I’ve been reading some “alternative” blogs at blogs4God. 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.

Phil Younger 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 This is not for you… 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 weather the storm 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 tekBlog.net.

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 northoftheborder’s graphic design, layout, and content. Sweet and kudos! I gave a quick read to his description of an XML-configurable Flash video jukebox. 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 Boyink to see how things were going. It appears that scoundrels have finally targeted his blogging platform, pMachine, with the bane of bloggers everywhere: comment spam.

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