Hello and welcome to my blog. If you're someone I know in "real life" you might say to yourself, "I didn't know J wanted to blog..." or some variant of that. Truth be told, I don't, so goodbye.
Seriously though, I've often thought of it in the dreamy way folks might consider learning Russian, Kung-Fu, the guitar1 or some other far away goal. Being a coder, builder, maker and a bit of a "hey, I want to keep my information mine....as long as it doesn't involve wearing tinfoil" kind of person I shun the idea of a blogspot blog or some other canned blogging site out there.2 The rare time I'd get to thinking "Today's the day I begin my path as a writer, let's get blogging!" I'd ask myself, "self, what's the first step down this path of personal documentation?". The immediate response from myself was "get a blogging engine going of course". Turns out that's a larger idea than you may first think. There is a veritable fuck-ton3 of blogging engines out there to choose from, each one more complex than the next.
I like simple. I like simple a lot. After running all that craziness through my head I'd just turn off, pull the idea from my mind and put it on the shelf for either : a time where things got simpler, or a time when my understanding of things grew enough that the complex seemed simple to me. I almost got going when Mark4 got his blog going...then I read his blog and realized that simple is not to be found there.5 All kidding aside, that idea's been on the shelf gathering dust for a while.
Then one day I opened an email6, followed the link and read a goddamn funny, pertinent piece of writing
After reading the article7 and clearing the tears from my eyes I looked over the site. I came to a budding realization: this site is beautiful, elegant and pretty fucking simple.
Simple as in straight forward, no bullshit, clean. This was the example I had unknowingly been waiting for. The idea of making a blog modeled after this design started seeping into my thoughts. Before long the oh so familiar madness had taken hold8 and I HAD to code it.
Now here we are, me writing, you reading, my first ever blog entry on a blog of my own making. Hopefully you've been at least a little bit amused by this story and any others that follow it. I'll happily accept your thanks, but also be sure to thank this guy9 for the inspiration...
...and of course Mark.10
Future >>1I've learned one of these things...though I still have a ways to go
2No offence to you if that's your thing. It's not mine and that's ok.....also, my Etsy shop is a deviation from that policy. I realize this.
3That's an imperial fuck-ton, which is a more manageable than a metric fuck-ton, but still
4Best friend, Bit-Brother and all around good guy
5Kidding Mark...sort of...
6Thanks Mark!
7Here's the link if you wanted to read it yourself
8Fellow Bit-Brothers, you know what it is that I speak of.
9Peter Welch (see picture below, one of them is him)
10No picture for Mark, he's like Sasquatch