Profiling The Blogger's Workplace

Maybe we now have close to 40 million blogs around the globe, and still counting. We have been served up a plethora of insights about who these bloggers are and what they blog about. We invariably catch passing glimpses of them around town, in WiFi hotspots lugging their laptops. We see them in airports parlaying waiting time to rapt sessions on the web reading or writing blogs. We know friends who are bloggers and in personal conversations, they tell us about themselves and their blogs. Many of the more successful bloggers came from mainstream media and so we have known of them previously as journalists. In fine, we do pretty much have a good profile of who the more visible bloggers in our virtual world are.

But they do not account by any estimation for the bulk of bloggers. And precisely because these are members of the “citizen journalism” caste or more popularly, members of the Pajamas Media, they stay and lurk in anonymity, creating their blogs and reading other blogs in the privacy and secrecy of their little worlds at home. And indeed, mostly attired in their creased pajamas, lingerie, shorts, and I’m quite sure, a number bare naked at their computer table their fingers humping at the keyboard as they create their blog entries.

What would one give to be a fly on the wall and quietly and voyeuristically watching the proceedings? Other bloggers have of course given personal insights right in their own blog entries, describing in at times nonchalant prose how their computer stations are set up, what items are on their tables, and maybe what time of the day or night they crank out their entries.

And sometime ago, I read from an MSM newspaper which featured the life of a youngish wife and mother who was quite addicted, in some particular context, to blogging. Pictures were included, showing a well-strewn desk with a dirty ashtray and an opened can with the remnant of some drink. One picture showed the lady in a grimacing growl, showing mock rage and anger, very early in the morning in her robe and ready to plug away on her PC for her regular cadenced attack against Pres. Bush and his administration.

Would these be typical profiles of bloggers in their workplace, or more appropriately, in their private study? For political bloggers, maybe. But there are millions of us out there who most probably do not fit the profiles of these more rowdy and public bloggers.

BTW, because of our numbers that little study where we maintain our blogs or surf the blogosphere must now be as an integral to the typical family home as the entertainment center in the living room, the wide-screen TV in the family den, or the reading desks in the study room. Needless to state, many lives now revolve around that little spot. We are told that not only outdoor time but even TV time have been drastically cut in exchange for more time with the worldwide web.

This leads to some personal introspection and a little house tour with the camera. And being in between jobs I do have more time than many bloggers.

This would be the main station in a loft converted into a den. Two tower PCs underneath the table stand in readiness, the other as ever-ready back-up. Having been a network guy for sometime, I may have installed more precautionary measures than the typical blogger. Like this PC still has Win98SE installed, this version still considered very hardy and typically not anymore targeted for virus attacks and similar malicious schemes. The full keyboard, compared to the smaller ones in laptops, allows for faster touch typing, a hold-over dinosauric remnant from the ancient times of typewriters. I suspect many bloggers nowadays practice the Biblical method of typing, the look and see method. But we actually took up required typing lessons in college. This one small printer services the entire house network. Though I used to maintain in the old house a home LAN with about 14 nodes, this one here is networked simply, all originating from an off-the-shelf broadband router, Ethernet and wireless capable.

To the left but still inside the loft area are three tower PCs, two sharing a common monitor linked together through a keyboard-monitor-mouse adapter. All of these provide additional access to the Internet should the main one be otherwise occupied.

Underneath a desk in the loft area, two PCs also lie in wait. One has a networking OS, NT4.0, installed and the other has a CD burner should the need arise.

Thus, when I do get the chance to update my blog, the menu is cooked right here in the loft area.

But in the kitchen area is where the laptop resides, since it occupies very little space. Thus, when with company and the need arises to access the web, this would be where we would go.

This would be the visitor’s room downstairs. And this PC may be used by them, except that I would have to run a long patch cord to connect to the router upstairs. But that 100-feet cable also lies in wait for any need.

Then for the unused remnants of that home LAN from the older house, they have temporarily been consigned to different parts of the house. Some in the extra visitor’s room upstairs now being used for storage, and on two sheds erected in the backyard.

In conclusion, that is how my workplace, or for me, my leisure place, looks like; so randomly strewn around and so untypical, mindlessly bundled together by somebody who acts a bit like a packrat and a bit like a paranoid too insecure about losing precious access to the Internet and not having provided for alternate recourses.