Dean's Light Box: Why Another Blog?

If you're reading this you may be wondering, "Why is this guy writing *yet* another blog?" And, that would be a very good question.

The answer is that I wanted a place to post my thoughts about my interests. It seems that now that the Internet is ubiquitous in the developed world, the styles and medium of personal writings have changed dramatically. To understand the personal lives of people, historians have typically relied on personal letters and journals. These days, personal letters are almost non-existant and are generally replaced by email. And email is not the type of thing that you simply put in a shoe-box to save for posterity's sake (debates about ISPs storing your email aside.)

On the other hand, I would not consider journals outdated but blogs definitely give them an interesting new twist. Not only do they add all the neat media possibilities (digital photos, audio recordings or pod-casts, video or video-casts, etc.), they also publish your thoughts, publicly. So I would say that a blog doesn't exactly replace a personal journal, which one generally reserves for family members or to be read AFTER they die, but adds this new public dimension. That public dimension is interesting because it allows people to stay in touch, asynchronously, and find others with similar interests. They help people create little groups or clubs of people with the same interests without having to organize and get together on a set evening once a month, for example. I have found that I keep up on my family's latest news better now that many of them blog.

It also occured to me the other day that blogging will help me get a head start on my journal. While I might write more personal things in my journal, I would at least start with some of the things I'd post in a blog. So here's to knocking out two birds with one stone.

Now I am, of course, hoping you might find tidbits of interest here as well. My main focus will be on some of my hobbies including landscape and macro nature photography, drumming, entrepreneurship, and general musings about life. I emphatically disclose that I do not claim to be good at any of these. Photography is merely a hobby in my spare time. I'm terrible at drumming and have never had a single lesson (ask my dear family that very kindly puts up with my "practice sessions.") I have barely made any money in my efforts at starting 3 separate businesses (the most recent has made more than the previous two efforts, but is not yet profitable.) I'm also no philosopher.

So with all that out of the way, I hope you find something of interest here.