Came in later for work today because I had to run some errands in the morning, took a longer lunch break and then stayed an hour longer to finish something. That’s why I got out only just before 20:00 and that’s when the shops close. I had originally planned to grab something on the way home, but I wasn’t too hungry anyway so I skipped dinner.
That’s not the dilemma though, it’s that there’s like 50 new blog posts to read because all the Blaugust participants are eagerly writing. Reading blog posts takes time. That means I don’t really have time to play games tonight I guess (did half an hour of Dead Cells and then gave up for the night again), and so I have nothing to write about. What a dilemma. #firstworldproblems
But this week is Topic Brainstorming Week and I guess that’s not my cup of tea anyway. I wouldn’t say I’m 100% not creative, but I’m usually reacting instead of acting when writing things. I’m good at correcting stuff (short things and longer things like theses), I’m not good at producing any kind of text that’s not stream-of-consciousness blogging or chiming in on a topic with an opinion. And boy do I have opinions about stuff 🙂
At least I managed to write a proper post for tomorrow already, because I won’t be home and so far I don’t want to break my streak.
PS: Blaugust has started and this is my second post.

People are different, so of course browsing habits are different as well, some preferably use their smart phones (I don’t), some use laptops or desktop machines. I suppose people playing video games are still mostly in the last camp although I’ve seen some impressive gaming laptops recently. But I digress, some people have a list of links to blogs they click through daily or weekly, some just type in the URLs, but many people use so-called RSS-Feeds to keep up with new posts on various websites, very often blogs.
To quote Wikipedia:

RSS (Rich Site Summary; originally RDF Site Summary; often called Really Simple Syndication) is a type of web feed which allows users to access updates to online content in a standardized, computer-readable format.

There are several RSS readers for desktop and mobile use, and a lot of websites that do this, for example Feedbin or Feedly or many others. I use Tiny Tiny RSS that I host on my own server.
Anyway, should you be interested in following all the participants of Blaugust Reborn this year, I created an OPML file (explanation) that you should be able to import into your feed-reader of choice. I will try to update it every few days at least, so you might want to add the latest participants manually. There’s also a plain TXT with the feeds.
If this doesn’t make sense at all, feel free to hit me up on Discord or comment for further explanation and how I can persuade you to love RSS 🙂

Maybe you shouldn’t take advice from someone with an average of two page views per post, but then again this is not a highly promoted blog.
I also don’t have a lot of advice, that others didn’t put more eloquently, but there’s a few things I want to mention.
 

The name your website/blog versus your domain name

See, this blog is hosted at armagon.wordpress.com – but nowadays I’m mostly going by Nogamara, except my twitter handle is still @Armagon – it’s not hard to google where the name came from, it’s also kinda an obscure reference, and I still have a toon in most MMOs by that name, but as it wasn’t original enough, I chose to mostly go by Nogamara (I also have that twitter handle) – but I won’t change the blog name. This might be a bad idea, but I don’t care. So my advice: Unless you plan to stick to your nick/handle for ages (and I do mean ages, I’ve used one nick at age 15-17, one from 17 until 27 and another one since then, and this is all just outside of gaming circles…) circumstances might change and either you want to be well-known and findable on the interwebs or you want to hide your juvenile mistakes by changing nicks at some point 🙂
Anyway. In ancient (for the internet) times Tim Berners-Lee (yes, that Tim Berners-Lee) wrote “Cool URIs don’t change” and because I’m an old fart I’m still sticking to that. So I’d rather change not change my domain name. If you want to, that’s your choice of course. Remember that it’s your website, your blog, your content. Unless someone’s paying you, do what you want unless you’re in other people’s faces. I’m just trying to encourage you to leave your old website (especially if it’s still relevant content like game reviews, guides, etc.) online (that’s where a free web host comes in handy) and not delete it. Yes, do as I say, not do as I do. I now (nearly 9 years later) wish I had come up with a cooler name. My original WoW Rogue blog was called “Vanish!” – also very narrow, but not totally off. Not a great name for a general blog either.

Interaction with other people

This is not my first blog and probably won’t be me last. On this one I’ve only had like 99% positive interactions with people, so apparently I was either flying under the radar, not posting very opinionated content, or something else. Keep in mind you might at some point write something controversial and then it gets linked on Twitter or Reddit and some Trolls are coming your way. Don’t let them drag you down. Don’t hesitate to moderate and block them or at least ignore them. Feel free to discuss but don’t take any attacks personal.

Commitments

If you want to blog a lot, go ahead! Blaugust is cool because you have other people around and it can be encouraging to read more posts, participate in discussions that take place in long form content instead of comments, and get to interact with other bloggers. If you don’t feel like posting, don’t despair though. If you signed up ready to try to get 31 posts going in August and feel you can’t make it – it’s fine. The Gold(25), Silver (15), Bronze(5) and Newbie (just starting a blog) Awards are fine, too. Do it for fun! Sure, you can take some of the bloggers who are writing daily or every week day as an example, but it takes practice for some people. It’s absolutely not the norm to be able to come up with a post every day. I certainly can’t sustain this for very long, I just have a chatty phase the last 2 weeks. I can absolutely not predict how long it will last, so my goal is Bronze and I’m overjoyed if I reach Silver. Sure, I could’ve just saved some of my last 10 posts for August, but this is my blog and if I write for 11 days until the 31st and then stop I’m a good target for ridicule – but I’ve been writing these last 2 weeks because I wanted to.