I began blogging in May 2007 with a tumblelog on Tumblr. A tumblelog is a loose collection of images, quotes, videos, sounds, and short chunks of text. I’ve seen the genre compared to a stream of consciousness, although we’re not talking The Sound and the Fury here. In fact, there is no stream but rather bursts of varying length at random intervals. Hence one journalist has called the tumblelog the punk rock of blogging, an apt comparison insofar as tumblelogs are also lean and often undisciplined. But punk offers more coherent narratives than most tumblelogs I’ve seen.

I used my tumblelog for fun and random thoughts, but soon I began blogging for real on Blogger about history and the Mac. The point was to teach and help out. The focus was narrow. My “real” blog was still my tumblelog, where I put the most interesting tidbits from past and present.

After some six months of blogging, however, I have found that there is much more interest in my blogs than my tumblelog. Part of the reason is that my blogs offer hard information, but my previous post suggests another compelling reason for the lukewarm response to my tumblelog. People with a natural appetite for narrative and an authentic voice leave my tumblelog amused, perhaps, but still hungry.