Concrete Theory Discusses the Art of Blogging

I spend a lot of my time reading blogs, and feel like mine just isn't up to snuff for how I would like a blog to look. Neither of mine - this one, or my semi-defunct football recruiting history blog which I never have time to work on... It's safe to say that writing a real blog about a real subject can be a full-time job. Brian at MGoBlog is my blogging hero - he writes the best blog I have ever read, period, about a topic that is extremely important to me.

A good blog has many key elements; here are a few of the top ones:

• Purpose - First, a blog has to have a purpose. A clearly defined aim. Deviations can be made, but they should not be substantial. Know your audience, and try to tailor content to them in some way.

• Substance - Probably the biggest point. Blogging isn't Twitter, a good blog post is several thousand words, and it's not just fluff. I don't follow this rule all the time, but I really should, and am going to try to from now on. More on that later.

• Information - A good blogger does his homework. Knows what he's talking about before he writes a post. Research, with references, is key. Not like a works cited or anything, but if information is pulled from somewhere, link to it. Example: Nebraska won tonight. Easy, right? One more thing, any multi-point Information really should be put in...

• Charts - Charts? Charts. Data should be displayed in an orderly fashion. I could tell you that Tate Forcier is sweet and made our offense click pretty well against MSU, even though we lost, or I could tell you to go look at this. What is it? A really, really big chart. Followed by less monstrous charts with summary information. THAT is a blog post.

• Formatting - I keep using MGoBlog because Brian is so good at this - everything is crisp, everything is universal. Posts are named in a useful manner, so you know what you are getting into before you get into it. Blog tags are built to be useful. If someone is a part of a blog post, their name is a tag. I'll be doing this from now on, as well.

• Editing - It's the internet, there's spellcheck... try really hard to not make mistakes.

• Shameless Plugs - Well, these aren't necessary, but sometimes you just need to shout out to people or organizations that are important to your topic. OK, the second one wasn't relevant at all, I'll admit.

So, considering what I just talked about, from this point forward I will be reorganizing the structure of my blog. I intend to divide it into a few key post types. These will be followed absolutely. I will try to make most of these once per week. I will be using oxymorons for a couple of the titles, because Unverified Voracity at MGoBlog is about my favorite blog post title there is, and it is a general title.

• The Final Product: ___ - Posts that purely show the end result of a team project.

• Methodical Madness ____ - Posts that discuss teamwork, development, etc. "Methodical Madness has a Prototype" is an example. Team work is always madness, but there has to be a method.

• Concrete Theory ____ - Conceptual posts. This is one of those. These are broad, broad topics, core to the class, or something like that. Theory can't really be concrete, since concrete implies permanence, and theory isn't permanent.

• Inarticulate Eloquence ____ - Code posts. Eloquent to someone who can read code, inarticulate to everyone else. "Inarticulate Eloquence Follows the Sun" would be a code post with sun tracking code, for example.

• Calculated Spontaneity ____ - Miscellaneous things, unrelated but cool. "Calculated Spontaneity Shows You Some Beaches". I contrived them, but they are out of the blue for the reader.

My tags will also become a little more universal. I will include people's names, Arduino, Processing, and various other things. Some will be creative, some will just be descriptive and to the point.

Version 2.0 of my blog begins now.