A Digital Discussion

One of our assignments in this module was to write a response to a blog posted by someone outside of our class. I thought it would be fun to find a blog that is: 1) not on my usual reading list; and 2) about a topic I am interested in but don’t regularly read or write about. I crossed off sports, news, politics, technology, and the environment and felt I was left with three major areas to consider - food, travel, cars.

With a full-time job, part-time graduate school work and one-year old son, I don’t have much time for travel these days so writing about Hawaii was likely to agitate me. Cars? Outside of the hope that I will one day be able to get rid of mine and walk or bike everywhere I need to go I don’t spend much time thinking about them. Food though…oh yes! Food is among my number one things to think about. After a quick Google search I came across this excellent blog which contains this post that I will focus on.

Yes, the post is about five weeks old, but it’s timely. With baseball season winding down and the cold autumn air seemingly here for good, I think many of us will have a few weekends in the next three months where we stay inside eating bad food and watching good football.

If the measure of a great blog posting is to motivate your audience to become passionate about something you care about - whether that’s who wins the election, methods to fight climate change, or debating if Tony Romo should play with a broken pinky - than Chef McAdams succeeded in my view. His use of exceptional photography, a casual writing style, and enough patience to provide step-by-step instructions likely inspired a good number of his readers to try out this cholesterol-raising meal.

From a technology perspective, he did two things in this particular posting which I like. The first is the use of photography. He doesn’t just add the pictures “because he can.” The images of the food are part of the experience. Reading about food is fun, but seeing the food is incredible. The quality of the photography helps his point - look at the crispy wings and cold beer, this is a meal you can’t live without!

Secondly, I like that rather than repeat his wing recipe in this post he simply linked back to an earlier posting. As we’ve read in many of our recent assignments, one of the greatest benefits of blogging is that blogs enable discoverability of other sites. So after reading this posting on how to make chicken wings, I clicked on the tag for entertaining and came across this post which featured this photo made by this wine maker. Because of my last name, my wife and I collect items with pigs on them so I sent an email to the contact name on Le Snoot’s website to see how I can get a bottle of their Cab.

I’ll make sure that if I get my hands on this wine I’ll have a glass during a Giants game while a blizzard rages outside and give a toast to Chef McAdams for inspiring me with his blog.