Happy Weblogger's Day!
I never thought that I would come to say these three words, and certainly not any of them together, two years ago. It was out of the question to put anything remotely personal on websites, let alone even divulge one's own thought or even a name for fear that "stalkers" would come knocking on the door. Or so that seemed for me, at least. It was inevitable passed down through my parents, and I am well aware, thank to them, of the dangers and fears of lurking "personality" theives. But that hasn't stopped me from making my own websites, divulging (part) of my name, the city I live in, and my age. And it certainly didn't keep me from coming up with an idea that I immediately knew was something that needed to be concieved, and the only fear I had was that it already had been. Countless were the days where a splendid idea would be shattered by the thought that someone already had thought of it. Such it the marvel of originality.

I came up with a very primitive weblog early in 2002, when I came upon Moby (the singer)'s blog on his website. It gave details about the snippets of his life, his voyages hopping across the world, as well as his thoughts. I promptly stole his HTML code and altered it beyond recognition, and pasted it into my nifty Geocities webpage editor. Every time a bright thought came whizzing through my restless brain, I copied and pasted the code, and manually added a few lines of a meagre pensive note. One sleepless (and undoubtedly hot) night in Brazil I came upon the realisation that the web-forum that I had set up for my class website had exactly the similar template as a blog: all I needed to do was make sure that I was the only one who could post, and that my post would appear on the front page, rather than a normal, forum-type subject and author. Thus my first "automated" blog coded in Perl was born, although it underwent many modifications until it became what it was in April 2004. Sadly the transition from text-style blog to Perl and archived-style blog resulted in a mighty loss of archived material, and thus what remains now dates only back to May 2003. In April, upon the realisation that my archives were sopping up space in my prohosting web account, I moved to my present residence, Blogger, and realised how much I had missed out on "Push-Button Publishing". I have to admit it was also a transition based on the fact that I might get a Gmail invitation. but I do miss the fact that I could proudly claim it was the world's (possibly) one and only weblog coded in Perl that boasted an integrated commenting and archiving system.

What set me on the path to blogging (and to some, revealing the unneccessary tedium and boredom in my everyday life) was the realisation that I was not required to write something personal in order to have people read it. Personally I find it more fun to have people read a blog than to keep it entirely out of the public eye, not unlike a sort of open-ended conversation that invites a personal response. But it is true that writing for the sake of someone else can more often than not take out the shine in a weblog's appeal. Weblogs are nonetheless a great medium for communication on the web, a 'movement' that sort of spontaneously evolved because of the personal satisfaction one can get from releasing one's thoughts for open consideration. I guess I wouldn't be exaggerating if I said many people now spend time online because of their blog. And rightly so, because every blog is unique. Even the mundane blogger template (grey on black, white on blue) has its touch of originality. And webloggers also force people to actually read, because unlike books, some entries don't have a direct 'plot'. I've realised it one too many times after skimming through a seemingly boring blog, catching my eyes on an interesting entry, reading it, and then immersing myself in the whole blog. If people have one more good reason for spending more time online, at least no one can argue against weblogging.

Written on Wednesday, June 9 at 8:33 PM