring what online identity means to me, and I’m creating balance in my life.

Balance? What does tinkering around with blogging and computers have to do with balance?

Easy, it’s my perfect hobby. The last time I really got down to the nuts and bolts of tinkering with something technical was back in highschool when the coolest (geeky) thing I could think to do was dual-booting my self-built PC and compiling unstable gentoo linux kernels with patches for devices most people didn’t have working yet. It made me happy.

Now I’m a fourth year undergraduate student studying theology at a small Midwestern Catholic university who finds most of his free-time spent reading and pondering philosophical dilemmas. While I find this immensely interesting, most of these philosophical dilemmas are as old as time, so pondering them for very long isn’t very satisfying – in fact, it can be downright depressing.

Working on a website like this offers me an opportunity to redirect my excess brainpower toward an activity that will hopefully provide some mild sense of satisfaction.

So here I am, rediscovering my predilection for technogeekery, and exploring new dimensions of self. I couldn’t be happier.