Over the past couple of years, I've on occasion considered starting a blog.  The reason is mostly practical - documentation of what I've done for my future reference - you see, I have a short memory.

As an example, I've replaced two doors (including door frames) in my house.  This is something well within my capability, but is not something I do often enough to develop a well embedded memory of the details.  As a result, if I had to do another today, I wouldn't be sure where to start. Frustrating and inefficient.

On the other hand, I've often referred back to items that I have documented about my hobbies in on-line forums.  No need to reinvent the wheel on some model-building or micro-controller technique; just read my own notes and repeat.  This works even better when photos are involved. I've also noticed that when re-reading of old posts, I recall details that I didn't explicitly note.  Curious.

To that latter point, I was recently purging some very old notes (10-12 years) at my workplace.  While re-reading them during triage, I was surprised to find that I not only recalled the items I explicitly wrote about but also some very detailed memories about the context of the event, the place I was when I took the notes and sometimes who I was sitting next to or even non-related events I was daydreaming about at the time I was writing!  The memory is an amazing and curious thing... 

So back onto the topic about considering the blog.  I've got my reasons, as noted above - but why now?  The trigger is an interesting home improvement project that is underway - my wife and I have decided to embark on a Solar project.  

When researching the idea, we visited two homeowners that had mounted solar panels on their property and both had publicized it in some way.  One published an entry about his project in a blog he keeps for his church functions.  He referred me to it prior to my visit as background.  The second homeowner commented that he had started a Facebook page for his project.  In both cases (the latter moreso than the former) it was a way to share what motivated their interest and the details of the work itself to a large audience efficiently.  Solar is one of those things that many are aware of, but few have direct experience with; as a result, there is a LOT of curiosity about it. 

Having decided to take the blogging leap (by the way, that word bothers me), I'm now looking into the how - I have to learn.  What platform?  Off line or on line?  What provider?  One blog for every avenue of interest, or one for all?  What other questions do I not know to even ask?  This post is part of that learning process.

We'll see where this leads.