Technical Blog: Not As Easy As It Looks Part I (Direction)

For those people who are aware, I've started a technical blog recently to adhere to my technical whims (and also prevent current lurkers and readers of this site to be bored out of their wits, if they're not bored already), more specifically relating to my "excellent" career path into becoming the next Tom Kyte, Jonathan Lewis, Ken Jacobs (plug in your favorite Oracle/Tech personality, except for the big BG). For those readers with an adventurous streak, they've also probably discovered that there's not much update since its inception last September 2005.

I've recently found out that starting a blog for a "categorized" subject has its bumps, particularly for the techie kind. I'm first to admit I don't know in depth level about databases or Oracle, as compared to those with light years of experience. Thus, there are several points that needed to be answered before putting in entries for the first time:

1. What sort of substantial contribution can I do to make the technical blog a worthwhile read for passers by?
2. How can I make the entries more interesting, and yet, still have the content that will deliver?
3. Will I make that critical contact across for readers who have no exposure to databases? Will I seem like a fool for those who happen to pass by who has had infinitely far more experience that I have?
4. Will I be in a danger of making my technical blog yet another spin-off of this current one, becoming more like an online journal rather than a blog that delivers technical content?
5. Will I be making any sense at all?


For a significant amount of time, I've been considering these questions. I've always frequented several oracle blogs, and the sheer technical know-how they display and the content they deliver is light years away from what I know. Although one day I aspire to be as discerning as them, at this point in time, I don't have the in-depth technical goods to deliver this type of content. Then the question remains, what can I put in my technical blog? The pressure is actually a bit unnerving.

Additionally, the problems with a tech blog doesn't seem to necessarily pop up for those writing for literary content. For literary blogs, they do adhere to reality, but these can be creatively rearranged for the purposes of their story. On the other hand, a technical blog is based on something systematic, organized and almost always (at least at the time of writing this entry) predictive. Even if you creatively programmed a script/software that would spout out random results, it would still be certain that it will always generate randomly. There's no change in that; it will rarely ever come out with results that have a pattern, except of the random kind. That's the nature of being technical, particularly of the IT development: They're fixed, they're done what they're told, garbage in, garbage out. No golden egg that will miraculously here. (Except by divine intervention, but that's beyond the scope of this entry)

So weeks pass by and I have yet to post an entry. Until I chanced upon an Oracle blog from a nice lady who still sees herself as a "newbie" (after 4 years of experience, it seems, but already delivering talks to Oracle group conventions). Her entries are open, warm and unintimidating. They dont have extreme details in the form of lets-disassemble-this-bicycle-down-part-by-part-and-see-if-we-can-put-it-back-together-again, but a rather fresh approach that does not intimidate. From that moment on, I decided I should follow her approach, but with my personal style and flavor. This still didn't solve my problem though, and my ideas for an entry still vague, but it did give me a direction to begin with...