I blog. This web site is a blog, well really it’s a web log, said quickly without the “we..” bit. Blogging has become something you can do at home, at work, via your mobile phone, via email and just about anywhere you can access the internet in some way or another.

So why do I do it? Well being a freelance web developer I have been aware of blogs and blogging for a few years but I’ve never really delved into it too much. Boy do I wish I had though. After just a small bit of research on the web I saw just how big the blogging community was and just what the potential of running a blog has for traffic generation, popularity, notoriety, earning and simplicty of running a site.

At the time I had an idea for a web site to teach the basics of digital photography, and a blog suited what I wanted to do. I’d seen other blogs like strobist, digital photography school and Flickr’s Blog work well, plus a whole host of useful blogs. So I thought this would be the way to go. Wordpress was my blog script of choice as it’s just so flexible and simple to set up and use, but how do you go about setting up a blog so it is successful?

Rather than jump in with two feet and completely mess it up, I did a bit of research and found some excellent blogs which helped a lot and really gave me motivation to get it all going. Darren Rowse is what’s known as a Pro Blogger and one of his blogs is about just that. A Pro Blogger basically gets paid to blog in some capacity, a lucky chap, but if he can do it, why can’t I? Daniel set up the fairly new blog Daily Blog Tips which has bundles of info, and helped me a lot too. It was also the first blog I ever commented on, so I’ll send him a certificate at some point when I’m rich and famous and have fixed my printer. These two sites alone gave me the info I needed and the links to everything I’d need, but there are a lot more available if you want to look.

Then came the design. I’m not the most creative person in the world although I can get my crayons working sometimes. I wanted a ready made theme that I could tweak a bit to my liking. My first choice was ok, but a bit of a kick from Vivien over at Inspiration Bit was enough to help me choose a better theme and now you can see Photography Basics in all it’s glory.

Then there came a new name that I came across while reading a guest post on Darren’s Blog, and his post was really good. Useful, informative, easy to understand…. and the author was 12! At first I thought, nah, I bet he’s not really, but on further investigation and contact with David Wilkinson he is in fact 13. He’s just had a birthday, and he lives about 10 miles from me. Small world innit. He runs a blog over at Techzi and covers the latest gadget and techy info. A lot of things are spiffy apparently.
So with all these great bits of advice, tips and pointers, how could I possibly fail. Whether my photography blog will be a success or not is up to me really. We shall see. This blog is one to run along side it to make the most of the blogging community and all it involves. Having the freedom to blog about anything on a blog like this should hopefully be another string to my bow and all that.

A gazraa is a strange thing. Gazraa evolved as my nickname meerly by chance on a trip to Tenerife more years ago than I really want to remember.

Gaz is obviously a shorter name for Garry, but looking at wikipedia, it could also be:

• GAZ, which is a Russian automobile manufacturer.
• Gaz, who is a character from the animated television series Invader Zim.
• Gaz, who is just a minor character in Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, who owns Geno.
• Gaz, which is a Mughal measurement of length, often translated as ‘yard’.
• Gaz is also a tasty famous treat of Isfahan, Iran, a nougat which is mixed with chopped pistachio.
• And finally, Camping Gaz, a brand of compressed fuel gas products for camping and caravanning.

Blimey!

Raa on the other hand is a little more involved. For my nickname it was just what I shouted during a night of drinking a fair few intoxicating drinks when someone shouted out “Gaz”, but does it have any other meanings? Well wikipedia doesn’t bring up much. It’s obvisouly an acronym for a lot of things, the most interesting being the following:

• Right Atrial Appendage
• Royal Australian Artillery
• Random Access Algorithm
• Reservation Aloha Algorithm

So not the most interesting of names, but it is mine and the one I’m increasingly known by. Do a google uk search for ‘gazraa’ shows pretty much what I get up to on the net…. maybe I should choose a new username so I can hide!
So there you. Gazraa. I’ll be testing you later on it.