Category: Blogging

Going Outside

We’ve all been going a little stir crazy at Casa Wilson the last few weeks. The seemingly endless rain and a tight deadline have meant that we’re all living in eachother’s back pockets and not getting enough sunlight…hence the look of confusion on Eve’s face in the above photo. “What is this strange place…this “outside” you speak of.”

Oh, and a sidenote: why, oh why is my blog being spam-bombed? What am I doing differently of late that has caused me to blip onto these people’s radar? Everytime I log on I have on average 30 new comments from…well I won’t say specific phrases because then I might start showing up on search engines for some of those things and get even more of it. WordPress is doing an excellent job of catching it all so far. I just can’t understand the mentality of someone who will spend what must be hour on mind-numbing hour trawling through comments on old blog posts pasting this drivel. Is this the dream job you always hoped to have? Did you sit on your mother’s lap and tell her your fondest dream was to become an internet pest?

Miracle of miracles the sun has come out, the birds are singing…I’m going for a walk in the real world for awhile.

Blogging Ireland

Soft Blogging

First I read something last Thursday on United Irelander. He seemed to be saying that the view held by non-bloggers that blogs were mere personal diaries was bringing down the image of blogging:

I personally feel blogs are let down with their reputation as being simply “personal diaries”. While there are alot of bloggers who talk about how Cindy was being a real bitch at school and pondering over whether Corey will take them to the prom, there’s a hell of alot of blogs which steer clear of the personal diary-esque style altogether and they need to be the ones who encompass the bulk of the blogosphere.

Oh really?

Then there was the piece by John Ihle in the Times just before the blog awards where the emphasis was all on blogs as an extension of the traditional news media and the whole “citizen journalist” slant and again wanting to distance blogs from the perception of them being just personal diaries.

Then Fiona deLondras asked once again why more women don’t blog (although I think there are loads of us and I think it’s one area in which we’re well-represented) and if they do is there a perception that they only blog on the “soft” issues. She did ask whether or not that would be a bad thing if it were true but I think that a lot of the time it is perceived as a bad thing as highlighted by United Irelander’s statement.

It is my opinion that this so-called soft blogging ought to be encouraged in Irish blogs. Why must we all go techhy or political with our blogging? Why should it be the majority as if the rest is a sort of embarrassment? We have plenty of hard topic blogs but the personal blogs…the ones that really talk in an honest and open and funny way about life…are thin on the ground in Ireland. Why are we Irish so scared about the personal stuff? The blogging I’m talking about is hilarious, poignant, thought-provoking and brave. It’s not just confined to women, there are men blogging in this way too. Unfortunately not a lot of them are Irish.

I think the question (that I’m asking myself too by the way) is not why more women aren’t blogging, or how to get everyone blogging about politics. I think it’s more why we Irish bloggers are so scared and intimidated about blogging about the personal stuff? Why is that seen as embarrassing or soft?

I’d also like to see more Irish shoe blogs…anyone care to try that one?

Blogging Ireland

And The Winners Were…

blog awards
Photo by Ryan of Rymus.net: Colm Bracken (In Fact, Ah); Me; Matt; Ryan.

I’m just now emerging from a dozy haze…no I didn’t overindulge at the Blog Awards on Saturday night, rather I was over at my parent’s house last night and complained that I seemed to be suffering some kind of allergic reaction. My nose was itching like crazy and I was being driven mad. My father offered me one of his anti-histamine tablets and I was so distracted by the itching that I gladly accepted. He assured me as I popped the little white pill that they didn’t make him drowzy, but I might find it hard to get out of bed in the morning. “No change there” I thought and happily swallowed the thing. What I didn’t take into account was, because of the breastfeeding which I’ve only just stopped and the pregnancy before that, I’ve not taken anything stronger than Panadol in about two and a half years. So I got home yesterday evening planning to write an account of the Awards but instead fell fast asleep at about 8:30. I slept the sleep of the deeply drugged until 6am when Eve woke with her usual ear-piercing screech. I positioned her in front of “Ice Age” and fell back into my stupor waking only long enough to press replay on the DVD when it finished. The credits were rolling for the second time when Matt rescued me and I crawled back into bed where I lay unconscious until 2pm. I don’t know what my Dad is made of but it’s of far sterner stuff than I am! Either that or he’s planning a little boost to the pension when the time comes and that first pill was free.

Soooo, since I’m way behind on posting about this I will direct you to the main site for the list of winners. Gingerpixel was not one of the glittering plaque-holders on the night but the Best Photoblog prize went to a very deserving Donncha. I had thought Ryan was going to be a shoo-in for it and he was the firm favourite but there was tough competition in our category. I got to meet so many of my favourite Irish Bloggers and I think I said hi to everyone I had wanted to say hi to. The only two I missed were Damien himself (but he was a very busy man on the night and I would have had to have stuck my ankle out and tripped him up to get to talk to him which I thought might have been rude) and JL Pagano who was standing behind me at one stage and I meant to turn and introduce myself but got distracted and missed him. Ah well, hopefully some other time JL. I’m also hoping that Paige will be coming along to some blog get-togethers in the future only telling us she wasn’t coming at the last minute. I was sorry not to have met you Paige.

It was a great night and Damien deserves all the cyber-love he’s been getting over the past few days and Rick O’Shea was the perfect MC. I will be adding quite a few blogs to me daily reading list now that I know the people behind them. Or in the case of TCAL, the large crowd behind them. Congratulations to That Girl and SinÃ©ad, hard luck to In Fact, Ah and Redmum (at least as a “non-winner” I’m in good company). So many blogs have great round-ups of the evening Irish Blogs is a good place to go to find them all. However, I will direct you to Letter To America, the blog of the hilarious Jett. He has a podcast up and I’m off to listen to that myself. His blog, funny as it is, only does marginal justice to how funny he is in real life so I’m betting his podcast is well worth a listen.

Blogging Ireland

Irish Blog Awards

Good luck to all the Irish Blog Award nominees tonight. The big event starts at 7pm in The Alexander Hotel in Dublin City Centre. I’ll be there with my glad rags on and am looking forward to meeting everyone.

I’m still debating on whether to bring my camera; with all the talk of anonymity around the various Irish blogs I’ll just end up with a load of photos of people with big blurry circles in front of their faces! Although it would be a good way of avoiding the scary end of the lens myself.

Blogging

Blogger’s Block

Paige over at BlankPaige has been supposedly suffering a bout of Blogger’s Block. Although her posts are as hilarious as ever and to her readers’ eyes nothing would seem to be amiss. I do know what she’s talking about though. I’ve been feeling it myself of late; It’s that edge of panic when you realise you’ve not blogged in a couple of days and you can feel what readers you do have trickle away and still nothing is coming to mind. So you think to yourself you’ll just go through your blogroll and see if anything inspires you. Instead the quality of blogging only serves to fuel that inner-critic. The one that vetoes every single potential post that does make it’s way to your brain.

Another factor that I’ve discovered is that more and more people that I know in real life are coming on and reading my blog. I think my mother has taken to telling everyone she meets to come on over and take a look which is great (wave at cousin Lisa and auntie Helen) but it’s having the side-effect of making me really self-conscious. Now instead of just wondering if I shouldn’t post something because it might be a bit rubbish, I also have to think about whether or not it’s going to come back to bite me. It’s like the blogging version of stage-fright.

When I think of the blogs that I love to read, the ones that give me a little smile when I see that they’ve updated and I can’t wait to pull up my chair, grab a drink and enjoy the read, I realise a few things. Firstly I just don’t get excited by one of the most popular of Irish blog subjects: politics. Sure, many of the blogs I love talk about politics and current events but they do so in a way that makes it personal, funny or relevant. The same goes for tech blogs or gadget blogs or knitting blogs or any niche blog. It’s not the subject of the posts that draws me in it’s the voice behind them. Some bloggers could write a post about watching paint dry and it would still be interesting.

So this makes me think that perhaps it’s not what to write I should be worrying so much about, but rather how to write it and if I’m being honest and open. If people connect with you then they’ll stick it out through blogging thicks and thins.

You see now…there’s that voice, the one that’s saying “Ha ha, your brother just read that and is going to give you a right slagging about being all touchy-feely.” Well, I’m posting it anyway.