The State of the Blog

Well, on the 11th it will be 6 months since I started this blog, so I thought I'd give you guys a general update on my plans and what I've learned about blogging at this time.

First of all, what I've found out: It took a couple months or so to find a niche I could best fill, but I think I've got it now. My most popular posts so far are the Distilled Wisdom series and other more philosophically-oriented posts. I fully intend to keep this up, and will have the next entry in Distilled Wisdom out in a few weeks, once work on my research paper has settled down. I also intend to do a follow-up to The First Lever (three guesses what it'll be called), on how self-interest leads people into wooish beliefs.

Now, I mentioned a few times in the past that I was planning to apply for a column in the school newspaper. I recently found out, however, from talking with people who have been involved with it, that it's not quite that simple. They won't let you have just a column, it seems, and you'll be roped in for tons of other duties as well. With this in mind, along with my overfull schedule and continuing research project, I've decided to forgo applying. Instead, I'll be using my time to concentrate on this blog, keeping up what I've done before, and adding new features. Also, there's one other side-project I have going on which I'll talk about in the future.

Did I say new features? Well, you'll have to wait until the actual half-anniversary to see what I mean. I'm not giving you any hints, either. You'll have to sit there in torture wondering about it. Or you could get a life.

As far as templating goes, I'm also planning to expand the blogroll a bit. I'm going to split it up into a few categories, including an "Anti-Blogroll," which will list blogs which express views disagreeing with me, but which I feel are still well-written enough to be worth reading.