Blog – Yogi's Blogosmos

I created my first blog on ‘Blogger’ platform and named it as ‘Eastern Sputnik.’ Sputnik means ‘travelling companion,’ since I was interested in travelling and am from the eastern world I gave the above said name to my blog. A colleague of mine mentioned to me at that time that the name does not make much sense; however in order to avoid going in a tangent, let me skip that discussion. My first post was ‘Religion – Should we Believe in it or not!’ I continued publishing posts on this blog though only very sporadically; in all I published only 11 posts from March 2007 to May 2010 and I had only 2 followers, both of them my friends. Then I completely forgot about blogging.

After a long hiatus I decided to get back to blogging. But instead of continuing at my blogspot blog, I decided to create a new one at WordPress (based on the advantages that WordPress offered over Blogspot). I named the blog as ‘Yogi’s Blogosmos’ a combination on Blog and Cosmos. I posted my first post ‘Success’ on October 19, 2014. I use this as a personal blog to post personal narratives, book reviews, free-verse & haiku poems and photos. I have posted 105 posts including this one and so far I have 91 followers. One of the biggest motives of starting a blog is to get into a habit of writing. But soon I realized that not everything that I write is fit to be posted. Hence I started maintaining a journal to scribble whatever comes to my mind and then I decided on which ones to post to my blog.

Based on a friend’s advice, I enrolled in IndiBlogger to popularize my blog. At the start of the year I decided to use the prompts posted in ‘IndiSpire’ to write blog posts. After religiously writing based on these prompts, I found that some of the prompts are not to my liking and are not in my interest areas. These days I check the IndiSpire prompt every week and if I find that interesting then I publish a post based on the prompt like this post which is based on IndiSpire edition 114: ‘Tell us your blogging story. When did you start? Why did you start? Everything.’

At the beginning of the year I made a resolution to publish at least two blog posts a week. I have been falling back on that target. Discipline is still a big issue when it comes to blogging or maintaining my journal. I am happy with the progress that I have made so far but I also realize that there is a long way to go. Blogging has given me a platform to publish my thoughts and helped me to improve my writing skills. As a result of trying earnestly to improve my writing skills, this year I had my first piece of published work in an anthology. I have come a long way on my writing journey which has been an enjoyable and exciting one so far.

This is a follow up post to my previous post: Print Books VS. E-Books and Print Books VS E-Books – Part 2.

Amazon might promote Kindle E-Reader as device ‘for the love of reading.’ But we would get locked into Amazon’s system if we buy the Kindle E-reader. A friend of mine reads using his smart phone through Kindle e-Reading app as well as Flipkart’s e-reading app. He says he does comparison shopping and buys from the vendor who offers a book at the lowest price.

Reading only using e-reader also makes it difficult to come across interesting books other than what Amazon’s or other such vendors’s recommendation algorithm would suggest. In one particular instance, I was watching Barry Shwartz’s TED video on my laptop and then decided to buy his book, ‘The Paradox of Choice’. Using only the e-reader would rule out possibilities like these.

While most of the time we come across opinions that portray Social Media as unnecessary distraction, they can be useful too. Most non-fiction authors take between one year and three years to publish a new book. Following them on Social Media sites like Twitter would help us to find out about any follow up research or development after a book (on a particular topic) got published. Professors/Authors like Steven Pinker, Richard Thaler, Dan Ariely and Nassim Nicholas Taleb post about interesting ongoing academic research from their respective Twitter handles quiet often. Some of these ongoing research might act as supplement to the book that we might be reading. As is always the case with any social media we have to have the discipline to selectively browse and read, otherwise we will be wasting our time. This is where a general purpose device like a smartphone or a tablet might come in handy rather than a dedicated e-reader.

Having access social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp will also help us to share with our friends and acquaintances about what book we are reading. Rather than a way of just bragging, we can use these tools to share quotes, anecdotes, statistics, etc. from the book that we are reading. About a few days ago I was reading an article by James Altucher on Pope Francis. I found a quote by Pope Francis about the media very interesting and I shared it via my Twitter handle. What’s the fun of any activity including reading if we cannot assimilate (good) aspects of it into our personality and bring it to the fore in our social interactions? Reading from sources like blogs, forums and websites will also not be possible with a dedicated e-reader.

Having a general purpose device like a smartphone or tablet can be useful in other situations as well. On a couple of occasions, I have taken snaps at the most unlikeliest of places and times using my smartphone and used these snaps later to write blog posts (Examples: Urban Nomads, Free Bird Peeking at Caged Birds and Cloud – awkward wingman). There was another occasion when I was waiting in the reception of a dental clinic while my wife was getting her dental procedure done, I opened the Kindle e-reading app and read a book.

With passage time displays in smartphones and tablets might improve to negate some of the advantage enjoyed by e-readers. There might be some new development such as in spectacles and contact lens that can eliminate or at least drastically reduce the eye strain developed due to reading on smartphone or tablet displays.

Amazon markets its Kindle e-reader with the tagline: “For the love of reading.” In a way, we can assume, any e-reader carries a hidden tagline: ‘For the confinement of reading from e-books alone.” While there is no doubt that e-books are superior to printed books on a number of utility factors, a dedicated e-reader is not absolutely necessary to enjoy these benefits. Ultimately buying and owning a dedicated e-reader is more a matter of affordability and preference than any technological requirement to enjoy e-books. A general purpose device like a smartphone or a tablet would allow us to read from a myriad sources in addition to e-books. We can actually use a smartphone or a tablet as a device to fulfil and enhance our ‘love for reading’ provided we only have the discipline to do so.