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Send me a few notes on your background: name, age, where you`re from, etc....
Garrett Albright. Age... Let's just say my mid-twenties. I'm from and currently living in Fortuna, California, a small city of about 10,000 people, though I've lived other places in California and also spent a year in Nagoya, Japan.
When did you start blogging ?
I first started experimenting with blogging in college, just as a personal blog, but none of my blogging attempts ever lasted very long before I got bored and gave up on them. In late 2006, I began developing SigFeeder (http://sigfeeder.com/), and set up a blog detailing the development of that as it progressed. I increasingly found myself blogging about other tech things besides SigFeeder there, which gave me the idea, somewhat on a whim, to start a separate blog just for those sorts of things. That became Ray Gun Robot, which first came online on the eighth of February this year.
Would you like to share with us the URL of your first post?
That would be Installing X11 for MacPorts: http://raygunrobot.com/ archives/Installing-X11-for-MacPorts However, my first three articles are ones that were originally from the SigFeeder blog and were published earlier. The first new article for RGR was the first Today's Links, a list of links I found interesting. The first Today's Links wasn't very tech-related, but later iterations of it were more on-topic. That article would be here: http://raygunrobot.com/archives/Todays-Links
What is your motivation to continue blogging?
Friends, networking, verification of information, recognition?It's hard to say. This time around, I've found blogging more fun than my earlier attempts; I suppose because I have things to write about besides myself. I enjoy sharing my knowledge with others, and, invariably, when researching my articles, I end up learning a few new things myself. Of course, the fact that I might eventually be able to make a little money from this is incentive as well, though it hasn't really happened yet.
What´s your inspiration source?
Daily life, friends, worldwide web... Just about everything. Things I've done in the past, things I've done in my future, things I see mentioned in forums or chat rooms or other blogs on the net... heck, I did one article on an old piece of junk computer I found buried in my closet the other day.
(http:// raygunrobot.com/archives/The-cheapest-PC-of-all-time-The-Timex- Sinclair-1000 ) I try not to limit my sources of inspiration.
What purpose/intent do you want to achieve with your blog?
That's a good question. I suppose the intent is to share my knowledge with others while learning a few new things myself. And, as I said, if I can make a little money at it too, so much the better.
Choose one sentence to describe your blog?
The by-line I often use when pitching the blog is "Tech with Personality." That's what I've been trying to achieve with my articles; not just tech and computer news and reviews, but those things interlaced with my own personal perspectives and experiences.
Who reads your blog and who should read it?
Well, I don't really have any real statistics as to who's reading it. But the intended audience is just anyone who's interested in technology and the effect it can have on our lives. I try to write the articles with enough background information so that people don't have to be huge tech-heads themselves to read it, but that people who *are* more knowledgeable will still enjoy reading it.
What do you like most on blogging? Communication, participation on different projects... I suppose the things I like about blogging are the things that make blogging different than more traditional types of written media; the interaction writers can have with readers and other writers, the fact that there's no editors telling you what you can and can't write, and the immediacy granted by the use of the Internet and the non-existent overhead. In a word, blogging is personal.
The top 3 blogs you read?
It would be tough to narrow it down to just three. Since there's a lot of good ones out there that already get a lot of traffic, I think I'll just limit it to three which are not so popular but still very interesting: Mac Geekery: http://www.macgeekery.com/ Some good Mac-centric tips and tricks for a wide range of skill levels. These guys know how to do strange and obscure stuff with a Mac that I often didn't even know could be possible. Mari - diary: Watashi to Tokyo: http://smt.blogs.com/mari_diary/ A blog written in English by a woman living in Tokyo. It can be a bit rough to read sometimes as she has far from a native-level grasp of English, but she updates quite frequently and with long entries; I admire her fortitude. I know from experience that few English students in Japan take their attempts at learning the language to this level. Anyway, she often blogs about news and trends in Japan. It can be quite reminiscent for me. Dosh Dosh: http://doshdosh.com/ I read a lot of marketing and promotion blogs for ideas on ways to increase the income of RGR and make it known far and wide, including the big names like Chow and Harper. But this one's a little more fun to read than others; maybe it's because of the goofy name, or the fact that all of the articles start with a picture of an anime girl for no particular reason. It just feels younger and fresher. >
How do you generate traffic?
Various ways. I use my own SigFeeder to promote it in the forums I post in; I also post comments in others' blogs often (but only if I have something substantial to contribute; I don't appreciate comment spam, so I don't do it myself). I occasionally Digg my own articles, and though I've never had one get two digits' worth of Diggs, that always brings in at least several dozen readers to the article in question.
What is the reason for visitors to return to your blog and become readers?
I try the good old Content is King approach. I try to keep thequality high on every article I post, and several times I've started writing something, only to realize that what I'm writing about just wouldn't be very interesting or informative to the reader, so I've scrapped it and started over. That's not to say I don't do lame filler posts now and then -- the Today's Links articles are an example -- but even with those I make sure they're at least relevant and on-topic as much as possible. I also try to update at least once every weekday, though sometimes other commitments or "blogger's block" makes that difficult.
Do you want to say anything to other blogger?
Yes. If you're not having fun and learning with every entry you're writing then you're probably going to get bored with blogging pretty quickly. Blogging should never be something you feel obligated to do; you should *want* to do it. Perhaps you need to shift the focus of what you're writing about. It worked for me.
Your URL: Once more, that'd be http://raygunrobot.com/
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