Saturday, January 9, 2010

Here we go

So here I am again. Blogging.

My history with blogging goes back a few years. I can't tell precisely how many, apparently I have erased my first blog in the meantime... that's me, trashing things from the past. I'm the guy who doesn't keep old photographs, letters from friends and, mainly, letters I wrote to friends that I never sent. Same with old blogs, I guess. They're just not me anymore.
After I quit the first blog (quit, not erase, that was way later) I started a second one that is still up, amazingly. I had the opportunity to go through it recently, and I was amazed that some of the posts I was able to really appreciate and like. I found a lot of trash there too obviously (some of which I immediately erased) but the sporadic moments of good humor or sharp critique, scattered about between 2004 and 2009, were very pleasant reads. I was not expecting this.
So here I am again. By coincidence, sitting on the same chair I typed most of my posts on, even on that legendary pre-2004 first blog. I remember when Blogger wasn't part of Google (it was bought in 2003 so that gives me at least 8 years of blogging now). There was no WYSIWYG text editing bar like you have now. If you wanted colors on your text or even one underlined word, you had to know HTML. Layouts were the ones blogger gave you - more than that you'd have to venture into that pool of code where a misplaced letter or sign could bring your whole page down to a blank. Good days.
There were no widgets, I don't think the word "widget" was even that widespread at that time. There was no "click and drag your page elements to re-organize them" because there were no such things as page elements. Well, the usage of the term was possible. But for what mattered, if you wanted to move things around, it was all code.
I could go on. RSS feeds were around but not this integrated. Following blogs meant having them on your browser's favorites - and having followers listed on your blog with tiny square avatars? That was light-years away. Thank twitter for having it as it is nowadays.
The internet is really an amazing thing, a little miniature of a society with its own rules and meanings and codes and behaviors. You get to know it when you swim around in it for a while, though it never stops surprising you. Changes are hard to predict, but when they happen, you analyze and you eventually think "Yeah it figures it went this way". I remember when YouTube premiered. In a few days, everyone was sharing links and searching it nonstop. I was a late bloomer, and in the first weeks I was still thinking "I don't like this site. What's it good for?". Yeah... "lol", I guess. But the old internet is a topic for another time.
I'm here now, I'm blogging. It will make a couple of people happy. I hope it doesn't make anyone sad. I can't tell what I'll be writing about. I like music and I like movies, so they will come up now and then. Other art forms eventually. I like to speculate on my everyday life, and that's probably what'll make the most of the information here.  I love science (hence the title), so expect science.
We'll see.

Comments are online, I will later on this week work on some minor layout tweaks and fine tuning.

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