Some Knowledge

I’m sitting here at my computer trying to think up something to write about.  I just got done looking over the long list of things people search for on Google Trends.  Number three on that list was the tuatara.  Apparently, the tuatara, which only lives on a few islands surrounding New Zealand now that imported rats and cats and dogs have made it extinct on the big islands, is more closely related to the dinosaur than it is to modern lizards.  The creature has some very interesting aspects.  The tuatara lives for 60 to 100 years.  It has a third eye below the skin of the top of its head that may regulate its sleep cycles.  The tuatara also has supposedly the fastest rate of evolutionary change of any animal, which is odd, because it hasn’t changed much in a couple hundred million years.

Well, this was all interesting material, but, I did not feel like writing some kind of report about some odd endangered reptile.  Mind you, I like reptiles, just, why would I copy the report on the Discovery channel site for my blog like I saw done three times on Google Trends blog results?  Do people just copy stories they find on the Internet for their own posts?  This seems really lame.  Almost as lame as Private Label Rights articles.

I found a website yesterday that gives away free PLR articles.  I said what the heck, check them out.  So, I left my email with their autoresponder and after their email made it through the spam filter I confirmed my membership in the five article a day free PLR club and downloaded my free prize of a hundred articles and the five for the day articles and unzipped them and looked them over.  It was very interesting material.  Is anyone interested in the evolution of teddy bears?  I am not even slightly interested in that.  I read one of the articles about aerobic exercise?  Do you know that if you do aerobics you can lose weight?  Not even worth printing my name on that one.  No wonder this stuff is free.  Talk about boring generic articles.  I wonder how many people visit random blogs looking for interesting content for their own blogs?  I’ve seen stuff posted to different blogs that looks exactly the same.  That’s the problem with electronic media, it is as simple as point and click to make a copy.

Every once in a while when I get really bored I will look for jokes on the Internet.  You have to read a lot of lousy material to find even one good joke.  Sometimes you hit a rich vein of humor and find several jokes all on the same site.  Usually, you end up reading the same thing over and over again.  It would be easier to just make up my own jokes.  I have a book on writing comedy.  The book is pretty lame.  Most of the jokes in this book are not even funny.  I don’t know who writes all this un-funny humor.  It gets on television too.  Lame jokes are a curse that spreads like a plague.

So, how does anyone think up things to write about?  It would have to be something that interests or concerns you.  I’m trying to think of what interests or concerns me now.  I’m interested in making money, who isn’t?  I’m interested in how the web is going to look in a few years.  Will it turn into a sewer of advertising like television?  Probably, but there is more to the Internet than business.  Do I have any hobbies that may be of interest to other people?  Yes, I used to enjoy experimenting with radio-frequency electronic circuits.  Kind of a niche topic.  Not everybody is interested in how wireless works.

There’s an interesting term, wireless.  They used to call radio wireless when it was first invented.  This was because all they could send was Morse code and Morse code was commonly used on the telegraph, so when radio came out it was competing directly with the wired communication system.  Wireless is the old Victorian term for radio.  They started using the term again when they came out with cordless phones that did not have to be wired to the wall, and wireless computer networks that worked without LAN cables.  An old term for new technology, how interesting.

I suppose I could write about all the interesting and useful knowledge I have gained about how computer networks operate from reading a huge thick book I bought months ago about computer networks.  Well, I could write about it if I could remember much of what I read.  There is just too much information to remember without studying and using it every day.  Networks work on many different levels.  You plug them in and they work.  What’s to know?

I suppose I could go fictional and just post stories.  Fiction blogs are not going to be real popular, unless I was JK Rowling and writing my Harry Potter books online for people to read in real time and make suggestions on.  Why would I do that when I could write a book and sell it to people instead?  I have thought about the idea of making up fictional stuff and putting it in a blog entry.  I have a fictional blog on Livejournal, which nobody even looks at.  I know how popular fiction is.

If this were a professional blog people who hire me to write articles or pieces for them could give me some subject to write about.  There are pay per post blog sites that operate this way.  You write a post about some article or other that somebody is trying to sell.  Essentially you would be advertising.  My blog here does not get enough traffic to justify selling advertisements yet.  So for now, I am just typing away trying to think up random things to write about.  It’s an enjoyable way to pass the time.

I occasionally write up posts based on news stories or just things I find in doing web searches.  This is about as good a way as any to get information for a bit of writing.  I thought about writing something about cars.  Cars are popular.  Do I want to be an unpaid cyber-advertiser for the auto industry?  No, the unpaid thing is uncool.  I was reading a book last night called “The Well Fed Writer” about freelancing, and it seems like a lot of trouble to get involved in.  You have to drum up business.  You have to do all the work.  Then you have to try and collect your pay.  On top of everything you have to keep all the records.  You have to figure out all your taxes.  You need to keep track of all your hours.  That’s a lot of work.  With a blog you sit at your computer and type about anything that crosses your mind.  Your opinions do not have to be any good at all.  You can be a complete idiot and still keep a blog.

This is a very long entry.  If anyone reads this I hope you didn’t come here looking for ideas to write about, because I’m fresh out.  Pick up some random item off the floor and write about that.  It’s no wonder people write about teddy bears and greeting cards.  There’s a lot of stuff in this world that would be the perfect subject for any kind of an essay.  Nobody knows if it will be interesting to anyone.  Write whatever you want and if they like it, they will come.