Part of spending a lot of time on my own is that my mind is full of a lot of things. From the asinine to the important, some of these don’t need to be written down. But at the opposite end of the spectrum, some of them do, if for nothing else but put down the thoughts as coherent ideas. Obviously, the ones I write down are all of no particular consequence except to keep my mind occupied; making the best use of an idle mind.⌘

One of the last comments I got here (which was never published) was from C. Maoxian:⌘

The problem when you dump all your links or all your thoughts into Twitter is that you flood your followers’ twitterstream and they’ll quit following you. I thought about following you, then I checked your followcost and discovered it’s “nuclear.” There’s a real balance one has to strike when using Twitter: you can’t tweet too much (or too little).

I thought about it, and decided that while I wouldn’t change my Twitter behaviour, I needed a better place to put up the short off-topics since 140 characters just wouldn’t do and a sudden burst of tweets is not feasible because 1) there is no good way to show relation between tweets, hence the context is lost from one tweet to the other unless explicitly stated. And that just eats up the limited allowance of characters, and 2) Twitter isn’t the place for an intellectual analysis, no matter how small. The nature of Twitter means that it will be lost quickly, before someone else can read and absorb what I said.⌘

I thought of using Geekaholic itself, but that idea shot out of my head almost as soon as it came in. The design and theme of writing that I’ve built up here stops anything less than a fixed number of words from being put up. That was done on purpose. It was to force a certain quality and deliberation in whatever essay I wrote to be posted here. The lesser the text, the more the chances that it’s not that important. If it is important, I will research and find out more about it until it becomes a significant amount of text; that’s just how it should be.⌘

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So I had to find another way to go about doing this. That’s how Shorts was born. Shorts is powered by Tumblr, and it gave me the excuse for giving it a run that I’ve been wanting to for quite some time since Tumbling has become a verb on its own. I dived in with no expectations, but I liked what I saw. Being mostly about the right tool for the job, Wordpress seemed overkill for something so basic and simple to me. There were other options like Posterous, but the lack of themes turned me around.⌘

Inspiring by looks

Tumblr’s choice of themes is amazing. Nothing special or too flamboyant, they don’t jump out of the page to catch your eye. And yet, they’re pretty. They’re pretty enough to inspire words, to make me want to write. It was the first thing I noticed about other Tumblogs that I saw. The look made me want to start my own just so that what I wrote could have a look like that. Maybe it’s the differing ideologies, but I’ve not felt this in any of Wordpress — .com’s — pre-built themes. I had to make one that I was comfortable writing to. But Tumblr came with so many, catering to the whole spectrum. It was just a matter of picking one and then changing the theme code a little to make it mine.⌘

Most of the Tumblogs I have seen, have all been simple and minimal. And a good number of them have been quite interesting to read — even if not subscribing material — enough to make me stop by every now and then. I guess it’s something about putting the focus on content that brings it out in people. When you cut out the noise, it’s understood that the quality of writing will go up. The only itsy-bitsy things that I saw which would qualify for noise were Fusion Ads, but even they’re pretty enough to blend in. Now, I understand that since I was linked to these Tumblogs by weblogs I already read (and hence have some standard of quality), it was sort of a given that I’ll only see the cream of the crop. But this is quite a lot of cream.⌘

Ironically, the one part of Tumblr that I did not like, was the part others usually don’t see, which is the Dashboard. The Dashboard, strangely, is the exact opposite of what our Tumblogs look like. It’s confusing, convoluted and needlessly complicated. There are 7 ways to write a new entry based on the type. Each one has a different interface and hence a different link to click to reach there. As with all options, it’s invariably half way through that you begin questioning your choice, and think if some other option would have been better. In that scenario, I didn’t find an easy way to switch types. That was fun. I plan to switch to the iPhone app when I get an iPhone, which should hopefully solve this problem.⌘

And that was my only complaint, which is telling. The customisation was a breeze. Especially making Tumblr point to my own domain (which thanks to the good folks at Racked Hosting also didn’t take long). I couldn’t have asked for a smoother, quicker weblogging experience. Poetically apt given the urgency of penning down my thoughts.⌘

Divided in thought

Shorts will not just be about what’s in my head, of course. It’s the place where I plan to write anything that’s not significant enough to warrant a 1000+ word essay, e.g. my little experiment with a new writing fluff and then the release following the successful result. Some times there are residual thoughts from what a piece I wrote here, or new but related ideas that crop up at a later date. All of those things will go there. It’s really just a log of things that cross my mind or things that I do. I’m sure other writers maintain a personal log of ideas as and when they get them, to refer to them in the future. I’m just doing it a relatively more publicly than them.⌘

A lot of Wordpress weblogs I see would fit better as Tumblogs — except for the annoying Dashboard, which remains Tumblr’s weakest offering — but I guess the familiarity and customisability of Wordpress counts for something. I don’t mind giving up my ability to tinker if the overall experience is good enough, and Tumblr is more than good enough.⌘

Consider me impressed by a new blogging platform after a long time.⌘