Hello! Today I moved my blog across from Tumblr. Bear with me as I update links to previous posts and try to figure out a way to make the images full-size when you click them. I'm not exactly tech-savvy, so this may take a while.
Originally I started blogging to save paper by scanning books instead of photocopying them. I found I preferred to use online blogs for my research because it means I can compile research in one place, and do so anywhere, any time, however far away I might be from printers and photocopiers. A research blog allows me to quickly and easily post things like videos, candid photos from my mobile phone, and links to any websites and articles I'm looking at (selectively, that is - if I posted links to every article I found interesting, there would be dozens every day. Procrastination alert.) And it so conveniently keeps everything together. When I want to tell or show someone something from my research, I can find it quickly from the tags I used on that post, and can show it to them straight away, on a computer or my phone, rather than having to go and get my ring binders from wherever I keep them and flick through them to find the right page.
Granted, this does sacrifice the satisfaction (both mine and the examiner's) of leafing through art reproductions on physical paper, which is a compromise I'm willing to make. My art project in 2014 was about sustainability in the institution and you've got to practice what you preach, right?
Up until now I have used Tumblr for 4 different fine arts papers, and it has served me well. Tumblr is casual, user-friendly, and creates a great visual feed. It's great for all of the above purposes, but in some ways it is also quite limiting, while Blogger is a more customisable platform.
My main reason for transitioning away from Tumblr is because I found out that there is a limit of tags that can be searched. This means, for instance, that if I had more than 200 posts tagged 'painting' (which seems inevitable at this rate), only the first 200 would show up under the link for that tag. While not a problem yet, considering that it's just 7 weeks into the project and I already have well over 100 posts, I can see this being a problem a few months down the track. Best to make the transition sooner rather than later.
