Unsung Blogger of the week #14

This week’s featured blogger is 21-year-old Daniel Hegder from Australia. He has been maintaining his blog hedger.blogspot.com since September 2004. Text from the email interview follows.

1. ‘Please write a brief profile of you and your involvement with blogging.’
I am a 21 year old student from Melbourne, Australia, currently studying Criminology and Anthropology. I’m also a singer and budding writer.
At first I started blogging because I didn’t understand what the fuss was about. When I started getting into comedy writing, I realised my blog could be a creative outlet and have treated my blog in this way. I prefer this to the ‘diary’ style blogs, which can often be tedious.

2. ‘How do you publicize your blog?’
Aside from having it listed in various profiles for message boards etc. that I might contribute to, my blog gets very little publicity.

3. ‘Which techniques have worked for you and which ones have not?’
Reading other people’s blogs and leaving comments can be a good way to publicise your blog. However, if you comment on blogs that are dissimilar to yours, this won’t necessarily work. Also, very popular blogs get so many comments that it can be hard to get noticed by commenting alone. When it comes down to it, people just have to make that leap and check it out for themselves.

4. ‘What do you consider as your best post so far? You can include upto 3.’
That’s a hard one. After the London bombings earlier this year, I did a series of blog entries about different ways of dealing with terrorism (for example, http://hegder.blogspot.com/2005/07/governments-consider-abolition-of.html and http://hegder.blogspot.com/2005/07/our-impotence-in-face-of-terrorism-is.html). One from July 8,  “Guy Tries to Masturbate Fear of Terrorism Away” was a little controversial.
http://hegder.blogspot.com/2005/07/guy-tries-to-masturbate-fear-of.html

5. ‘What are your Top 5 Unsung Blogs ? (please include only those that
are not in any Top 100/500 lists).’
I’m not sure if these are on any Top Lists, but anyway:
Toe to Toe – http://www.steppinonyou.blogspot.com/
Bitch Pulled My Weave Out – http://psychadelicbuttersnazzy.blogspot.com/
81 Vaginas – http://81vaginas.blogspot.com/
Japanese Lee – http://japanlee.blogspot.com/
BoltWatch – http://boltwatch.blogspot.com/

6. ‘What are your current book recommendations ? (1 or 2 is
sufficient).’
A Devil’s Chaplain – Richard Dawkins

7. ‘How is the blogging scene in Australia?’
Thriving. There’s no shortage of Australian blogs, anyway.