Blog categories
Someone once told me that the best mechanics have the worst cars. The reason, supposedly, was that if you were a good mechanic, then your skills were in high demand. If you spent the day working on cars, the last thing you wanted to do when you got home was work on your own; and, if you had any spare time to work on cars, you'd be working on the ones lined up in your shop.
Over the last 6 months or so, the number of posts on my blog have skyrocketed. The main reason for this was that prior to Nov 2006, I had been using some homegrown blogging software. Now I don't know if the mechanic story is true but I do know that if I had any time to work on programming I was going to spend it working on software that people were actually going to use rather than on the blog software that was only really meant for me. When I moved to the new software, the blog became mostly about content and less about functionality.
With the influx of content, I've started to realize that there are people who read my blog who come here for tips on cool websites, people who want to learn how to do stuff, people and still others who want to see where I went on vacation.
It's for this reason that I've decided to start breaking the blog down into categories or sections. The main page won't change but you'll be able to click on one of the four (so far) sections of the site and limit the posts to the ones you're most interested in. So far I've come up with the categories below. You can already subscribe to the RSS feeds for your preferred section. As I add content, the posts will be sorted into the appropriate section. For example, if you wanted the RSS on the LIFE category, you would simply click on the RSS icon next to "LIFE" in the categories list.
/
|-- LIFE
| |-- blog
| |-- comic
| |-- good review
| |-- bad review
| |-- holiday
| `-- photo
|-- HOW2
|-- NEWS
`-- TECH
`-- video
`-- youtube
- LIFE includes personal writings, ramblings, opinons, reviews, etc.
- LEARNING includes HOWTO articles. I'm considering calling it HOW2 so that all the categories are 4 characters long.
- NEWS includes posts related to news worthy topics e.g. the 580 fire.
- TECH is probably the hardest category to come up with a title for. It would include youtube videos, links to interresting sites, etc.
Here are the categories of some popular websites as reference. For reference, this post would be stored under LIFE.
NYTIMES: HOME, WORLD, US, NY, BUSINESS, TECHNOLOGY, SPORTS, SCIENCE, HEALTH, OPINION, ARTS, STYLE, TRAVEL USATODAY: HOME, NEWS, TRAVEL, MONEY, SPORTS, LIFE, TECH, WEATHER WSJ: HOME, NEWS, TECHNOLOGY, MARKETS, PERSONAL JOURNAL, OPINION, WEEKEND & LEISURE LATIMES: NEWS, CALIFORNIA, WORLD, ENTERTAINMENT NEWS, BUSINESS, SPORTS, POLITICS, OPINION, COLUMNISTS
Hindsight
The Trulia Hindsight site lets you see how a neighborhood changes grows over time. I tried it out with a map of the
neighborhood where I grew up.