Thoughts on Blogging...

I was reading around this morning whilst munching on a well buttered and marmaladed piece of toast and I ended up at Donklephant. Justin Gardner is "fairly centrist" and usually has a reasonably friendly melange from which to choose. What caught my eye this morning was a photo taken during a rugby game between Scotland and Portugal. He comments -

New photos at the bottom of the page this week. None as brutal as this one, but all interesting in their own right.

Now I could spend some pages on the so-called "brutality" of rugby. I could get quite upset at his choice of a photo taken at one of the minor matches of the Rugby World Cup. Actually I have a soft spot for Portugal (the team in red), and they were fairly well beaten by the Scots which is a shame.

I played rugby myself. Not very well. I was usually played at lock (as one of the tallest in the team and not very fast), or "blindside flanker".

Now that latter might require a bit of explanation. Rugby features a "scrum", its own form of the "huddle" (I think it is called that - where play in American Football is restarted) in which the eight forwards of each team are "packed" in a 3-4-1 formation against each other. The blindside flanker occupies the outside of the row of four on the side closest to the sideline. It is a very simple job. You flatten anything and everything that happens to be carrying the ball. As fastest over 10 metres and one of the slower over 20m I was well suited to it.

If it helps at all, the locks are the middle two of that row of four.

But that is not what I wanted to write about.

In my peregrinations through the blogiverse I have come across many blogs which are obviously written by journalists. Some (The Sciolist was one) have had to give the game up after their employer gave them the word that it was "not appropriate". Other journalists are openly encouraged to blog on behalf of their employer. There are also those journo's who are covert writers.

I don't know at all whether Martin is a journo. I suspect that he is, but it matters little in the case to hand. I want to make it very clear that he is not alone in what is to come...

In his "1000 words" story this week, Martin links here - where there is nary a hint of a photo let alone rugby. The first thing to catch my eye was this -

Use the mash button to embed a news story or a news feed (with advertising) onto your website or blog.

and

Register to earn a share of the advertising revenue each time mashed news is viewed on your site.

That may or may not be a good idea. It is not something that I would take up.

That leaves the "real" blogger - such as TF, Al, Dave and the other "private" bloggers who might start with a news story but usually put it into a personal perspective. It is this group who, irrespective of their politics, are generally the most interesting reads.

Oh, and Martin, I hope you don't mind me saying it but I have yet to find the rest of the "page" that you keep your 1000 words on. Some script editing might be required?

So to satisfy those curiosity urges go here and suck off the "Free Sample". I have no idea of the content other than it should contain some rugby. Look for a player with the number 6 on his back - he is the blindside flanker.


And there are photos from NZ vs Italy here

UPDATE -

I had a moment of clarity yesterday - found out what was wrong with Justin's "1000 Words".

I use dial-up, and have turned OFF any system reference to Flash. Hence the (for me rather long) video files at the bottom of the page tend to stall. My bad. Luddite again. Heigh-ho!