A New Blog for 2012

What the hell is this? Why are you starting a new blog in 2012? And why on earth are you calling it Crackunit2?

I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while. I’ve had it ready to go for a while less than that. I’ve been dilly-dallying for a while. Pondering what flavor of future-facing social-media strategy I’m going to employ and all that bollocks. But the new year seems like a good time to go-ahead and just do it. Get a post up and get going.

Why start blogging again?

It’s simple. I’ve been missing it (for a bunch of entirely selfish reasons). It’s not that I don’t have ways to share nonsense with the world, thank you Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, FourSquare, Instagram, etc.

But none of them are the same as keeping a blog. A blog is your own thing to mess with. You’re the boss. It’s like having people round to your house rather than meeting in a nightclub with all its rules and rituals. And sometimes that feels nice. Even if there’s only a few of you sitting round the kitchen table not doing much. Sometimes that’s nicer than the wild anything-could-happen abandon of a night at Ritzy’s with loads of people wearing their best clothes and their best flavor of Axe.

And the fact that it’s your place means you need to do a tiny bit of DIY every now and again. Just the smallest amount of copying-and-pasting code and getting my hands a tiny bit dirty is good exercise for me.

Plus I’m convinced that blogging made me think a little smarter – when you’re putting your thoughts into a fully public, searchable, permanent and commentable space it makes you question your thinking a little bit more. Forcing myself to question my thoughts is a good thing. You’d have to be inside my brain to fully understand this (and you don’t want to be in there).

Plus there was a sense of blogging community that I really enjoyed. I got to know a bunch of really smart, friendly, helpful, and decent people around the world. I’d like to meet some more of those kinds of folks in new and interesting places.

Why now?

I don’t think the world needs more ‘hey look at this cool thing I found’ blogs, there’s plenty of that – there’s better people and better tools for that kind of thing. So I’m not going chasing after that. I’m going to try to post stuff that I’ve either made from scratch, or at the very least built-on to the point where I’ve added a pinch of something new.

Crackunit.com ‘died’ a while back – coincidentally we had twins at a pretty similar moment in time. That’s one of those life-events that somewhat eats into your thinking and writing time. And then I decided to leave Poke, move half way around the world and take up a big job at Wieden and Kennedy. A couple more things that might get in the way of blogging.

But that was then, this is now. The twins are two and a half, which means the hard work of rearing children is practically done. And the job is a breeze. So I’ve got plenty of time and mental space to start blogging again. Obviously all lies. But I’m going to do what I can to set aside some chunks of time to do this as best I can.

Why Crackunit2?

Because everyone loves a clean slate don’t they?

A few months back I was asking around how I could start a new chapter on my blog. And Richard Hooker tweeted back that crackunit2.com was free. At first I thought “funny” but nothing more. Then as I sat on the thought I began to like it more and more. It’s exactly what I needed. A new notebook.

Crackunit was then. Crackunit2 is now. This is my sequel. My Empire Strikes Back. I feel like Luke crawling out of the stinking guts of a festering Tauntaun.

Happy 2012!