However, one concern that I have is that the field on which I write is quite a niche market, and being theoretical in nature (most posts concern such topics as Scheme, Haskell, category theory, and continuations, as well as other interesting programming languages, such as Squeak, which was originally developed at Apple (according to “Squeak Smalltalk: About” at http://www.squeak.org/About/, “Squeak began, very simply, with the needs of a research group at Apple.”)), it is difficult to post relevant advertisements.

On a Mac-related blog, since Macs are products for which other companies also manufacture and advertise related products, it is possible to post related advertisements. But on a theoretical blog concerning programming language theory and category theory, what should I advertise? About the only related topics that come to mind are related books and ISP-related services for readers who want to set up similar blogs. Do you have any advice for setting up a blog on a theoretical topic?

Another problem concerns getting Web site forwarding to work. Free WordPress.com blogs, unlike WordPress.org blogs set up on private domains, are prohibited from posting advertisements, so I set up my own domain on Register.com, http://www.dekudekuplex.org, rented a rental server from Sakura Internet, and set up Web site forwarding to forward that domain to the actual URL of my new blog (at http://dekudekuplex.sakura.ne.jp/blog/en/) (which is more difficult to remember).

However, the Web site forwarding is not working properly, in that while links on the blog reached by the actual URL are working fine, links on the same blog reached by the Web site forwarding all point to the top page of that blog, and do not link properly.

Did you have any problems with Web site forwarding not working properly when you set up your blog? Do people who have set up sites on rental servers and use Web site forwarding to forward the IP addresses need to transfer the domain to the rental server site?

Regarding Mac-related topics, a few years ago, I used to be Moderator of a Games Discussion Forum on MetroMac.org, the Metropolitan New York Macintosh Alliance (see http://www.metromac.org/), a New York-based Apple User Group. However, one day a cracker cracked into the server, and deleted all the posts there and my Moderator account. The owners of that site were incensed, and because the first thing that that cracker did was to delete my account, they surmised that the cracker’s actual aim was me, rather than their site, and that I must have somehow been the cause of the cracker’s actions. (It seems likely that the cracker broken in as a result of an argument I had had with another discussion board, Ars OpenForum 3.0b (see http://episteme.arstechnica.com/), over their censoring an article I had posted about the Macintosh version of EverQuest simply because the article had been written so professionally that they had thought that it must have been spam posted by Sony.)

As a result, the administrators at MetroMac did not reinstate my Moderator status, and warned me that if this kind of incident happened again, they would delete my account (although they did give me a free Supporting Member account for one year). I stopped writing about Macintosh games, and eventually relocated from New York to Tokyo and became the Administrator of the Haskell-Beginners Mailing List (see http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners).

However, Macintosh games have always been an interest of mine (I even wrote a lengthy article, “Why Apple Can’t Afford to Ignore the Gaming Industry” (see http://www.metromac.org/newsletter/express/may04/gaming.html), for MetroMac Express, the MetroMac newsletter, on the topic). Nevertheless, there was very little interest in Macintosh games on the Games Discussion Forum which I had moderated, and I wound up having to write more than 95% of the content there. Also, it is not clear how to integrate Macintosh games and programming language theory (although perhaps Squeak, originally developed at Apple, and such related virtual reality technologies as Croquet (see http://www.opencroquet.org/index.php/Main_Page) and Cobalt (see http://www.duke.edu/~julian/Cobalt/Home.html), are related topics).

In 2008, you reported founded Touch Arcade (see http://toucharcade.com/), your new blog which discusses iPhone/iPod gaming. If I created a blog focusing on Macintosh games (as opposed to games for the iPod), do you think that there would be interest in this topic?

2. Pick a topic other people care about.

Right?

I suffered from the same “greed”, and it wasn’t until I started working on something that I was passionate about, did I realize where I had gone wrong. Instead of “forcing” myself to work on my blog, I now enjoy working on it and hate that I don’t have more time to do so. While I still enjoy making money with my blog, it is no longer my primary motivation.

D. Rich