The experiment

Okay, so maybe writing a cookery lesson as my initial blog was not the sure-fire way to fame and fortune that I thought it might be - but it did at least get me writing. But for anything to come of this exercise, it needs a purpose.

So ... Goals:

Many people use blogs for personal branding. To sell myself as something. But what something?

I am a young architect, interested in sustainable design, but also with the practicalities of the the construction project, and the business of property development.

I enjoy cooking, and have been steadily increasing my repetoire and skill level recently. I reckon my experience would be helpful for other beginner cooks to get into the swing of things. I also have a relatively new family, and so I'm slowly trying to change our eating habits from the fast food of our student days to something healthier.

I garden a bit, but only a bit, and maybe if I were to write about gardening it would fit better into a discussion either on architecture (landscape design, and important finishing touches to a project), or on cooking (so far I only actually grow some herbs and vegetables, specifically so that I have these things on hand when I need them in a recipe).

To just blog about life in general seems like the lamest option. KingMuzza the renaissance man - cooking and gardening and looking after the family, while designing high-class hotels on a tropical island in the Indian Ocean. Might be interesting, but with all the information streaming over the web, why would anybody want to read that? After all, I do have Facebook for communicating with friends and family.

The advantage to writing a personal journal of life is that it is writing practice. It could be the first steps / experiments / exercises in book writing. Being a novelist one day in the distance future is a romantic option, but its like I have any ideas for novels. I do have at least 2 books festering in the back of mind which are architecture related -

• An in-depth study into the architectural history of Mauritius - and a reading into the culture and history of the country through its architecture.
• A discussion / best-practice guide on the everyday life of getting a quality building produced.

Further, a blog is a practice exercise / first step towards producing fully-fledged web-pages. Vicki (the future wife) is busy opening a scrapbooking shop, and with it wants to set up a web page - for marketing / a community of scrapbookers to exchange ideas and be integral to the running of the physical space shop / and a future mail-order shop. The idea is that getting this blog online and functional is a test case (content management, marketing of a blog, i'm not sure what else) - so that one day when I do set up Vicki's page, I can effectively market it straight away, without the expected teething problems.

Perhaps all these ideas will require more than one blog, but more likely the ideas can now be filtered down to their essentials and get this blog producing something of value.

As an aside - I haven't figured out yet how to make the blog visible. I tried searching Google and Delicious after writing my first post, but I couldn't find any sign of it. This might take some research / experiments.