Dr. Horrible

It’s still early in my career (!) as a blogger and one of the things that I’m curious about is the relative value of posting personal stories, notes and images versus posting interesting things that I find elsewhere.

Ultimately I’m talking about creating content as opposed to sharing it. Or stealing it if you want to take that view.

For example, the post about our trip to Block Island and the post about astronaut flight suits both give a glimpse into personal thoughts and interests while the Bloody Table is something I just found on Boing Boing. I suppose that the things that I decide to share are also reflective of personal tastes but it sometimes feels a bit like cheating.

That said, coming up with deep, revealing posts every day isn’t something I can manage while living up to my responsibilities at home and at work. It requires time that I don’t always have and so I think that sharing things helps keep the blog breathing. And frankly, when I see something neat, I like to share.

So for now, my mindset is that posting personal items is great and when I have the time and inspiration, that’s what I’m going to do. I am also going to share stuff that I discover and will always try to be honest and credit the source.

But there’s one more angle to the sharing bit – timeliness. For example, I posted the “Dancing” video from Wherethehellismatt.com because it was great content and it made me feel good. But by the time I posted it, it was already all over the web and even received a blurb in Newsweek. It seems kind of silly to use the instantaneous medium that is the internet to post things already covered by “old media.”

And this is the dilemma that I face today. For some time I’ve been hearing about Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, a three part musical written by Joss Whedon of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” fame staring Neal Patrick Harris of “Doogie Howser” and “How I Met Your Mother Fame.” Teri Gross recently interviewed Harris about it on “Fresh Air” and it’s been mentioned in Time Magazine and who knows how many other places.

Yesterday I finally watched the first episode and I really liked it. It’s on Hulu.com which makes it easy to embed videos and the quality is excellent. And I liked it. So I want to post it but I don’t want readers (of which there are currently none) to think that The Many Uses of Tim Foil is weeks or months behind the times.

There is pressure to keep posting – one day, after all, I’m going to announce this blog – but I don’t want that pressure to turn this into a place to go see what was happening six weeks ago.

On the other hand, I do want compelling stuff on the blog and Dr. Horrible is certainly that.

So I’ve decided to post the series in three parts over three days. Primarily because I like it. Secondarily because it will provide content for three days and thirdly because, you know, screw you! It’s my blog! Just because you knew about it first doesn’t mean that everyone has as much time to spend surfing the web for minutia!

Until further notice then, the approach will be to post whatever tickles my fancy. I’ll try to err on the side of “newness” but will not discount content just because I didn’t discover it before anyone else.

And so, without further delay, (Cripes! Just play the thing already!) I present Neal Patrick Harris in Part One of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog!



Tune in tomorrow for Part Two and the day after that for Part Three…