140 Characters or Fewer?

My initial thoughts on Twitter?

Great that I can update quickly from im and, theoretically, from my phone.

Fun that I can see some friend's constant thoughts on life and everything.

Limiting in that only two people I know are actually on it.

Where My Peeps At?

Once in a great while, when I have an entire day to kill while it's snowing like crazy outside, I like to check my blog stats. It's not always easy tracking IPs to know exactly who's who, but it's interesting to note where my readers are, so that I can tailor my posts specifically to them.

Of special note:

• My highest number of returning visitors comes from Elmbrook Church. This tells me that either the pastors are checking up on me (unlikely), or that the interns and ministry assistants have very little to do, and that I need to post more to amuse them (far more probable).
• I have readers in Germany, Spain, Michigan, California, Minnesota, Montana, Florida, and Illinois. That's a lot of places, considering I only really know people from Wisconsin and Illinois.
• I'm curious as to who works at Wells Fargo. They read a lot, and hae linked to my page from Josh's. Introduce yourself!
• One of my readers uses a Linux system. That's cool.
  

Mr. Fuchs Got a Blog

Mike finally gave in and started himself a blog. I helped. Currently he's out-posting me for the month of December. But in my defense, he doesn't use spell check, and he has a little more to write home about. Check it out at mafuchs.blogspot.com.

We're Not Idiots Here

Thanks to Josh, I discovered that I could test my blog's readability using a handy, likely highly-accurate online tool. I was pleased to find out that...




I then tested other known blogs, with the same result. I thought to myself, "Ah, what a cute tool, it tells everyone their blog is written at a high level so they feel good about themselves." But then I plugged in a certain difficult-to-swallow blog of a long lost friend, and lo and behold...



So it does work.

The Blogs I Haven't Written

In the past two months or so, I've thought about blogging many topics. Here are a few.

• Sprint
• Baseball season
• Independence
• Goal setting
• Bluetooth
• Oatmeal
• Weddings
• Proving the casual dress code theory
• Cold
• Snow
• christmas concerts
• twitter
  

Consider this a checklist of sorts, a foretaste of blogs to come.

This is my 100th Post

I was going to write something of substance, since I haven't written in awhile, but I thought I'd mark this blogging milestone with some meta blogging.

I happened upon a blog yesterday called Unphotographable. On it, the author details the photos he neglected to take, that would have been good.

I feel that way a lot, regarding my blog. As I go through my day, there's many things about which I would like to blog. Events that I feel merit announcement in the public forum. Products that deserve a review. Opinions that just need airing. But I don't write. I think about the things, and I read others' blogs.

Why? Perhaps I worry that what I have to say will be deemed repetitive (most of my best thinking happens while running), or banal. Or perhaps I get too caught up in what others have to say, that I forget that I have a forum of my own. Or perhaps I'm simply too lazy to exercise my write to free speech and practice the written word.

Whatever the case, now, in my 100th post, I am setting a Writing Goal for December: 15 posts. With some reasonable quality. I may need to create a sticker chart.

New Facination: Kottke.org

All kinds of useful news in my Google Reader. And they even linked to McSweeneys today!