An Introduction

A friend of mine from university, who has the truly annoying habit of talking people into doing really cool and horizon-broadening things that they end up enjoying a lot, has been trying to get everyone he knows to start a blog. I've decided to follow his advice for a few reasons.

1. He can be very persuasive to people he already knows and whose levers he knows. This may sound manipulative and evil, but it really isn't. In my case, he just tends to pose things as challenges and compare them to things that I care about. "Learning Chinese characters is really just like figuring out the command line." "Running your own startup is a huge learning experience and engineering challenge." Things like that.
2. I'm trying to create more than I consume, and a blog is a conspicuous and externally verifiable means of doing so. This is part of an ongoing self improvement thing that has its roots in some personal things that happened over the last couple of years.
3. I have things that I want to say. There are a skills and areas of expertise that I've managed to cultivate, and I think that I have constructive things to contribute.
4. A blog can be a useful platform for building experience as a writer. I read a lot of science fiction, which has given me a lot of material to steal from use to cultivate interests and ideas that I want to try out. Occasionally, I have thrown down a book in disgust and shouted "Come on! I could do better than that. That's a {total break of character, half-assed deus ex machina, really tedious and boring plot, etc.}" So yeah. There are some stories that I've been playing around with, and a few neat twists. Most of what I would be posting here would be writing exercises or cutting-room floor type material, as I want to hold onto anything good until it's nice and polished.

I may post the occasional piece about various other interests of mine or the occasional travelogue, but most of the content is probably going to be story related.

Technical digression: I'm setting this up via blogger because I'm lazy and cheap and paranoid and don't want to bother running my own webserver or paying for something I don't need yet. I may move to a better host at some point, but I'd like to see if I can keep this going for any length of time before I try to do anything that involves configuring the security nightmare that is wordpress.