fork (2)

I don't know how this will go and it could be a bad idea, but I've been thinking about it recently. I've decided to fork the blog. Why?

Well, I'm aware that a lot of what I write is just gossip, rants and nonsense, basically. Part of me understands that can be perfect blog material. Another part never imagined this is how it would turn out and I admire blogs like Eddie Awad's, Jonathan Lewis' and Andy Campbell's that focus on technical content. Even those with more mixed content, like Howard Rogers or Tom Kyte deliver technical content in other ways, through their articles or forums. I'd prefer to do that via my blog and that 'Dougs Oracle Blog' title has annoyed me more and more over the months. I'd be surprised if it doesn't irritate others, too

I could see a few options for addressing what I see as a problem.

1) Stop dealing in trivia and stick to the technical stuff. The problem with that is that I actually quite like writing trivial nonsense and I think that's what people want to read sometimes. When I refer to trivia, I include things like conference reports, what I did on my holidays and industry news. It would require more self-control than I'm prepared to muster.

2) Use categorisation along with separate feeds to make it clear what's truly related to Oracle and what isn't. That could work, but I'd prefer that someone could arrive at the blog via a search engine and be able to browse through technical content without wading through the other stuff.

3) Have two blogs! Heh-heh .... one's not enough for me

I already think I've got it the wrong way around because I moved all of the vaguely technical posts to http://oracledoug.com/blog over the weekend to make a fresh start, but that's not where most feeds will point. Perhaps I should have started a new personal blog there and kept http://oracledoug.com/serendipity for technical stuff from now on. I'll mess around with it over the next couple of days and I'll consider any feedback regarding the best approach. Suffice to say, you shouldn't depend on feeds while I fiddle around with it, but all existing posts will remain at the serendipity location, whatever the final solution.

I hope that most readers use RSS readers (if you don't, you should) and it will just be a case of adding another feed to your reader and won't demand any more commitment on your part. In fact, I hope it will require less activity because anyone who's not interested in non-technical blogs can avoid them completely (and vice versa). Needless to say, The Boys were a little perturbed by this activity until they realised this could turn into a popularity contest that might teach me a lesson! We'll see.

It was interesting to go through all my past postings separating the technical from the rest. On the one hand, there's far too little technical content. On the other, it does exist and works better in isolation. Oh, and when I say technical, I don't expect it to be particularly deep because I'm more interested in helping people with day-to-day problems than trying to impress anyone. It'll probably end up more like dispatches from the DBA trenches than sermons from the mount, but I doubt I'll be able to avoid my opinions!

Hopefully it'll also serve as a self-inflicted kick up the backside (difficult though that might be to do for real).

P.S. Before anyone jumps in and leaves comments about the menu not being consistent, or characters being wrong in the migrated postings, rest assured I am mid-way through the exercise. I'm doing this in my spare time and it will not be finished today!