This post is all about the numbers. It’s about being the 1600th post on Broken Kode, the 51st post for the month of December 2010 (which also equals the largest number of posts ever in a single month) and the start of the year of end review for 2010.

I originally wanted to have a single post with everything but honestly this post just got out of hand (clocking at over 2000 words), so I’ll be posting it in parts, with a specific focus in each post. I’ll then do a review post right at the end.

Come the 4th of January the site will have been online for 7 whole years! As 7 is also my lucky number (don’t actually know why I think it is, as I’m sure billions of other people feel the same way, but the number 7 makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside), hopefully it will be a banner year for me.

Having said that 2010 has been an exceptional year for me so far. So before 2010 leaves us forever I thought I’d drop a quick salute and reflect on the year that was before I jump into the year that will be (it’s also been a few years since I did one of these, because frankly this shit takes AGES to compile and is a proper time suck).

On Blogging

This is an interesting one. Blogging is dead as I know it. I'm not saying that blogging is dead, but the way that I liked to interact with people via their blogs and their long form words is completely gone. That's really sad for me to see and actually feel, because I really enjoyed that aspect of things.

Twitter has come to replace that. Honestly my main issue with Twitter is that I’m not feeling much in the way of interaction, at least so far. Maybe I’m going about it the wrong way. I don’t reply and respond to every single tweek and when I do it generally goes unanswered (typically).

So what’s a guy to do? I like the fact that everyone and their dog is on twitter. I hate the fact that I can’t write the length that I want. I can tweet from work, but only via my iPhone (which isn’t a big deal). The thing is the form of communication doesn’t rightly appeal to me.

I guess that’s not completely true, it does on some level, but it’s not my preferred method of online communication. Maybe I just need to embrace things, or maybe I just need to keep building this site up, such that it also becomes a destination of sorts.

Maybe branch out into Twitter a bit more. I tried to do it these last few weeks. It was mildly successful, if you consider getting more people following you as being successful.

The ‘Kode doesn’t have a specific focus. People might come here to get a few interesting links, a few snarky comments, maybe look at some pretty pictures, and maybe download a bit of code or whatever.

For the past few years I’ve really been link blogging with some comments, as that was all that I could bring myself to do. In depth commentary takes time, time away from other things, things which I’m enjoying just as much.

So the task for the 7th year of Broken Kode is maybe to refine the commentary slightly - I still like the haphazard linking. The thing is, can I refine how I present things? What good will that achieve? I guess it ultimately depends on what I am trying to achieve with the blogging. It’s an outlet. By now it’s habit. Blogging is about presenting your ideas and I guess I’m trying not to loose site of that, since it honestly seems everyone else around me has.

There are those people that have not. People like Gruber, Swiss Miss, Kottke, Joen and a few others, but by and large the art of personal blogging isn’t as vibrant as it once was…or is there too much noise out there that I can’t really distinguish between the good, the bad and the ugly?

Personal blogs that are updated with any regularity are a rarity. Don’t worry about me I’ll keep the lights turned on.