Another revamping

I have done another significant revamping of this site. All code snippets are now in color. I will share the Vim script I used to do this, so that other bloggers may benefit from my work:

" Script converts syntax highlighting
" into a form suitable for my blog.

let html_use_css = 0
TOhtml
%s/00c000/00c000/g
%s/c0c000/c0c000/g
%s/0000ff/0000ff/g
%s/00c0c0/00c0c0/g
%s/<br>//g
w

To use this script, copy the code into a file named “blog.vim”, and then enter :so blog.vim in Vim. Open the resulting file in your web browser of choice, then go to the source and copy and paste the code into your blog (in HTML mode, starting after the <font face="monospace"> tag and ending before the final </font> tag. Surround the code with <pre><code> at the beginning and </code></pre> at the end in your HTML. You can modify the script to get the colors you want.

New directions for this blog

I’ve been blogging on WordPress for exactly two weeks now.  Anyone who has been following along has probably noticed that there’s been a change in this blog over the past couple weeks, especially in the past few days.  I’ve been doing a lot less rambling about stuff that I’m doing, and a lot more tutorials.  I hope to find a healthy balance in this blog between stuff that’s about me and stuff that will appeal to other people.

The bottom line is, I don’t just want to write.  I want people to read my blog.  I’m not an attention whore by any means.  I don’t necessarily want hundreds of followers.  I just want at least a few people to read my blog.  I want my voice to be heard in some small way, and to know that my words are having at least some form of impact on others.

I’ve done a significant revamping and remodeling of this site over the past several days to make it more accessible and navigable, and thus more appealing.  I’ve added a categories menu at the top with my most prolific categories, as well as a tag cloud in the sidebar.  I’ve also made some effort to “put myself out there” in the WordPress community.  I’ve gone out and searched for other blogs, and I’ve followed blogs that appeal to me.  I’ve liked posts that I found inspiring, informative, or enjoyable, and I’ve commented when I had something to say.

I know some people are reading my blog, even if it’s not that many people.  I have a couple of followers so far.  I’ve told some other people about my site, and I know they’ve checked it out.  I am satisfied with this, even though I would eventually like to have more readers.

The problem is, there’s a certain skill you need to have in order to gain a following, and I lack that skill.  You need to be good at figuring out what other people are interested in, zoning in on a target demographic, and creating content that will appeal to that demographic.  I’m just not good at that.  I tend to talk about what I’m interested in, rather than what other people are into.  Take DOS for example.  Who uses DOS anymore?  Not that many people.  Running DOS is kind of a niche hobby.  Slackware is also kind of a niche OS.  You’ll find a lot more bloggers on here talking about distros like Ubuntu and Debian.

But still, I’m happy with what I have.  I will try to find a healthy balance between appealing to other people and talking about what I’m passionate about.  I will continue to make posts about DOS and Slackware, as well as other topics that I find interesting.  Ultimately, this site is my “geek out” blog.  Ultimately I write it for me, not for other people, and I need to stay true to that principle.