Tommy Collison

One of the people I follow on Twitter linked to an article about how dogs were superior to a girlfriend. I laughed, but one particular article in the ‘related posts’ widgit (a bit of code at the bottom that generates posts that might be relevant to the one you’re reading) which was titled ’5 Items you owned (that would bore today’s youth)’. As someone who grew up around technology (first blog aged 12 like!), I found this list quite interesting. The last item especially caught my eye. The diary/journal.

I got one of those!

Nope guys, dim that gleam in your eye, I don’t have a little notepad with 2009 emblazoned on it, where I divulge all my most intimate secrets, who I fancy( note 1), what Mum’s like behind the blog/twitter account(note 2), what living with John and Patrick is really like(note 3). Nope, my blog is my online journal. To use 1990′s computer terms, WYSIWYG! (What you see is what you get)

So which is better? Offline journal or blog?

Well, first, is what gets written all that different?

I’m not sure. I know that if I kept a journal, I wouldn’t write really personal stuff in case of anyone finding it. I’m pretty sure someone would notice me writing articles in a notebook for an hour a night. John’s incredibly curious when it comes to these things, he’d probably hatch an elaborate plan to absail from his beloved Piper D640 or whatever down to my window, sneak inside, steal the book with a fishing rod and sneak back out again.

Why am I suddenly humming the Mission Impossible theme

But yeah, I don’t o into ridiculous amounts of personal information here, so why would I in a journal. I guess if you got one of those new fangled Bratz yokes they won’t stop advertising on TV which has a voice recognition lock thing on it.

Anyway, blogs far outshine secret diaries in their sense of community. How else would you get comments on your posts? How else would everyone now know my French travel itinery unless they saw Den15′s comment on my Holidays post? My favourite part of my Fry experiment was people’s reactions, even if there were negative ones as well as positive.

Also, diaries get finished, and they have to be put away, and then you run the risk of them getting lost and all that. All my posts from last year are neatly organized, and categorized! I’m not much of an art student, and couldn’t draw you a flower to save anyone’s life, yet I have pictures dotting my posts left, right and centre. Couldn’t do that on paper!

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1. You skipped my entire post just to see if I was truthful here didn’t you? :D

2. She’s lovely! What’d you expect me to say!? She reads this y’know!

3.  Most of our communication is via MSN, and the office is always stuffy due to about a bazillion computers, but you get used to it. I’d say if a bigshot doctor examined us, he’d find our lungs had adapted to living with so many computers.