Yes, I have a facebook page. Yes, I am on Google+. I have albums up on my Picasa and YouTube accounts (both now owned by Google). I also maintain a presence out on teh intarwebz at a number of forums (beginnerbikers.org, The Gun Counter, ninjette.org, zggtr.org; all as Galaxieman or some form thereof). That said, they’re all free. Yes, I have to put up with ads on sites like facebook, and I have donated to beginnerbikers.org (reminds me I need to do that again soon) to help with hosting fees. But essentially, they don’t cost me anything, or wouldn’t, if I were to so choose. This site on the other hand is not free. I pay for the web hosting, and the domain registration in order to have someone maintain a server out in meat-space somewhere that keeps all these little electrons alive…
Why?
I started because I wanted more freedom to put stuff on a blog. Because I wanted more space than was being offered for free on the blogger site I originally started out at. Because I felt that it was worth it for me to be able to say whatever I want, whenever I want, and not have some overarching arbiter of ‘goodness’ or ‘rightness’ or ‘whateverness’ change, adjust, revise, or otherwise muck about with my content. I did it on the principle of the thing. I’m not a huge fan of the ‘establishment’ and anyone else telling me what I can or can’t say. Whether or not I’m a fan of it, I also understand that the military has rules about it, which is why I didn’t blog about current operations while I was deployed, and instead used the site to put out information to keep the people at home up to speed on what we were doing. But is any of this really the reason I keep doing this?
Not really, so why?
As a tangent, I recently was introduced to the “5 whys’ concept, which is that if you really understand something, you can continue to offer a small child more information about the subject through at least 5 iterations of the ‘But why?’ question that they are so good at… without having to resort to the standard “Because I’m the adult, that’s why!”. That said, am I going to get 5-deep in the ‘But why?’ interjections before actually getting to my point?
No.
Why I blog: Because I like to. Because I have a modicum of talent with the written word, and with both still and video photography such that I can expound on what the externally silent but internally raucous cacophony rattling around inside my grey matter is all about. Or a least whatever part of it seems to be oozing out my ears at the moment. Sometimes I have cool pictures, or cool stories, or just a generally opinionated rant on a topic. But regardless of the reason for any individual post, I do have somewhat of a penchant for talking story, and this little corner of the internet allows me to do just that, on my terms. In any case, I can just blab here, and if I don’t care for people to read it, it can just stay here and ‘be’. Or, if I’m trying to tell a story that I know I’ll want to share with multiple groups of people (see: internet forums mentioned above), I can write it down here once, and then drop an excerpt and one or two pictures at all of my various internet haunts. Saves a lot of time that way.
For instance, I did a ride today. Ninjette forum bubbas who said they’d be there weren’t, but another guy did make it, so we went anyway. At the secret testing location, we meandered up the mountain to the first pull-off, which I had found through the magic of Google Maps.
Not a bad backdrop, all out in the jungle on a mountainside. However, Mike mentioned that there was an actual overlook further up the road:
Yep, that’s downtown Honolulu in the background. Here’s a shot from the end of the walkway nearby:
Diamond head, downtown… not a bad spot at all. Road was pretty nice too… but I won’t say too much about that since I’d rather not have any extra words anywhere on teh intarwebz about this particular road. Fairly squid-free, and hopefully it’ll stay that way. It was really nice to know there’s a legit motorcycle road here on the island, even if it’s only 4 miles long. And with that, adieu.
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