I, Blogger

So I have finally started my blog. While the blogosphere continues to grow at an amazing speed, some bloggers of the early days have already switched back to a static homepage they update every now and then, or gone completely offline.

Why now? No particular reason really. I have been playing with the idea of creating a blog and have written up a few blog posts locally without publishing them, just to see how I liked it and what I would have to say. (A few of those early secret blog posts still sit on my hard disk and will eventually show up here retroactively.)

Looking back, I first maintained plogs (for “paper logs”) some 20 years ago when Andrea and I were traveling around in Europe by train. Each of us would write down the experiences of the day, where we went, what we liked and disliked, just about anything that came to mind, in a small booklet. When we were both done with writing, we would read each other's notes, which was great fun.

The intended readership of these plogs was one person. The esteemed readership of this blog may be about the same size currently. By coincidence, Bernhard just started blogging too, so that makes us two late adopters and ensures each of us has at least one reader. Onward.

Next, there was a technology decision to be made: install blogging software or use a hosted service. Ed Costello had shared his experience with getting Movable Type working on pair Networks servers, reading through the steps and given that I wasn't planning to spend more than an hour or two in getting things running I chose to go with a hosted service, Blogger, and have been pretty pleased with it.

Labels: personal, technology