Despite my complete disapproval of "blogging" as a culture, and a complete overdose of the concept last Sunday, I've decided to get one of these "things". The reason is just that it's so easy to use it to make world-readable diary-like notes. My main website is now running non-free software on a non-free webserver. Ho hum. Details. Matthew Byng-Maddick had the realisation that blogs are basically a decentralised form of Usenet, with most of its failings. More accessible though. A subset of the technical community on the Net probably doesn't have anything to do with blogs at all, just as ICQ and Babelfish and other innovations never caught on with them. I think blogs fill a different part of the space of web-based discussion / archiving / diary systems, and a part which hasn't really been filled up until now. There's certainly a very decentralised ethos - the software I'm using for this one seems to have no concept that anyone might want to run it other than through a locked down limited CGI account.