Exposition

After explaining why I consider weblogs a good idea in general, it's probably about time I explain what I started this particular one for.

My personal problem is that I'm spending a lot of my time thinking. I mean not thinking about concrete stuff I'm working on right now; I mean thinking about various tricky problems I just happen to be interested in generally. And I don't mean just letting my thougts wander a bit from time to time, like most everyone does sometimes. I mean really thinking a lot. Usually for hours and hours each day.

In fact I'm thinking so much it actually distracts me and makes it nearly impossible to get anything concrete done, preventing me from implementing any of the stuff I spend so much time thinking about...

In other words, all the time I spend thinking is really plainly wasted. What good does thinking about stuff do, if my ideas will never see the light of day?

This realization slowly trickling into my awareness, I was increasingly inclined to find a way to share my ideas. I was thinking about writing essays; but there are considerable drawbacks to this. With the aforeposted discovery on the usefulnes of blogs, it didn't take me long to realize a weblog is what I want. A weblog doesn't require well thought out ideas, which would make writing essays a considerable effort, and exclude many "smaller" thoughts. On the contrary, by it's very nature a weblog embraces brainstorming. It doesn't require covering a topic in any completeness. Just dump the ideas as they come. And pick them up later, adding new thoughts. Or move along and let others pick them up.

So what to expect here? Most of my thoughts revolve more or less around user interface/usability issues -- in a very broad sense, ranging from the actual design of specific GUIs, all the way down to the internals of operating systems design. After all, some users like to or have to work close to the OS core (think of admins, shell users etc.), and even if you don't, the core design indirectly affects what you can do in the end in very fundamental ways. So this blog will mostly revolve around UIs and OS design, and related topics.

I'm still not sure whether I should keep it strictly on topic, or also cover other less related stuff I happen to think about.

The beginning might be a bit strange, as I won't only write about new ideas I just came up with, but also try to catch up with all the more or less firm ideas that formed over the last couple of years.

PS. Thanks to Gianluca Guida for helping with naming this beast.