Christ, it's dusty in hear. Minecraft? Hell, I haven't played that in like 3 years. Los Alamos? Haven't lived there in almost 7 years. Time to update some things.
I haven't completely given up on blogging- indeed, I ran a short lived blog that was purely space weather focused over at the University of Michigan's Climate and Space department page. This blog was challenging to maintain. When writing for space weather, I see two paths that can be taken. The first is to report on every little event that happens. This means echoing what is reported by NOAA's SWPC forecasts or trying to keep up with the very active space weather monitoring and/or aurora watching community. This approach is neither fun nor productive; it's just adding noise to an already crowded space. The other is to try to add a unique perspective on space weather related news. This approach gives more room to the writer and more opportunity to be unique. However, it also requires deeper insight into the science & forecasting community (which I had), but fewer opportunities for shorter, more superficial posts. Since the department wanted frequent posts, I couldn't keep up. Each post required a lot of thought and effort; it was draining.
What I really want is to be able to post all the random crap I want, even if it's not space weather. That's what this blog used to be, and I enjoyed it (even though I had zero followers, and that's fine.) So that's the format to which I'll return. I'll post about space weather occasionally, but also sprinkle in what ever the hell I feel like. And that will be a better blog (at least from the writer's point of view).
Finally, I frequently find myself identifying small solutions for issues that arise when doing space science software development, especially from the point of view of an OSX & Linux user. I've wanted, for some time now, to share these in a meaningful way. By pumping some fresh life into this blog, I will have that opportunity again.
Let's see if I stick with it. Probably not, but that's just fine with me.
