I think it's time to write this piece, after many many years of doing this. 

People debate my "review" of netbooks as compared to Apple's iPad. Who is the iPad for? I should know it's not for me (even though Apple was happy to take my money). I should evaluate it based on its intended "audience." I should think about them before I write my blog post. I should write the post they would write. I should forget about what I see with my own two eyes. 

That's nonsense. It's ridiculous. 

I am a blogger, not a reviewer. I'm telling a story from my point of view. There's a totally implicit YMMV on everything that appears on this blog. You have a different experience? Great! Blog it. And stop trying to tell me what to say. 

Further, there's a myth that reviewers are omniscient and have infinite resources and know what everything's intended purpose is. That's also nonsense. The people who review these things for the newspapers and magazines would do better to just tell us what their experience is and who they are and let us sort it all out. In other words, imho, we could use more honest bloggers and less reviewers. 

Anyway what I said happened really did happen. I had some pictures in my camera and if I had had my netbook they really would have gone to Flickr and because I had my iPad they didn't. Really. It really happened. Not the end of the world, or even particularly important, but I didn't say it was. There's no point arguing because unless you were one of the two other people there you couldn't possibly know. 

I don't claim there's any global significance to what I write here. I claim these are my own experiences, related as clearly as I know how to relate them. That's all. Nothing more. 

Blogging has been going on for a long time. There really is no excuse for not knowing the difference between a blog post and a review. Think about it.