Tech Review

Noticing a link to a post of mine, I dropped by the eponymously named blog by "The Spewker's" (I met her at Blogworld.).

In the post, she discusses her plans to change the focus of her blog from "news and commentary on just about any topic that strikes my [her] fancy" to "articles focusing on political news in the world of entertainment," claiming that blogs with a narrow focus or that find and defend a small "niche" in the blogosphere encounter the most success. It makes sense. People who want the latest on equestrian matters will type "blog.local-riding-store.com" not visit a blog with one horse story in between 76 "Bush is Hitler" posts.

My own blog-reading habits usually correspond to this model. When I need the 411 on Cuba, I go to Babalu. When I want to read about some our brave fallen soldiers, I surf on over to Gazing at the Flag (make sure you spell the last word correctly). It's Libertas for movie reviews and smart conversation. Gates of Vienna gives me the haps on the clash. If I want to experience the psychic pain earthlings feel when trespassing onto the Bizarro World, I bring up the Daily Kos.

One can extend this theory to retail and satellite radio where Sirius, for example, has a channel that plays nothing but Elvis and another one that plays only Springsteen. Some people may only like "The Boss" or "The King," I suppose, but it's more likely that individuals of normally varied tastes desire immediate sating of Springsteen jones'.

On the other hand, one topic and no variation can make for quite a dull blog, a mesmerizing thump-thump not unlike European Techno music. Not the ones above, but some blogs are so redundant that the they become predictable and, therefore, of no use to anybody but those for whom blogs are an exercise in Weltanschauungian self-love. How many times do we have to see a shaved fluffy with calipers on her head to get the animating idea in Stop Animal Cruelty blog? And I know that I'll get tired of Novela Blog in another seventeen years or so.

Novela lady

On the other hand, I'll probably never grow weary of varied but ideologically "safe" (Contrary to the protestations of pretentious poseurs, most people don't explore opposing points of view.) sites like National Review, Amspecblog, and Town Hall that sprinkle multi-issue conservative opinion with movie, television, and book reviews (NRO is particularly good at this. I'd like Pajamas Media to go in this direction, if you're listening Mr. Simon).

I've taken the latter, multi-subject approach with Asymmetric although I probably get less aggregate hits than if I would have made a separate blog for each subject. Some people interested in Cuban music or computers might not feel comfortable with my politics, for example, or Catholics might not enjoy- scratch that- might feel guilty looking at tasteful pictures of beautiful women (What a great excuse! see below) or reading PG-13 jokes.

Next to my wife, the most beautiful woman in the world, Monica Belluci (whew! dodged that one.)

Which is why I use B2evolution- blogging software- to minimize the damage from a diversely-themed blog. B2evolution lets me set up different blogs, each with its own URL and RSS feed. Cubanocast is www.nelsonguirado.com/index.php/cubanocast. The domain cubanocast.net (Some di** picked cubanocast.com a couple of months after I started blogging. Thanks, di**.) points to the former address. So, when somebody asks me about Cuban music, I tell them to go to cubanocast.net (I can't get over it. What a di**!). I use a different template for each blog as well.

It's paid off a couple of times. The nice people at the excellent La Onda Tropical were wary of linking to me because they didn't want to get involved in politics, but agreed after I explained that I kept Cubanocast politics-free.

Just thinking. Sorry to bother you. Now you can go to toecare.blogspot.com.