| Arguably the granddaddy of all weblogs, Netscape's "What's Cool" was probably the first site I ever saw on the web, nearly five years ago. Now, a weblog is (as many have said already) entirely what you make of it and it's that whole free-form nature which has recently attracted me back to the 'genre' (for want of a better word). One of the main sections of my site used to detail three or four other sites which I'd been visiting on a regular basis. It still does. However with a weblog, I can constantly refresh that content and feel less guilty about not regularly updating my site in the process. We log for ourselves, for others, and even for Europe. But mostly, we log because we can. |
| remember .plan files? These days you can read them with a browser, and the browser understands more than just ascii text. |
| I originally began weblogging as a way of encouraging hits to my home page, vis a vis providing more interesting content than just links to my favorite blah blah blah and pictures of my blah blah blah family and friends. For awhile, working on my page was something of an obsession (although you can't really tell that from the old-school design), and keeping a weblog mitigated that eerie sense of screaming into the void one gets sometime in cyberspace. (Or, as Shelley aptly put it a century ago, "Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away") But, as my great Aunt Petunia might have said had I a great Aunt Petunia, "you keep a weblog, and one day the weblog will keep you." Nowadays, I see blogging as a means to unwind, a more interactive mode of self-expression than other pursuits, and a chance to get my thoughts down on certain subjects in a more direct way than I can elsewhere (for example, my more strictly partisan Bradley site). It also makes for a great excuse to surf the web all day. I was doing it anyway, but now I have a purpose, see? |
| I started my "weblog" because I missed the ability to get on the web and get lost. It's helping. |
| Nearly a year ago I was having a conversation with Peter and gave him my standard answer, "I don't have my own site because I make sites all day long. I don't want to churn out more pages when I get home." So when I found an interesting site I thought other people might want to see, I sent it to Peter (allow me to recommmend this method to any of you who, for whatever reason, don't feel like doing this on your own). At some point though, I realized that I wanted to tell my own small stories. I'd followed other people's lives online for years and knew I didn't want to put up the sort of spill-your-soul stalker invitation journal I saw on every tenth site, nor did I want to make what a weblog seemed to be (hey kids, check out this cool hamsterdance thing!). So I built my own hybrid, and labeled it "ceci n'est pas une weblog" just to be ornery. And I found inspiration from people like Paul and Jouke and Heather Anne who were thinking aloud in the interconnected way that this medium inspires us to do. What exactly makes this act "weblogging"? I don't know. But here's my favorite part - in order to speak to the subject in about three weeks in Texas, Derek put up these pages and invited us to think aloud in interconnected ways, to weblog (if such a verb can be used) him some answers. |
| The proverbial 24 hour Show-and-Tell cable TV channel. This is not a bad thing either. If the Idea of Weblog can survive the hype-machine then maybe it can act as a catalyst and a forum for people to think and speak about and discover the things that are important and valuable to them in life. |
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{ Posting to this story took place from 2.17.00 to 2.12.01. The forum is now closed. }