Blog Entry 200

I can’t believe I’ve already published 200 entries in this blog. And even more unbelievable, that those pages have been viewed (and I hope read) more than half a million times. To all, thank you for your patience with me and my ramblings.

When I was younger, I used to write for a paycheck. In the French IT press. And I hated the deadlines. I was always procrastinating, and as a result was spending the night before each deadline, writing. I don’t know why writing was such a pain for me at that time. I liked the “before” – collecting the information, testing, comparing, analyzing -, I liked the “after” (reading the finished article, first on my computer, then in the published magazines), but I did not especially like the “writing” phase at the center of the whole process.

It was stressful. First, there was the pressure of the deadline. Second, being vague, inaccurate or factually wrong was not an option.

In the times of paper magazines, publishing an article was a serious business. Readers were paying for their copies of the magazines, and they expected accuracy. There were tens of thousands of regular readers. And millions of French Francs of advertising money at stake. You worked hard to be sure that what you were writing was accurate, and you checked your facts twice – because nothing was worse than being proven wrong by a reader, or by the company distributing the product you had just tested. Because if you had it wrong, you had to publish a correction in the next issue. The walk of shame.

Now, I write for pleasure. Primarily about old or niche products. No paycheck, no deadline. No editor to respond to. No pressure. And I enjoy the whole thing. The research, the tests, the fact checking, the development of ideas, and the writing itself. And the interaction with you, readers and fellow bloggers.

It’s much easier (and immediate) to interact with you than it was in the times of the “letters to the editor” in monthly magazines. And although I still try to be thorough, if I get something wrong, you’ll let me know in the comments, and I’ll fix it. Not a huge issue.

In the ocean of negativity and hate that some portions of the Internet have become, I’m grateful that the comments section of this blog has remained an island of civility.

So, thank you again. Meet you again in a few days for Blog Entry #201.