Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Happy Birthday Gangwon Notes

It took a while to find my niche. I signed up with Blogger because of some article on MSNBC discussing how the legal ability of non-journalists to publicize their opinions was under attack and that everyone should start a blog. The next day, I did. That was in May, I think. Three months later I wrote my first post. I really thought of myself as a citizen journalist and tried make every post informative to others. Later posts became more personal.

The Marmot, IA, the Flying Yangban and Ruminations all discussed Korean politics so in my first posts I wrote about national politics and it was good to learn a bit about the names and goals of the Uri Party and the Grand National Party but that wasn't really what interested me.
I wrote that I wanted to learn Korean. I still do, but there is a big difference between wanting to and actually doing and I haven't put the extra effort in. I hope I can force myself to this year.
One problem with learning Korean is that I would probably use it specifically to make my complaints known. I have tried to be open to different cultural ways of doing things but I just can't see the reasoning behind the Korean style of driving.

I don't think I complained too much in my blog but the obvious other side of "No news is good news" is, "Bad news is interesting news".

Of course a large number of posts were my attempt at PSAs. I described cycling routes -although some of these just became a cycling diary with little use to any other than family, and local festivals.

When I started my blog, my wife worked for yangyang tourism. Now she works for the Coast Guard and you may have CG related posts appearing in the last few months.

I think that my blog has become simply things that I find interesting and now shows my take on events. I still post PSAs but I no longer try to sell Yangyang.

Where will Gangwon Notes go next year? I want to try new things like podcasting or videoblogging but I am reaching the limits of my computer's abilities as well as mine. I am still not convinced that vlogging or podding are all that useful but I want to try them.

As my loyal readers will know (hi mom, sis), there will be more baby posts.

I am slightly involved in Talk Origins, an evolution/creation debate page. I may bring more of that to this blog but I feel that stretches my niche and I will probably keep my views on evolution and creation separate.

However, I will probably do more book and movie reviews and try to keep at least half of them directly related to Korea.

2 comments:

skindleshanks said...

Happy Birthday!-- I have to say, your blogging has evolved quite nicely over the next year. Now, with a little one, though, how much blog time will you really have? (I'm going to get mine going real soon--promise :)

As far as evolution goes, that would be something interesting to talk about over a bottle of (homemade) root beer sometime. -- I believe in some form intelligent design, don't see it as necessarily opposed to evolution on the surface, but do think that evolution needs to answer some tough questions before being adopted as infallible gospel truth. The ethical implications of evolution would be another rich point for discussion. Don't worry-I'm not a fantic--just would be nice to have some challenging discussion now and then.

Let me know if you want to grab a drink some Saturday to swap baby pics and discuss whether there is any possibility of intelligent (English) conversation in this province!

skindleshanks said...

BTW I just bought a bike today, (an Alton Icon Alpha) so I'll be watching for any more posts about good trail rides around Sokcho!