blogging

On blogging something every day

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Siemens Desiro 380007

Today marks the 30th successive day that I have posted a blog entry. This used to be something that I could do with no effort – in fact, go back to 2002-2004 and I was often blogging several times a day. Nowadays, it requires much more effort.

Back then, there was no Twitter or Facebook. Consequently some of the posts I made were merely a couple of sentences – maybe a very brief commentary on an interesting link. Those sorts of things now go on Twitter or Delicious, with the subsequent digest of links being auto-posted on Saturday mornings. Unless I can come up with a few paragraphs of thought, I tend not to bother with blogging about one particular news item.

Plus I have less time to write blog posts these days. Back when I was at university, I had enough breaks during the day to post regularly. Now that I work full time, I only have lunch breaks, evenings and weekends to blog. Generally, I will write several entries in one go, and then schedule them to be posted on each subsequent day (I actually wrote this on Sunday afternoon, for example). Whilst I have managed to produce something every day recently, it hasn’t been easy and I respect those people like Dave2 who are still able to produce substantial blog posts every day, year in, year out.

I’m going to try to keep on with posting something every day for as long as I can. It isn’t easy, but hopefully keeping it as a habit will help, and you can also support me by commenting on posts to show that what I write is worthwhile.

5 Years of Blogging

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5 years ago, I started a blog. It wasn’t particularly good, or even particularly interesting, but it was out there, on the internet.

5 years on, and it’s still here. It’s changed somewhat – the URL, the design, the back-end system have all changed – but it’s still my blog and I’m still the one posting it. Had you told me 5 years ago that I’d still be doing this, I’d have been surprised.

I’m not going to do anything big, or announce anything major today – for a start it has come at a really bad time 🙂 . But I just want to take the opportunity to thank everyone for reading this, especially those who have been reading from the early days.

Incidentally, I finally finished my dissertation yesterday, and had it laser-printed today, ready to hand in tomorrow. That’s one chapter of my life I’m very glad to have behind me 🙂 .

4 years

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At about 6 minutes past 5pm on the 14th January 2002, I wrote this entry. 4 years, 4821 entries, 6689 comments, 757 trackback pings and a whole shedload of spam later and it’s my fourth blogiversary.

Four years is a, to put it bluntly, a bloody long time, and I’m really pleased that I’ve been able to keep it going this long. So many of my projects in the past have come and go – this is one that I’ve managed to stick with and it makes me proud to think it’s still going strong. I have no intentions of giving up now.

Most of all, I’d like to thank all of you who have commented and trackbacked over the years, especially people like Andy, Kim, Ben, Richy and Ciaran who have been commenting here almost from the beginning. It’s the feedback I get, more than anything, that keeps me going, so keep it up and I should still be here in another 4 years time 🙂 .

The blog has also been with me through some interesting times. Back in January 2002 I was a 17-year-old college student. Since then I’ve had my 18th and 21st birthdays, left home, been to university, got a degree and started another one, met Hari and visited lots of new places, met lots of new people and done many new things. I can’t guarantee that my life will stay interesting but at least if it doesn’t I have a good record of when it was.

And the blog itself has changed – back in 2002, there were no comments, trackbacks or RSS feeds, and I was posting using Blogger to some webspace that only had 100MB of monthly bandwidth. Now I use 100MB in about 6 hours, the site is powered by Movable Type, and I’ve graduated from RSS to Atom for all my feeds. I also started the sideblog in November 2003 which has been doing well too, despite a few quiet periods.
I don’t regret starting this blog one bit – through it, I’ve made many new friends and got a lot of enjoyment.

Here’s to another 4 years! 🙂

Previous anniversary posts: 2003, 2004 and 2005 (when I nearly forgot).