If you have a lot of RSS feeds for infrequently-updated personal blogs in your feed reader of choice* then you can’t avoid seeing posts that follow this format:
“I’m so sorry I haven’t posted in [length of time which is generally a short period in analog world but forever in the blogosphere]. I really planned on posting more and committed to doing so for [New Year's, my blogoversary, Ramadan, etc]. But then my [work commitments, school schedule, real research projects] got in the way. I’m really sorry, dear readers, but I’ll try to do better in the future.
I think this genre of post is fascinating because it speaks to our expectations for the frequency with which a good blog should be updated, and our almost universal failure to live up to that ideal. Also, if you’re reading a feed via RSS, you wouldn’t necessarily have noticed the gap in posting without the “I’m sorry” post.
My posting isn’t always as frequent as I’d like it to be, but I was sure I’d never write one of those posts because I find them irksome. However, I’ve encountered an entirely new reason for not posting and thought it was novel enough to share.
I moved to Princeton, NJ a week ago and found that my blog (and the back-end that I access to edit it) are completely blocked on all the Princeton wireless networks. This is disheartening as without such a blockage my musings would likely have a much stronger impact on the elite policy-making world (just kidding). It’s also surprising since I would expect this more at my undergrad alma mater than at Princeton, and I have yet to write anything critical about Reunions. Oddly enough you don’t get any indication that the site has been blocked — no Websense notice — but rather the site just never loads. It took me quite a while to realize it wasn’t me, and for the moment it looks like I’ve been blocked because this site was the source of a phishing attack. I hope to get it resolved and resume my regular posting schedule soon, but I wanted to clarify that this particular gap in my posting is actually due to technical problems and not due to any deficiencies in my work ethic or personal character. And, dear reader, thanks for reading.
*Aside: if you’re reading this via a web browser, you’re old fashioned and should start using Google Reader today. Exceptions granted if you found this link via social media such as Facebook and Twitter.
