Yearly Blog Update 2017

Last year, I made a number of changes due to a shift in my priorities. Some of these changes were significant enough that this year can be viewed as a cleanup year. Like usual, I will be explaining some of the changes that will be coming up.

Random Rants and Ramblings

I'm not currently planning any noteworthy changes for this blog.

The War Between Schooling and Education

My primary education blog is no longer going to be my only outlet for my educational beliefs. I am trying to start a secondary blog that could evolve into a more social approach. I will explain that a little more later. As for my primary blog, some posts might move. Most will be unaffected.

Mental Exercises

Last year, I mentioned that I was burning through some pre-written mental exercises before making some significant changes. These mental exercises are nearly complete. All I have left is one final follow-up.

Less than a month ago, I settled on the future of this blog. More recently, I had another idea. This would be for another blog. The idea was that I would encourage people to ask me questions. Since I can disconnect from what I am supposed to believe better than most people, I could provide a fresh perspective on a number of issues.

This idea quickly fell apart. I am not social enough to get people to ask me the kinds of questions that I want. Despite that fact, I have decided to keep the concept open in case I ever want to follow through.

The ideas I had for the evolution of my mental exercises were little more than a way to put a post together each month to keep things alive. If I ever pursue another blog, something is going to have to give.

As I explained last year, I feel that the value with my mental exercises was in developing the concepts. Continuing work on the blog is not the best use of my time. Rather than put in time to keep alive a blog that I am unlikely to continue into the future, I have decided to focus on other projects. The last post will be January 15.

Pictures from a Sub-Amateur

Much like education, my pictures are going to be split a little. There will be little change to my picture blog. I have been considering a switch from my yearly Osprey summary to an overall Chambers Creek summary, and that might move to Tumblr.

Tumblr - maritimeorca

While playing around with a personal Tumblr blog, I found a potential use. I remembered back when I kept documents related to my experiences. Since a lot of those experiences were better documented in eBird, I stopped maintaining those time-consuming documents. It turns out that eBird checklists seem to work better than anticipated when copied to Tumblr.

My maritimeorca blog at Tumblr seems best suited as a replacement for my old experiences documents. I plan to continue posting eBird checklists, but I am also going to include other experience-related posts. Some of these will be in the spirit of eBird, but covering what I have seen outside of checklist submissions.

In addition to posting about what I see, I can also share photos of what I see. I still intend to post my pictures to Flickr, but Tumblr could add a secondary audience.

I don't want to treat Tumble too much like Flickr. I want to give people an option for a different experience. For this reason, pictures will be posted on a steadier pace (instead of gaps followed by dumps) and out of order (seemingly increasing the variety by breaking up related pictures).

My Idea Outlet

There will be some changes coming to how I select what to write and the order in which I will post to My Idea Outlet. These will be documented in my About OneNote file. Additionally, I will probably start adding some form of glossary to the various projects.

Proudly Pro-Ed

When Bernie Sanders grabbed attention with his horrible idea for free college, I panicked. I hate getting into politics, but it appeared that educational rights were on the line. I decided to contact the different presidential campaigns (although most campaigns don't respond to those types of questions) to determine their stances on this important issue.

I could have posted to my normal education blog, but I started thinking about a few things. For starters, the goal of discussing a political election didn't seem to fit very well with a blog meant to explain my personal beliefs. I started thinking about splitting my presence. By doing so, my primary blog is going to focus more on explaining my views. My Tumblr blog will focus more on responding to current events and promoting an open discussion.

Another reason that I started this extra blog is kind of corny. I wanted to be the first to use a hashtag. It seems like it's only a matter of time before someone posted that they were #proudlyproed. Concerned that this would be used in support of our anti-educational schooling system, I wanted to claim the hashtag on behalf of the pro-education minority.

One consideration for this new blog is the potential evolution. The evolution is unlikely to ever happen due to my inability to promote my online presence, but I at least see a path. By claiming a hashtag, I can look for others using the hashtag for reposting purposes. I can also add contributors. While additional contributors can be added to Blogger, it seems confusing to allow someone with differing views from mine to post in the middle of various posts about my personal beliefs.

I will likely add a document go between my two blogs. I can reference my document in either location, share both links within that document, and write a few things that can apply to both blogs.

Flickr

I am not planning on making any changes to how I handle Flickr.

Google+

I am not active on Google+. Blogger automatically posts to Google+, so I'm not going to completely abandon the site.

eBird

I was seriously considering a transition to my bird photos. The idea was that I would post my pictures to both Flickr and eBird/Macaulay. When thinking things through, I ran into my inability to promote myself. If I used eBird/Macaulay for my eBird checklists instead of Flickr, I would lose a link. Although Flickr does not have many connections to the rest of my online presence, it does have some. I have decided not to eliminate a possibility for others to stumble onto my blogs.

There will be an exception to all of this. There are times when I have uploaded bad pictures to Flickr just to verify a sighting. eBird/Macaulay will be used for this purpose as a way to keep some of my worst pictures from appearing on Flickr.

Recapping Changes

• Mental Exercises will now be slow exercises to familiarize people with Excel.
• maritimeorca Tumblr blog will be used as a personal experiences blog with eBird checklists and Flickr photos.
• Proudly Pro-Ed Tumblr blog was started mid-year