Some unsung blogs I read

Thanks in part to Google Reader and the miracle of RSS feeds, I read way more blogs than I post comments on. I do leave some comments, but I just don’t have the time to properly have a blog.conversation on all the posts I read.

I try to bear in mind the XKCD cartoon: “Someone is wrong on the Internet” — sure, if you want to discuss and debate anything, there’s no shortage of places to do so. But if you contribute to them all you’d be at the computer all day and all night doing it.

So you (and indeed the writers) of some blogs might never know that I enjoy them. This post is to make amends for that. Here are ten of my favourite blogs that I rarely or never comment on:

• Highriser — some great perspectives on Melbourne life
• Jayne’s Our Great Southern Land, highlighting Australian history
• I Started Something — the influential Long Zheng, from somewhere down near Hastings on the Mornington peninsula, stirring up the Windows world with observations, particularly on forthcoming releases
• Overheard in Melbourne quotes many of my fellow Melburnians and the amusing things they say. I particularly liked the one today: Like…my brother has this livejournal thing, and there’s a group he’s a part of, all about embarassing things people say, and how other people overhear them and post them on the internet. He reads them to me sometimes – some of them are really bad! And, like, I’m always afraid someone is going to hear me saying something dumb, and put it up there and he’ll realise it was me. Oh my god. What if I’m already on there??!!
• Ed Bott has his own blog and one on ZD Net has a constant stream of opinion and advice on PCs
• James’ Chaucery blog highlights little factoids, and is what inspired me to do those little graphs that pop up occasionally
• Kensington Victoria is random topics, often funny, from some bloke in Kensington
• Coding Horror is a well-known programmer’s blog from Jeff Atwood, who has some incredible insights into the lives of professional geeks like me
• Transport Textbook has a lot of interesting (at least to me) articles on transport (specifically public transport) theory.
• For some reason I find the Washington Post’s Get There blog equally interesting. I’ve never been to DC, I don’t even know that much about the geography or politics involved, but it seems they have some similar problems in transport to Melbourne, with congested roads, crowded trains and buses, and disruptions from time to time causing havoc. I wonder if one of the daily papers here would take up something similar — I might suggest it. They do seem to be able to illicit a more forthright response than is often seen here, though the Leader blogs with people like John Rees from Connex and Darren Peters from the South Morang Rail Alliance may be showing the way.

I wouldn’t expect everybody to read what I read, given some of them are specific to my interests.

I read (and like) a lot of other blogs, and specifically excluded those written by my friends and acquaintances (hello to Tony, Trish, Ren, Kathy and all the rest of you), as I’m sure they know I’m reading, even if I don’t comment often.

At some stage I should go through the links on my own blog’s margin and update them to something closer to this list.

What other unsung blogs are there out there?