The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower

Posted on 29 November 2006 by Rob

I’m at a lost what to say this evening, so I thought I’d do a book review. The book of choice is Stephen King’s The Dark Tower; the seventh and final book in the series.

The series is King’s most accomplished work to date. They make you realise just what a clever writer King really is. The world of Roland the Gunslinger and his ka-tet consisting of Eddie, Susannah, Jake and the adorable Oy comes to a stunning conclusion in this seventh instalment.

What struck me was how clever King writes. He incorporates himself as a character in the story, and I don’t mind admitting I shed a tear at events that unfolded towards the end. I won’t reveal what happened at the end, but it was fitting. I was tremendously satisfied when I finished this book.

All in all, although King tends to waffle at times, and you sometimes just wanna scream “get on with it, man!”, The Dark Tower series was definitely a series worth persevering with. It took King a long time to write the series, but it’s been worth it.

What is blogging?

Posted on 28 November 2006 by Rob

The recent spat of blogging that has been done recently on NOTS has made me wonder what exactly blogging is. What it is that I am hoping to achieve with NOTS? Is it enough just to ramble on about anything in particular, or should the focus be on interesting and informative articles about various subjects, and should research be carried out to ensure quality of posts is high?

First of all, let’s determine: “what is blogging?”. There are a number of websites around that answer that question:

BBC Webwise – Ask Bruce – What is blogging?

Blogging is a way of collecting links to webpages and sharing thoughts and ideas with people online.

Blogs (or Weblogs) are basically online journals or diaries which are great for sharing information and ideas.

Blogger.com

A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world.

Hmmm. The next question would be: “why blog?”.

Bruce at the BBC says:

Surfing’s no fun if you can’t tell people what you’ve found.

How many times have you sent e-mails to your mates with the address of a particularly interesting web page, annotated with your own hilarious comments?

Wouldn’t it be good to get your own web page where you could publish these comments, plus the links you find, turn it into a daily journal of thoughts and ideas and make the whole thing available to the world?

Seems quite simple when you put it like that. In other words, I blog so that I can tell people what I’ve found on the web. I don’t do that much. I don’t tend to email my mates with particularly interesting web pages either (in fact, I tend to delete the ones I get – no offence!). You could call NOTS a “daily journal of thoughts and ideas”, but I don’t tend to post every day, although I’d like to, if I had something to say.

So, WHY DO I BLOG? First and foremost, because I like it (even though it may not seem it, due to lack of posting). Blogging has become a phenomenon on the world wide web in recent years, and it gives a good feeling to know that I’m part of a global community when I blog.

Initiatives like deaf-blogs.com, which I contributed to somewhat, reinforced the gratification that blogging provides in what was, for me, a major way. To think of myself as one of the first bloggers to post vidblogs in BSL is just so cool.

Anyway, I’m going to do what was done over at Sandhill Trek, and invite fellow bloggers to tell me why you blog. I’ll do a later post incorporating some of the more interesting takes on this subject, and see if I can reach some sort of conclusion on this issue.