Chris Shiflett laments the demise of blogging, placing the blame mostly on Twitter, because throwing out 140 character remarks is so much easier than sitting down and crafting a blog post.

I've blogged less in the last year as well, but I can't blame Twitter or Identica, my microblogging platform of choice. I'm going to blame the slightly younger and less grey me who decided that doing a PhD was a good idea, or at least an idea from which I shouldn't run screaming. The further I got into writing the big essay, the less creative I felt, and my writing on this blog almost completely stopped.

The timing of Chris' #ideasofmarch call to keyboards coincides with my desire to re-engage writing. I've got about 20 draft posts lying around, and while I'm not going to make a pledge, I would like to actually finish some of those.

I like blogging because I'm contributing to my space on the internet, because writing blog posts allows me to clarify my thoughts and to practice writing, and because helping to write the software running this site lets me poke around in the wonderful and fascinating wide world of the web.