Where’s the Beef?
You might have noticed that there’s been less ham radio content here lately than in previous times. I don’t really consider the blog to be off-track as much as it just accurately reflects my own activity. Radio has become a less integral part of my life over the last few months and my chronicle portrays that fairly well.
Scanning the blogosphere for ham radio related content one quickly discovers that there are personal journals authored by ham radio enthusiasts and then there are info blogs.
The info-content blogs provide much higher bandwidth. These usually take the form of “how-to” articles and in-depth commentary about recent amateur radio news and happenings.
The contest blogs are a good example — these often focus on tips for improving your scores or methodologies for mounting a single op, two radio operation, etc. You’ll find this type of content to be generally less personal and more informational — much of it could just as easily appear in QST or CQ magazine (except for the fact that these publishers look with disdain on ham bloggers).
My blog definitely falls outside the realm of info-content. Despite having been licensed for an eternity and being a certified Old Fart, I’m the last person you want telling you how to build an antenna, or use a grid dip meter, etc. I’ve seen it all and done it all but I remember precious little of it so I almost never write technical articles.
I simply throw a few thousand words a week on the wall here and keep my fingers crossed that some of it will stick. I’d be perfectly content being known as that guy who writes about nothing in particular but folks still want to stop by to read about that “nothing” every day with their morning coffee for reasons that can’t quite be explained.
Besides, it’s not like I didn’t warn you — from the about page:
Our hobby is a strange mixture of technical and social and I don’t feel constrained in commenting about things not directly related. Consider this blog to be a lot like tuning 40 meters on a crisp, cool, Saturday morning. Anything and everything is open for discussion.
Life is all that stuff that happens when you’re not in the shack or on the air — which is why I write about that too.
73 de Jeff
April 26th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
“it just accurately reflects my own activity. Radio has become a less integral part of my life over the last few months and my chronicle portrays that fairly well.”
Bravo Jeff. As you are aware, I am a longtime critic of the Amateur radio culture….it stems in part from the apparent absence of other endeavours in Hams lives. Your comments and shift in your blog postings has been noted and I applaud it.
I had a “personal” site mewcomm.net and a ham site wa4d.net. You more than most recognize that blogging is a time consumer (waster?) and by moving to unitfy/integrate your blog into a more “balanced” site makes sense. Congratulations.
I recently dropped the ham only site and left the pointer and now use only mewcomm.typepad.com. I don’t have time to post more than weekly, but it will serve.
Cheers,
mike whatley
altadena, ca
April 27th, 2008 at 11:13 am
Excellent post Jeff. My blog falls squarely into the “personal journal” category, generally writing about whatever I found interesting that week. I do almost always focus on things somehow related to ham radio though, since frankly, mostly because I get so much enjoyment out of the hobby and want to try to share that. The closest I’ve ever come to a “how-to” article was my series on ham radio tools, but that was an exception to the norm.
What I found interesting in your posting was something that my wife noticed when I first started chatting on the local repeater while mobile: She said “You guys talk about nothing”, and she’s exactly right. I think a lot of what hams talk about is, indeed “about nothing”, perhaps making at least some aspect of this hobby the “Seinfeld” of hobbies. (For anyone who might not understand the reference, the “Seinfeld” show was described as a “show about nothing”).
73,
David, K2DBK