How I Blog: Abhijit Nadgouda

This is the nineteenth post in our “How I Blog” series. To read the rest, visit the archives. Interested in participating? Drop us a note about ‘How I Blog’ along with a photo or yourself or your blogging space at tips [at] blogmedia [dot] biz.

Abhijit Nadgouda, Software Engineer, Blogger

I am one more of those converts who cared a damn about blogging a year back, and now cannot stop writing about it. I am Abhijit Nadgouda, have lived my career mostly as a pragmatic software engineer. Recently, very recently – Feb 2006, I started my weblog – Abhijit Nadgouda @ iface, and realised that it was my ignorance that kept me away from it for so long. I had always equated blogging to a personal diary, and I sure didn’t want to publish mine (I do that in my vim). I got exposed to the full power of blogging through a project, just because we chose WordPress (IMHO the best blogging tool around today) to create an article management system. It will not be unfair to say that today I blog only because of my introduction to WordPress.

I realised that blogging is more about communication than anything, which really is the essence of Internet. I had been craving for discussing my understandings/rants/perceptions of the software world with others, getting their opinions and perceptions. Blogging does all that and it even crosses the boundaries of countries and worlds for me, and provides an excellent platform to reach out and invite people to discuss. It has been so effective that me and my big mouth have coerced a couple of my friends and my wife to start blogging.

It did one more thing for me. It has expanded my reading space, I read over 70 feeds and it seems to keep on increasing. I have come to respect technologies like feeds and feedreaders. On that note, when I read, I use the feedreader (Bloglines) to identify who has new stuff and then I visit the site to actually read the article. I don’t think feedreaders, by themselves, can provide the same ambience as the blogs/sites who host the articles. The design is as much an important element of the article as the text. I digress, this ever increasing list keeps me uptodate with the world and is one of the prime causes of my continuous improvements.

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The tools I use to blog are not many. My blog is hosted on WordPress.com, they take care of the webmastering and hosting for me, for which I didn’t have enough time when I started. I don’t blog from any specific machine, it is either my Dell Inspiron 700m or Toshiba Satellite A25 or my Linux box. That is why I try to use the web editors more than offline publishing tools. BTW, Texturize is the best editor, yes, even better than the WYSIWYG ones. I hope offline publishing tools include it soon, till then I am going to stick to the web editors. Just like the machines, I am not very particular about my ‘blogspace’, it can be my work area or the living room, bed room, the terrace – you name it – the only pre-requisite is the Net connection.

I am trying to improve myself by adding some discipline to my blogging. I am trying to set a specific time of the day for blogging and trying to write everyday. A lot of times I lose the thought just because I don’t note it down, so I have started to note down anything that comes to my mind, however silly it is, in my handy dandy notebook (Blues Clues!!!). When working on the computer I use my global editor vim to take the notes down.

Lastly, I will love to hear what you have to say about my blogging, I am ready for brickbats or bouquets. My current blog is more of a professional blog, not a personal one. I write mostly about software and its impact on the world. But it has been so terrific that I am tempted to start more blogs, on more subjects. I will do it, but only when I will be able to keep writing there. I hope it happens soon.