Blog Addicts of the Week: Pen and AJ

MEET our Blog Addicts of the Week, Pen (girl in photo) and AJ of the joint blog The SilPur Life.

Could you tell us something about yourself? How old are you and what are you currently doing? When and why did you start blogging and who got you hooked?

Pen: I’m 28, currently a postgraduate in Sydney, Australia. I started blogging in February 2003. Journal writing has always been my thing ["I write for me!"], and blogging became a natural extension to that. I started blogging on my own volition.

AJ: I’m also 28 and currently working as a quality assurance engineer in the Philippines. Pen introduced me to blogging via an invite from the then exclusive LiveJournal site. Both of us migrated to a free hosting site where PHP and MySQL were supported. We both learned how to use WordPress and we finally decided to get our own domain to be free from all other restrictions brought by these free blogging and hosting sites.

What makes a blog better than a regular website? Did you try putting up your own site before you started blogging?

Pen: I have put up several websites that were functional for their academic nature, but blogging is a whole different avenue that allows me to unload most of my person that removes that element of inhibition. Like really “putting yourself out there.”

AJ: HTML has always fascinated me. CSS and design followed then content would be the last push me in going all out. Blogging is flexible and the only person you really have to satisfy is yourself.

Would you say that blogging is very addictive? How many people have you convinced to also start blogging?

Pen: It’s more essential than it is addictive at the moment. I need to blog to get in touch with people back in Manila. But yeah, I do have a tendency to want to post something as much as I could. If that is addiction then I guess the answer is yes. I don’t know about convincing anyone to blog. I guess most of the people I knew just decided to start blogging too.

AJ: It’s a way to de-stress yourself, though it annoys me whenever I land into an angst-ridden blog. Blogging is supposed to let people know something about you and not to vent all your anger to the world. Yeah, blogging is addictive especially if you know your readers look forward for a new entry. Pen and I have the same set of friends and we probably spearheaded their blogging habits.

4. How has blogging made a difference in your life?

Pen: Hmm. I guess the main impact would lie more on reading other people’s blogs, which opened doors to people’s thoughts that would have been unthinkable years ago. People are also brought together much in the same way that CB radio and chatrooms did before, but on a whole new “cerebral” level.

AJ: When I started using the Web, I was very conscious about my personal privacy. For instance, I have multiple accounts in Yahoo! and Hotmail. But when I was getting the hang of blogging, I wanted people to know who’s writing the article and not some nutjob writing under an alias. It made me comfortable on exposing my real identity.

What blogging software do you use? What makes it better than other blogging services?

Pen: I’ll leave Ajay to answer that. I was in BlogSpot before when I was blogging on my own.

AJ: We have been using WordPress. It’s so easy to use and theming and layouting is so easy. There’s nothing like it.

What’s the most memorable experience you’ve had in the blogging world?

Pen: I’m not sure how to answer that. I’m sure Ajay has an answer that’s iPod-related?

AJ: I won an iPod — the grand prize from the first blogparteeh!

More than that, I get to know lots of fellow bloggers in person. It may sound lame, but it really is a nice feeling on getting to know people who has the same passion as yours.

If you have to pimp your blog to readers, could you tell us in 100 words or less why they should visit your blog?

Pen: (Do we get 100 words each? :P) Our blog is not intended to lure people in at all, so I am a bit unsure how to pimp it. But if I had to, if I really really had to, I’d say “Hey, check out what I’m up to,” which makes it really uninteresting given how self-absorbed people can be (I do get narcissistic at times. And all people should just go and admit they are too!)

AJ: Ditto with Pen, we never intended lure people. It’s just our everyday life and a little information sharing from the daily net news and activities that I gather around the web. We are more of an insight of who we are. People who know us personally get to see or read our thoughts and people who don’t know us get to have an idea on who we are.

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Thanks, Pen and AJ! And to all those who’d like to be featured, just leave a comment and your URL so that we can check out your blog. Or e-mail joeyalarilla@gmail.com.

We’ll feature a new Blog Addict every Friday, so keep visiting

Who knows? The next Blog Addict of the Week could be you.

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