About 3 weeks ago, Kevin tagged me on his blog and on Mastodon about this blog challenge. I would have done it at the time, except I was about to get on a plane to New York City for a wee holiday with my mother and then when I came back, I had a small detox from the internet due to the craziness of the world and forgot all about it.
Better later than never!!
I am tagging Michele!
Why did you start blogging in the first place?
In the late 00s, with the rise of Twitter, there were a handful of people that I was following from Wiffy (An old Nintendo-centric forum that was run by fellow Monaghan man Barry), and I wanted to start posting about the video games that I was playing which turned into random posts about how to make your Windows Vista look like Windows 7 (those were the days), alongside using it as a personal diary.
I look back at my 17-year-old posts and I cringe at the grammar, the sentence structure and the overall ‘content’ that I was publishing. It wasn’t until August 2009 that I bought my first domain, padraigfahy.com, and created a new blog, with thanks to Daniel for hosting it. That iteration of the blog is long gone. If you dig through here, you might be able to find some old posts from way back.
I always wanted to write. I was never good at it at school, but I knew that is something that I enjoyed doing. At one point, I was considering whether to become either a reviewer or a journalist before I settled on working in the IT industry.
What platform are you using to manage your blog, and why did you choose it? Have you blogged on other platforms before?
I use WordPress. I have been using WordPress for the majority of the lifespan of this blog. There were a couple of times that I switched to Ghost and back. I tried my hand using Gemini for a while, but I was doubling all my work and I just didn’t have the time for it.
While Ghost, Write.as and other software is good, I always find myself coming back to WordPress as I am able to have a finer degree of control over my website as to what I want. With WordPress, I can use a plugin to add a shop or change the look/feel of the editor, but with Ghost, you can’t add a shop nor change the editor.
How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?
I use the WordPress dashboard on the website. And I use the Gutenberg editor 🫣
When do you feel most inspired to write?
Not necessarily when I am ‘inspired’ but more when I think “Oh shit, I am paying for a server that I am not using every day and I should probably post something to make it worthwhile”
Sometimes, I will get into a groove and post multiple times in a week, and sometimes I will not post for a couple of months.
Depending on what the topic is and whether I am in a groove or not, I could spend 5 minutes or 5 hours on a post.
Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?
I publish immediately. I think I have scheduled posts some of the birthday posts (33) but I wouldn’t do that often.
What are you generally interested in writing about?
I like to write about wrestling (even though it may only be predictions) but I would like to write more long form wrestling content, discussing storylines, the industry or even looking back at old shows.
Music is also something that I like writing about. I have always been different from most of my friends, family and colleagues, as I mainly listen to Japanese music. I use The JukeBox as a way to share some of the music that I enjoy with others who I believe would enjoy it too.
Technology is an area that I like writing about, but for some weird reason, I don’t post about it as often.
Who are you writing for?
Me, the Google crawler bot and that one particular person that will inevitably stumble upon this blog either via the live link or via the Wayback Machine about my sick Lightning Farron skin in Minecraft that I posted 13 years ago.
The real answer is myself. I treat it as a personal diary, but without talking about my personal life.
(Sidenote: I was going to post it in the previous question, but I don’t talk about my personal life as much on here or on social media as most people wouldn’t care and for security. We may have overshared about our personal lives back in 2009 on Twitter, but we cannot do that now)
What’s your favourite post on your blog?
I think it will have to be my Getting Started with Mastodon ‘guide’. I am proud of the work that I have put into that.
It’s those types of posts that I would like to do more of.
Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?
I moved back from Ghost to WordPress in September and at the time, I replicated the look and feel of the Ghost blog but since then I have made changes to the site. I don’t plan on changing away to something else, and I don’t plan to add anything soon.
Thanks again to Kevin for tagging me and to MacDara for sharing this trend.
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