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
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- I’ve started using Vimeo to post videos.
- The adventure continues….