Russell Beattie

Diego Doval just did a weblog redesign, combined his two weblogs and added categories in a new "d2r" weblog. Very nice! Great job Diego!

This big change seems to be due to a Blog Crisis that Diego went through the other day:

Over the past few days I've been noticing that there is no rhyme or reason to what I blog about. ARF is a mess. Even if it's technology in general and what directly concerns me of it in particular, the topics still jump all over the place. I can as easily post personal comments, ideas, news on spaces, or link to other news or blogs, with or without comments. I tried to separate a bit by blogging about non-tech stuff on my other weblog but that hasn't really done the trick, since there are just too many different tech-things that I find interesting.

I think anyone who's blogged for a while does this - I did it the other day myself. Sometimes it calls for a major redesign to get you back on track, sometimes it just takes a reminder of what your spending so much time doing and why. My redesign earlier this month really energized me. It just felt fresh and that was great - but then I got into a rut a few days ago, and worked my way out of it by remembering that what I'm doing is supposed to be fun... That always helps.

My opinion on categories is quite firm and very simple: it's all me. I have no desire to start dividing up what I'm talking about so that someone can filter out half of what I'm saying. It doesn't work that way. Categories always comes up after I start one of my anti-Republican rants (reminder: they still suck) and I get comments or emails about how I should have categories so they can edit these types of opinions out. Yeah right... if you like what I have to say about tech or mobile or culture or family you can't just suddenly decide I'm an idiot when it comes to other important issues. What do you think my brain stops working suddenly? Bozos... Okay, sorry. I'm getting hot under the collar again. Anyways... categories are out.

Diego, however, and a lot of other people feel the need to have them. I can see how they're useful for dividing up topics especially when you have a project that you're supporting like Spaces. Anyways, it's nice redesign and hopefully it charges Diego up because he seems like a guy who has a lot of interesting things to say.

-Russ