Though I've been actively blogging now for 3+ years, I've always thought of this as an amateur side effort, not something where I really spend a lot of time. All my blog changes have been incremental, since I never seem to find the time to "do it right" and get one of those fancy, pimped-out web sites that have all the latest bells and whistles.

Well this weekend I finally took the plunge and registered an official blog domain for myself: from now on I'll be posting at http://blog.richardsprague.com .  As always, I recommend reading from an RSS aggregator (I still use Bloglines the most, though I am toying with Google Reader too).  Since my work life and personal life are pretty much the same, I'm not sure it makes sense to keep two separate sites, so we'll see how much longer I continue to post here on MSDN.  I think there's a way to have this MSDN blog divert automatically to my other site, but figuring that out will take more time than I want to spent right now.

People ask me why I keep a blog, so this is a good time to try to answer that question. For me it came about in three stages:

1. When I run into something interesting on the Internet or elsewhere, it's nice to bookmark it. The IE "favorites" feature quickly becomes unwieldy after a while because you end up with so many bookmarks that you can't keep track of them all.  By posting interesting links to a blog, I can find it again by simply searching my blog site.
2. Once I start bookmarking, and doing it publicly, I might as well write a few notes about each site I see. Even if nobody else reads it, it'll be nice to remind myself later what I really thought about the article of interest.
3. Ultimately, other people might see what I wrote and have their own comments about the subject. I learn so much from comments, and I am regularly amazed and grateful for everyone who writes to me this way. In return I like to know my reader's own blog sites so I can read and comment about their posts too.

So if you haven't started a blog yourself, why not take the plunge too? If you're shy, pick another name and blog pseudonymously.  Even if nobody else reads it, it's still a nice way to keep track of all that surfing time you spend.

And please, let me know if you have a blog, so I can add it to my blog roll and read you regularly too.  The blogs of my friends and readers are consistently the most interesting stuff I read on the Internet and I love reading posts from all of you.