Tag: Blogs

Where is this blog going?

Topic-focused blogs tend to get large readerships. But I’ve always expressed whatever takes my fancy here on JHM.

I’ve been writing posts on ‘Journeys of Heart and Mind’ (JHM) for twenty-two years now. Sometimes I’ve written daily, or even more often than that, sometimes I’ve gone for months without posting at all, but recently I decided to deliberately write more frequently. But what I’m considering right now is not the frequency of posts, but the range of topics I cover.

Writing, Escher-style (Wikimedia)

The most successful blogs specialise on a topic, often quite a narrow topic – for example ‘Infra-red astronomy’, or ‘greenhouse gardening’; poetry or photography or evolution or Bronte or Paris. These topic-focused blogs tend to get large readerships. But I’ve always expressed whatever takes my fancy here on JHM; I’m not interested in audience size, more on variety and sharing an insight here or an opinion there.

My favourite topics include spaceflight, history, following Jesus, science, technology, astronomy, photography, world events and more. I’ve decided to continue posting an any topic that grabs my attention.

I spend £100 a year or so on the blog, about £2 a week. This is what it costs to keep and manage the domain name scilla.org.uk (though this covers my email address and Donna’s too and allows me to set up and manage subdomains like jhm.scilla.org.uk as well. And it also covers the cost of web hosting and a Word Press account to manage the blog, cover data storage, editing facilities and the rest. I could return to using Google’s Blogger platform which is free of charge; that’s what I used until July 2016. But it’s more limited and doesn’t provide such flexible formatting as Word Press.

All of this to say I shall probably leave things as they are, post a little more than I’ve managed for the last few years, and try to keep posting on a range of topics that interest me.

But it would be good if you, my readers, gave me some feedback. What do you like or dislike? Are there other topics you’d like me to write about? Are there things you wish I would not write about? If you have anything to say about this, do please leave me a reply. I don’t guarantee to follow your advice, but I promise I will consider it carefully. Thank you! And thank you also for reading JHM.

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome!

Making a fresh start

I sum these topics up on my Twitter profile as biology, web, science, technology, family, faith, history, and travel.

Having recently restarted blogging after a long pause, I’ve been thinking through how best to move forward – what should I change, what should I drop, and what should I keep?

Today’s post explains some of this, I’ll share what I’m doing and what I plan to do next. I’ll consider any comments you may leave, either here on the blog, or on Twitter or Facebook. But here’s how I see things right now.

Buy me a coffee

I’m offering everything I publish for free, but will always be delighted to receive a small gift, especially if you have sold or republished something (though even then it’s optional). Details are at coffee.scilla.org.uk .

Cruising the Gospel

This is a moribund blog that I’m in the process of restarting. I’m not sure yet whether to continue it in its present form, or to roll it into Journeys of Heart and Mind (JHM) as a topic in its own right. Currently I’m inclined to keep it as it is, and perhaps generate some PDFs from each book I complete. See it at gospel.scilla.org.uk .

Gateway

My Gateway site is mainly for my own use, but it’s full of links about Cirencester (my home town in England), local time and weather, some Christian links, local and national news, science and technology links and so forth. Some of you might like to take a peek. If so, head to gate.scilla.org.uk .

JDMC

JDMC stands for Jesus, Disciple, Mission, Church and is an introduction to Alan Hirsch’s Forgotten Ways. To learn more and download a copy to print (or read online), visit jdmc.scilla.org.uk . I need to update this booklet and plan to when I have time, unfortunately the web links in the PDF open OK, but using the browser to return take you back to the title page; I’ve been unable to fix this so far. If you open the links in a new tab you’ll be OK, but it’s easy to forget.

Journeys of Heart and mind

I intend to continue with this more or less as it stands. That means a mix of topics will appear here, articles about all of the things that motivate me as they occur to me (so in no particular order). I sum these topics up on my Twitter profile as biology, web, science, technology, family, faith, history, and travel. Others include photography, astronomy, spaceflight, archaeology and a few more. One thing I will add is a way of seeing just posts on one of these topics at a time, I think that will be useful; not everyone wants to see everything. You’re reading on this site at the moment.

Photos

I use Smugmug to display my photos and will continue with this, but I need to rearrange things in topic folders to make it more usable. Visit photos.scilla.org.uk to browse my all time favourites.

Twitter

My main Twitter account is ChrisJJ, but I have a second account, JHM. I haven’t used the JHM account for a long while, but might post tweets about faith topics there, and everything else on ChrisJJ. My mind is far from made up on this as there are quite a few pros and cons.