TITLE: The End of a Good Blog
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: March 26, 2007 8:14 PM
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Between travels and work and home life, I've fallen way behind
in reading my favorite blogs. I fired up NetNewsWire Lite this
afternoon in a stray moment just before heading home and checked
my Academic CS channel. When I saw the blog title "The End",
I figured that complexity theorist Lance Fortnow had written
about
the passing of John Backus.
Sadly, though, he has called an end to his blog,
Computational Complexity.
Lance is one of the best CS bloggers around, and he has taught
me a lot about the theory of computation and the world of
theoretical computer scientists. Theory was one of my favorite
areas to study in graduate school, but I don't have time to keep
up on its conferences, issues, and researchers full time. These
days I rely on the several good blogs in this space to keep me
abreast. With Computational Complexity's demise, I'll have one
less source to turn to. Besides, like the best bloggers, Lance
was a writer worth reading regardless of his topic.
I know how he must feel, though... His blog is 4.5 years and 958
entries old, while mine is not yet 3 years old and still shy of
500 posts. There are days and weeks where time is so scarce that
not writing becomes easy. Not writing becomes a habit, and pretty
soon I almost have to force myself to write. So far, whenever I
get back to writing regularly, the urge to write re-exerts itself
and all is well with Knowing and Doing is well again. Fortunately,
I still the need to write as I learn. But I can imagine a day when
the light will remain dim, and writing out of obligation will not
seem right.
Fortunately, we all still have good academic CS blogs to read,
among my favorites being the theory blogs
Ernie's 3D Pancakes
and
The Geomblog.
But I'll miss reading Lance's stuff.
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