So, I’ve been lurking around various places in something that is apparently called the mathtwitterblogosphere, stalking a few folks who seem to know what they are talking about and stealing great ideas left and right. After a couple of weeks of doing this, I started feeling, umm, guilty. At some point I figure you should give back, right? So, I jumped into twitter with both feet sets of fingers and started posting stuff like crazy. Funny me, no one followed me for the first couple of weeks, so I’m not really sure who read any of it. Still laughing at myself over that one. But I digress. Twitter, for all it amazingness, limits me to 140 characters. Pretty difficult to express myself fully in that space, plus I wanted to have a better record for myself of my successes and failures as the year progressed. Enter blogging. I still feel a bit weirded out by it, and I’m not sure why on earth anyone wants to read my random, unorganized thoughts, but whatever. Here I am.
All that being said, I proceeded to join a bloggers anonymous (jk, it’s really a first time blogger support group) and have an assignment each week for 4 weeks. Homework…hoping I have time to do it all. Here’s my prompt for the first week:
Where does the name of your blog originate? Why did you choose that? (Bonus follow
up: Why did you decide to blog?)
I spent two full weeks trying to find an available, intelligent, math-geeky name for my blog. Honestly I lost sleep over it (really!). I’d wake up in the middle of the night thinking, “wonder if _______ is already taken?” Without fail, all the great ones were. This is my punishment for waiting so long to jump on the blogger-wagon. People, I even pulled out college textbooks looking for phrases or notation that would be cute. I had my facebook family thinking of stuff for me. Nothing was working. So, I decided to just make up something stupid. Enter PurpleProntoPups. Purple: simply, my favorite color (also my 4 year old niece’s…hmmm, am I a good influence on her?) I have to have something to go with it (yep, purple was already a blg name) so I put my favorite festival food, pronto pups, with it. (FYI, pronto pups are similar to corn dogs, but the breading is pancake batter…a couple of street booths make it with donut batter–DO NOT knock it until you try it. It’s been a staple food every October at the Fall Festival in my hometown for 40+ years). And, voila, purpleprontopups was born. Wish there was something better behind it, but I just decided to find a name and get started.
PS. i just write, and edit as I go. I never re-read what I’ve written, so skip over any grammar issues or typos.
Purple Pronto Pups (My World of Teaching) 
Enjoyed reading your blog tonight. I guess I am still hungry as the description of the prontopup sounds delicious.
Congrats on putting your thoughts out there; I hope to follow in your footsteps soon.
This is GREAT! I am also starting out for the first time ever. I do not re-read either, so I am in the same boat there. This is great!
Oh – and no one reads my blog either, so I am with you there.
Hi Rachel! I’m so glad you explained your blog name because I thought it had to do with horses! (Math and horses, what’s the connection?! Where did I get that idea?!) I even wrote a post on my blog and tweeting to get people’s ideas for my blog, so after 8 months of blogging I finally got a name just 2 weeks ago! I hear ya!
So GLAD you’re blogging, Rachel. Being a lurker is creepy (like I was), so I’m glad you joined the initiation :)) It’s also my pleasure to feature you on my blog at https://purpleprontopups.wordpress.com/2012/08/15/blogger-initiation/
@pitoinfinity: Damn it, none of this “no one reads my blog either” bit because I’m going to read your blog right now! Readership will build if you write for yourself first and write what you’d want to read. Keep plugging at it because it’s so good for YOU!
Love love love my new bloggers!! Fawn
Oh, I’m an idiot. Sorry.
Let’s try this again: I featured your blog on MY blog at http://fawnnguyen.com/2012/08/21/math-blogger-initiation-week-1.aspx
I like the name – especially the way that it is really personal to you.
Finding a name that isn’t taken is tricky. I had the same problem when I decided to set up a website for my students – I was just lucky to be able to snag the same name on Twitter.
Ha! Now I see the official category in which I find myself after say 6 months. I’m sitting here reading the blogs that Fawn posted on HER blog, because I started reading her blog after a conference we attended back in February this year. Of course, besides the humor and flow in hers, I found other blogs in numerous ways, though have been subscribing to many because where would I find time to read all of them? So I go on binges of LURKING, prowling around in vast connectivity of math blogs.
As expressed here and elsewhere, one does have a sense of guilt, simply reading and enjoying the idea that there are in fact many common thoughts and (some ratio) uncommon thoughts out there to correlate to one’s own ramblings– without adding to the plasmic ooze! I also have wondered whence and how the ideas appear for the topics of blogs, but with this first prompt, clearly it can be a small, small bit. In the past, guilting snacking away, I scurried away without leaving any crumbs (comments) behind. Today, facing a task this evening, hopping on the keys seems like a short detour to a good starting point for reaching a status higher than LURKER. (Helps that Moriarty’s gang in London included Lurkers, who cannot possibly have been very savory characters, and who aspires to be unsavory?)
One of these days, it will be time to roll up in a cocoon, to emerge with a blog– will have to, in order to start a class blog for students, so may as well make the leap, test the wings, whatever the metaphor. And do so while still making time to browse