April 25, 2009
The Value of Context
I'm thinking a lot about the context of writing these days, in as much as context drives the writer's intent, and drives the audience's expectations. I've been doing a lot of writing lately, most of it organized around The Wildly Popular We Love DC, as that's where my energies are often spent these days. But, I've been wanting to add more short form works somewhere, somewhere that I can slap up a big picture, or a couple of links, and make them work. Thus, I introduce, The Bit Bucket, a Tumblr-based blog.
I've been watching Tumblr evolve and do interesting things for the last year or so, and I'm intrigued by all of the different buckets that it has for different kinds of content. I respect and like that a lot, as it seems to go deeper than the one-size-fits-all box that WordPress and Typepad and other blogging systems use as paradigm.
Much as Twitter has made me a better writer (brevity being the soul of wit), I am hoping that Tumblr will make me a better blogger. I'm not abandoning this blog by any means. I am working on the results of a recent survey of Twitter users as to how we use the short form in social media, and how it affects our social circles. That's perfect for the long form. I've also got a copy of the new Cisco Routers for the Desperate that needs to get reviewed, and I probably need to do long-form reviews for the Jetta (just passed 60,000 miles) and the 5D Mark II (6 months next month!) that are percolating up. So, for now, expect the following contexts for writing:
Twitter: 140 characters of vapidity and/or awesomeness.
Tumblr: From 141 characters up to 750 words.
Typepad: 750 words or more.
And of course, if you're not reading We Love DC, you're missing some of my best photography and local beat writing.
About Tom Bridge
Tom Bridge is an itinerant technologist, and blogger in Northern Virginia. He is a Master's Candidate at Virginia Tech in Science & Technology Studies, with an emphasis in History of Technology. He is the Co-Founder of We Love DC, a partner at Technolutionary LLC and is a contributing member at ThaJungle. He lives with his wife, Tiffany Bridge, and cats Jack and Macro, in Arlington VA.
Contact
Available via email at contact at mail dot tombridge dot net or via Instant Messenger at DrC2k (AOL) and tbridge (Gmail) or via telephone at +1.571.243.3135, or via Twitter. Please remember, Eastern Standard Time unless otherwise noted herein.
