As I look through my web traffic on what is really the third day of my blog being live and discover as the hours go by that people are coming past to visit, I felt that it was a bit unfair to expect people to visit a site in which they know nothing about the person behind it; this especially when the person behind it chose to use his name in the URL.
If you haven’t read the URL, my name is Shane Baxtor. If you know about me, the chances are that you’re a regular reader of TweakTown.com in which I’ve been present at for 7 years now. And over the recent years I’ve headed the Video Card and RAM reviews. If you don’t know who I am, you should do after reading this.
So, why a blog? – The reason is simple really. I want to bring what I learn to you in a semi-formal way; be that information like a delay of a product, leaked specifications or the stuff that happens behind the scenes at TweakTown. If TweakTown is the office, the blog is my home.
Over time I want to do so much to the site when it comes to regular content. With so many colleagues and friends in the industry, I hope to invite them to become a featured blogger for pieces that interest them. There’s really so many people I work with that know so much, but simply don’t have the time to put finger to keyboard on a regular basis and let you know.
For these people I want to do two things. One, use the information I get off them to create my own posts like I’ve done recently, but not only that, give them the chance to come out and have their say and give you their thoughts. This is something that I really want to do, but understand that I need to have it presented in a way that doesn’t look like self promotion.
I wouldn’t have a problem if GIGABYTE came out and wanted to do something about the 333 feature on their motherboard line-up or Sapphire and their Vapor-X, HIS and their IceQ and so on, but I want to read it in a way that doesn’t sound like a copy and paste from a press release. I want to see numbers on how their cooler is better than another’s instead of a simple up to 10% remark. I’m happy to do the work and give the numbers so that you can see the proof.
Something else I want to do is let you know the samples that I’ve received during the week in a weekly roundup style piece. The aim behind these posts will be to give you just an idea of what I get in a given week; sometimes it’s two samples, while other times it’s 10. During this I’ll also point you in the direction of some of the reviews I’ve done over the past week and give you a bit of extra commentary on the articles.
I hope to do these on Friday nights which for my American cousins will translate to probably early Friday morning thanks to the massive time difference we have with me situated here in Australia. So hopefully as Friday afternoon swings by and you find yourself trying to kill those last few hours at work, you’ll be able to find something in these pieces of interest.
Something that keeps me thinking about the future is a small motto I like to live life by; “It’s better to try and fail, than to not try at all.” So this is what I’m doing today and hopefully for days, weeks and years after. I’m trying, and as always, while I hope not to fail, it is only the worst thing that could happen.
I’ve added an About Me tag to this piece and as time goes on I’ll talk more about how I got into writing, TweakTown and freelanced for some of Australia’s top magazines. This post will also be linked to in the main blurb on the right hand side of the site. For that reason I will edit it over time by most likely linking to other important pieces of information about me.
For now, though, I hope you enjoy what I’m offering, I hope you enjoy my reviews at TweakTown and I hope that I can offer you something that you don’t get anywhere else.
– Shane Baxtor