TITLE: The End of a Good Blog AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford DATE: March 26, 2007 8:14 PM DESC: ----- BODY: 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. -----