Blogging About Nothing

After years of maintaining a website of photos, documenting a few goings-ons, announcing some details about my life, and announcing news of the family, I have finally started to admit that I blog.  So sad.  If I think about it, I’ve been online for years now.  Here’s the rundown on my online life.

History of the Blog Part 1

  1. In 1996, I started playing around with HTML in college.  This was back sometime after Mosaic Navigator came out. I had three simple pages with links hosted on space we had on the University @ Albany UNIX servers.  I thought to myself, “Why would anyone visit my 3 pages?  Yes, I do have a nice jpeg of a Klingon Bird of Prey.  However, would it not be interesting if I ruminated regularly?  Then people would have a reason to come read my thoughts?”  Alas, I was ahead of my time, and I never committed to this concept.  I didn’t have an audience.
  2. From 1997 – 1999, I maintained a larger website with more links, and less flashing gifs.  I called it Lair of the Phoenix, and it wasn’t much more interesting than the website from college.  Call it a glorified online list of my favorite bookmarks.  I distinctly remember telling people about it, but I didn’t have an audience.  Would you want to read someone else’s bookmarks?

History of the Blog Part 2

  1. In August 2002, I started joelipe.com, and called it Superstylin’.  I wanted superstylin.com, but the folks at The Onion already own that domain.  More interesting this time (I’m the editor, I can make that kind of unsubstantiated and grandiose statement), as I actually had photos, besides links.  I started writing/blogging regularly, since I figured I should explain where I took the photos, and what they were about.  This “explaining of photos” continued for another few years until I finally admitted that I was a blogger.  The audience was mostly family who want to know what I’m doing, and friends who don’t want to talk to me, but want to keep tabs on me.  I figure they wanted a warning if I was in the neighborhood.
  2. The website evolved over time, fancier and prettier (I like to think.)  In 2006, I tried to upgrade it with CSS, but that didn’t work out too well, and I stopped those efforts.  Unfortunately, the website was still very manually-intensive in terms of photo gallery updates and archiving of monthly postings.  Also, I was getting bored.

History of the Blog Part 3

  1. I tried one redesign in June 2008 using a published template, but the updates were still very manual.  Life has gotten too complex and time-consuming these days, so I need to speed up life.  I did find one way to make my life easier — using Google’s Picasa and other existing tools to streamline and upgrade the photo galleries. It saved me time, money, blood, sweat, and my fingers.
  2. Deciding to give WordPress another look, I liked what I saw with all the templates and themes, plugins, and other ways it will save me time and energy.  I converted June 2008, and so far, so good.
  3. I’ve started using Vimeo to post videos.
  4. The adventure continues….

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