I’ve been reading some “alternative” blogs at . By alternative, I mean not my usual faire. I’ve been sampling the Journals category and Kathryn Lively’s St. Blog’s. Interesting what you can find when you take the time to try something new.

blogs about shutting down his blog and why he did it. It makes sense. He said that his motives revolved around the need for attention and the craving that it forms. I can relate. When I first started blogging, I was checking my referrer logs every hour to see if I had any hits. I still check my logs regularly, but not in the same way. Plus, any comments that came my way were a big bonus. “Wow, someone real out there knows that I’m alive, and they read my blog!” You get the idea.

Then there was a provocative, well-written, beautifully presented journal called Oddly enough, the thoughts and events recorded were so personal that I was both moved and bothered. Bothered because I was reading something so personal. I hope that Candace, her family, and Matthew of illness.

I tried some other blogs, too, only to find that they had fallen prey to link rot or some other form of abandonment, such as .

But then I was quickly back to my old haunts in the techBlogs category. I must say, even though I’m not a Mac fanatic (don’t love ‘em, don’t hate ‘em), I was totally

impressed with ’s graphic design, layout, and content. Sweet and kudos! I gave a quick read to his description of an . Did I get that right? Curious. His blog archives use PHP. I wonder what system he uses to run his weblog. Is it homegrown?

I had to check in at to see how things were going. It appears that , , with the bane of bloggers everywhere: comment spam.

On another note, I just discovered that now has a of their online service. Very cool! I tried the trial edition, and I plan to buy it when I can. It’s only $29, so not a bad deal.