Last week, I tweeted that “reading lots of new blog posts in rss makes me way happier than reading lots of new tweets”.
Opening my RSS reading and finding 30 unread items makes me happy. Opening Twitter and seeing 150 new tweets feels like work. I’m not sure why that is. I think Twitter has become more negative, and the ease of posting quick bursts makes posting negative stuff easy. With blogging, writing something long requires time, words, and an argument. Even the passing thought of “should I post this” creates a filter that lets only better stuff through.
And I find myself running out of blog posts to read more quickly than tweets. Even though the content is longer-form, there are much fewer sources total. I want to fix this.
That same day on Twitter, I put out a call for new blogs. I got a few recommendations (all great!): Priceonomics from Allen Pike, The Morning News from Patrick Gibson, and Matt Bischoff’s tour-de-force of a tweet.
I’m looking for more, though, and blogs of a specific type:
- Written by a single person with a voice and interests of their own
- I like programming but I’m happy with other stuff too
- Longer-form is better than shorter, but both are good
- Prefer original content to link blogs
- Ideally fewer than 2 or 3 posts per week
Send me tweets and emails about the awesome blogs you love, please! And don’t be afraid to promote your own blog. I want to read it. Over the last year, while looking at my referrers, I’ve found some awesome blogs that my readers have been quietly working on, such as Christian Tietze and Benedict Cohen. I’m not kidding, I want to see your blog.
Here are some blogs of the type that I’ve found myself enjoying the most recently.
Slate Star Codex might be my favorite blog I’ve found. Scott has a contrarian angle on isuses that’s not always right but is always interesting. If you email me, I’m happy to recommend my favorites of his posts.
Sometimes, it can be inspiring to read people in other programming communities writing good stuff, like Pat Shaughnessy and his blog. Zack Davis’s An Algorithmic Lucidity is great. There are blogs like Mike Caulfield’s and Manton Reece’s that read like a journal for a new project. It’s awesome to be along with them for the ride.
Blogs I’ve found beause of Swift stuff, like Olivier Halligon’s Erica Sadun’s, Ben Cohen’s, and Russ Bishop’s. An amazing blog from a co-worker at Genius, James Somers. He never posts, but when he does, it’s worth the wait.
I think I miss blogrolls, too. One of those will probably make an appearance on this blog soon.
