Blogging since 1999 (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog)
It occurrs to me that it was shortly after I turned in my final grades in Spring, 1999 — six five years ago — that I started tinkering with the table of contents page for my collection of online handouts. I thought that, instead of just posting links to the resources I recommended, I would write a short evaluative blurb. I kept doing that on a regular basis, and before I knew it, I was blogging.
And I mean “before I knew it” in the literal sense — I didn’t mention the word “weblog” until 2000, and that was only in a reference to a Wired article on the weblog phenomenon. What I did on my site changed as I came into contact with other blogs. Of course, my former student Will Gayther‘s addition of the code for attaching comments to blog entries less than a year ago was also a big change. (I can’t thank him enough for his creativity and generosity.)
I started adding dates on July 20, 1999 (when it seemed important to note that I was writing a brief blurb on the history of the moon landing on the 30th anniversary of the event).
I won’t bore you with a repeat of the history of my blog, but hey, what’s a blog for if not a repository for one’s random thoughts.
Yes, Will, I didn’t mean to be exclusionary when I mentioned the comments! Indeed, I used to have a bit of hacked up code that ran only on my desktop… sometimes during breaks I would drive to campus just to push the button that ran a batchfile to copy the HTML to the live website.
You’re right, each of the changes you mentioned was a breakthrough, though I do think that the comments probalby had the most profound effect, since they allow people to add to (or, in your case, correct) my statements!
Actually, as I remember it, the first “Ow, wow!” change was when I showed you how to Remote Desktop into your school computer, so that you could actually post entries to your weblog from home! I seem to remember that a couple of times before that, you had actually driven all the way into school for the sole and single purpose of clicking on the link on your office computer to put your new blog entries online. :-)
The next one was when you could just write an entry directly online. The next would be comments. And I think the fact that the “Newfound Citations” part of your blogroll now automatically stops displaying the “to old” links is pretty cool as well. :-)
As someone who comments somewhat frequently, I know I appreciate the recent edition of automatic lines breaks on entered comments. :-)
Over five years! Congrats. That’s longer than most students attend college; longer than most marriages last; longer than most sitcoms; longer than many wars. And definitely longer than most blogs, which end up in the etheric graveyard. Thanks for writing so steadily.
Err… (doing math on fingers) right. Sorry — I don’t know what I was thinking.
I haven’t forgotten, Donna, about the alum blogs. No word yet… I’ll see what I can do.
After all this time, at least you can stil find interesting things to blog about on a daily basis. But for a second there I thought I was going senile; 1999 was only 5 years ago, because I’m coming up on my first high school reunion. I feel old.
Meanwhile– any word on alums being able to get Seton Hill blogs? I would like to keep my blog going, but Blogger is getting annoying and temperamental.