Impending third blogoversary
A long time ago (three years, actually) in a galaxy far, far away (or rather, at Blogger) I started a blog. The date of the first post was August 9th 2000 and I said the following:
I decided to set up another blog, this time for general stuff. I have to say — this rocks…
Another blog? What? Well, I had already set one up for my obsolescent Vinyl Obsession project, the posts from which have been folded into the music category here at it could be worse. So, to be honest, I’m not really sure when my first ever blog entry was, but we’ll go with August 9th, 2000.
I know this is all very self-referential, up-my-own-backside stuff, but I don’t care. This blog, blogging technology and the blogosphere itself have all come a long way since 2000. Blogs have been described as hubristic and self-opinionated garbage.stm, but they are now on the mainstream media’s radar. This probably has a lot to do with the writing of the Baghdad Blogger during the recent war in Iraq, and the unique and unrivalled perspective that he gave to the events unfolding around him.
But what has The Blog contributed to the wider Web? Its rise coincided with that of the Web Standards Project, and it is obvious that the renaissance in content-driven personal Web sites — using the then-new standards-compliant (CSS + valid (X)HTML) ways of designing Web sites — encouraged the eventual adoption of these methods and technologies in such high-profile, commercial sites as Wired and ESPN.
On many personal Web sites, many of which are blogs, much beauty, clarity and — let’s face it — good typography has been the result. So much so that it smarts to see good money being thrown away on Web sites that continue to be implemented in old-fashioned ways.
“Hubristic and self-opinionated garbage” they may sometimes be, but The Blog has changed the Web, if not the world, for the better.
Update: Oh, and I’ll be blogging every day (where possible) during August, in celebration.