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I totally agree with the author. I've been frustrated finding the information I needed so many times, and when I eventually found it by putting together the pie

I totally agree with the author. I've been frustrated finding the information I needed so many times, and when I eventually found it by putting together the pieces from different sources, I called it a day and moved on. But then one day I figured that me wasting the time to find an answer might be something that's affecting other people as well, so I did a couple experiments. My entire blog is now mostly a bunch of solution posts to various issues I encountered (I know, not very sexy). The most popular one by far is https://dragoshmocrii.com/ubuntu-20-04-stuttering-animations-video/ https://dragoshmocrii.com/ubuntu-20-04-stuttering-animations... which brings in tens of people everyday (not that much, but still). Initially, I just posted the solution, but then I wanted to see what people actually thought about it, so I encouraged them to drop me a comment if the solution did help them. So people started to reply, and it's a great feeling to see I could save people time! One might wonder, why not use a better place to post a solution, such as Stack Exchange websites. And the answer is why not keep it on my website and build some reputation for myself, who knows who stumbles upon my solution post, and invites me to apply for a great job! ;)

TeMPOraL 6y ago
That's a good observation. Come to think of it, according to Google's Search Console[0], most frequently searched for / visited posts on my blog are a) some very specific stuff about numerical methods that I wrote during my university years, b) a decade-old post about fixing issues with Polish diacritics and Y/Z swap on Windows - i.e. explaining how to use CTRL+SHIFT/ALT+SHIFT to fix keyboard layout/language, and how to disable it entirely. I might start doing it - instead of trying to think of large topics to write, just describe results of any research I needed to do where I had trouble finding reasonable answers. Not for fame or SEO - but as a service to random strangers. Judging by unending stream of searches for over 10 years, I suspect that this post about keyboard layouts/language switch is the single most useful thing I've done in my entire life. (As context for non-Americans: language & keyboard layout switches are all too easy to hit by accident, and suddenly your keyboard "isn't typing" some characters, or swaps Z and Y, or whatnot. This doesn't go away on restart (or at least it didn't use to), and completely confuses regular people, making them think their computer is broken. Those non-tech-savvy people usually resort to manually copy-pasting problematic characters from a file or from a website whenever they want to type them. You can imagine the impact on productivity and sanity, particularly at work.) (And I just can't fathom how this is still a problem in 2020. Microsoft, WTF?) -- [0] - I don't use Analytics or any other tracking script on my site. Search Console gives you access to data on performance of your site on Google's search engine, and includes the only two things I ever cared about wrt. any analytics - how do people end up on my site, and what posts do they visit.)

TeMPOraL 6y ago

That's a good observation. Come to think of it, according to Google's Search Console[0], most frequently searched for / visited posts on my blog are a) some very specific stuff about numerical methods that I wrote during my university years, b) a decade-old post about fixing issues with Polish diacritics and Y/Z swap on Windows - i.e. explaining how to use CTRL+SHIFT/ALT+SHIFT to fix keyboard layout/language, and how to disable it entirely. I might start doing it - instead of trying to think of large topics to write, just describe results of any research I needed to do where I had trouble finding reasonable answers. Not for fame or SEO - but as a service to random strangers. Judging by unending stream of searches for over 10 years, I suspect that this post about keyboard layouts/language switch is the single most useful thing I've done in my entire life. (As context for non-Americans: language & keyboard layout switches are all too easy to hit by accident, and suddenly your keyboard "isn't typing" some characters, or swaps Z and Y, or whatnot. This doesn't go away on restart (or at least it didn't use to), and completely confuses regular people, making them think their computer is broken. Those non-tech-savvy people usually resort to manually copy-pasting problematic characters from a file or from a website whenever they want to type them. You can imagine the impact on productivity and sanity, particularly at work.) (And I just can't fathom how this is still a problem in 2020. Microsoft, WTF?) -- [0] - I don't use Analytics or any other tracking script on my site. Search Console gives you access to data on performance of your site on Google's search engine, and includes the only two things I ever cared about wrt. any analytics - how do people end up on my site, and what posts do they visit.)