What topics do you want me to write about in 2012?
It has not yet been three months since I started this blog. I have managed to post something every single day since I started, apart from my decision over a month ago to take Saturday off. Now that I’ve proved to myself that I can maintain the habit, I’m going to take a break (coinciding with the winter holidays), reflect more deeply on where my blog has explored, and plan out and implement some major changes and improvements.
I strongly believe that content is king. This is why I have deliberately focused entirely on content in the past three months, rather than on format, tone, and style, even when I became increasingly aware of areas of improvement outside the area of content. I will work on those other areas for 2012.
Meanwhile, I would like to improve the content as well, by making it more useful to you. I am listing here just a few of the broad topic ideas I expect to address in future posts (many of the topic areas have already appeared in the past three months, while others have not).
What do you want to read here?
If there are topics on this list (or not on this list) you are particularly interested in reading about here, let me know; I will take all requests seriously!
The list, roughly organized by topic but not in any particular order (and by no means exhaustive):
Music
- experiences performing music as a serious amateur
- experiences practicing music
- my progress on various instruments
- concert reviews
- reviews of music I discover and like
Food
- stuff Abby and I cook and eat
Pittsburgh
- reviews of local eats
- reports on local events I attend
- local politics
Running
- comparison of different models of Vibram FiveFingers shoes
- discussions of minimalist and barefoot running
- race reports
Exercise
- discussions of what works for me
- discussions of new workouts as I explore them
- reviews of exercise videos
Outdoors
- reports and photos from enjoying time outdoors
Diet/health
- experiments in diet, especially toward paleo style
Software development
- reports on local user groups
- reviews of tools and ideas I use for software development
- fully worked out code to illustrate using a language or library
- making effective use of types
- testing methodologies and concrete setups
Book reviews
- reviews of books on a wide assortment of topics
Philosophy/psychology
- self-improvement stuff
- meditation
- gratitude
- nature of creativity
- how technology changes things
- nature of human irrationality
Education
- how to learn
- what to learn and where
Writing
- pointers to comments I post on others’ blogs
- write and post more poems
Politics/economics
- discussion of issues, defying any party line
Videos
- start making instructive/entertaining videos for YouTube
I would definitely like to read about your thoughts on self learning... especially how you would compare the pros and cons from before and now...
Thanks for the feedback! I will definitely write a lot about self-learning, both in concrete contexts such as computer science, music, foreign languages, and from a general perspective.
We have a lot of common interests, so there's a lot I like on this list. I'm not quite as interested in the music, but almost everything else interests me, specifically (in rough priority order):
* self-learning
* self-improvement
* meditation
* agile software development* local user group updates* software craftsmanship
* diet
* exercise
* barefoot running
* pittsburgh stuff
Cool, I'll definitely write on all the above. No barefoot running for me again till spring though! I want to try some barefoot trail running sometime by summer, even though it still seems crazy to me.
I like hearing about local events in the 'burgh, both cultural events and technology group meetings.