My name is Mike Lee and I invented blogging.
 
I mean, other people invented it before me, but I also invented it. Most things work that way. A bunch of people think of it at the same time because it’s due.
 
It was 1995. We were in college, so we had time and energy and server space. We liked HTML and were into the whole web thing, so we wanted to put something online. With nothing more interesting to offer, we started to talk about ourselves.
 
I called it a web journal, but the popular press eventually abused the word blog (a constantly updated list of random thoughts and links) until it because synonymous. I continued my various online projects until a few years ago when I started putting all my energy into offline pursuits.
 
I’ve been meaning to get back into it for a long time, but because I was in transition, I didn’t really know who I was. How can I tell my story if I’m just learning it myself? I searched for my identity for years. I knew I was a Cocoa programmer, but I needed something more specific.
 
Finally, it hit me.
 
Specifically, a 1990 Buick Century. I was thrown onto the hood, hit the windshield, bounced off the asphalt, and ended up on my back in the middle of the street. In the end, I walked away with little more than some light internal bleeding and the knowledge that I was one tough motherfucker.
 
Now, don’t get me wrong. Getting hit by a car is no picnic, but it doesn’t make you the world’s toughest programmer. For one thing, you have to learn how to program, but we’ll get to that. You also have to be genuinely tough and not just, say, lucky. We’ll get to that too.
 
Anyway, I wanted to get a few things out of the way before starting off on this new adventure in storytelling. I’ve been thinking about this day for a long time, and I’ve made some decisions.
 
If it’s not obvious, I’m doing this in iWeb. This is the first time I have ever created a web page with anything other than BBEdit. (That’s not entirely true; I used to use vi, but that’s another story.) There are three reasons for this.
 
  1. 1.I don’t have time to write a new content publishing system or to deal with the design of the page and iWeb does a decent enough job at both.
  2. 2.I don’t want this site to be about what a good (or bad) web designer I am. I want it to be about the message, whatever that might be.
  3. 3.I know iWeb really, really well, so I’m comfortable with it. It’s also a good idea for me to use it regularly so I can keep an eye on it.
 
I’ve also been giving a lot of thought to how I might improve the whole blog experience. I’ve decided to depart from current practice in a couple of ways.
 
I’m not going to have comments.
 
There’s nothing more irritating than spending a bunch of time crafting a thoughtful argument, then having some jackass undo all that work by adding “nuh-uh!” at the end of it.
 
The mind is a muscle. When someone says something you don’t agree with, it leaves microtears in your mind. When the damage heals, you’re smarter. We call this process “learning.”
 
When someone vandalizes a blog entry, it undoes all the damage I did, and in a lazy, unproductive way.
 
I’m going to edit my entries.
 
I want this to be less like a diary and more like a series of essays. As such, the date on which each entry was written is not important. Only the message is important.
 
Things change. New evidence comes in. I might reconsider something I’ve said, or think of some way to say it better. I’m just warning you now: I reserve the right to be wrong and to learn from my mistakes.
 
So there it is. I’ll be updating this on a whenever basis so get with the times and subscribe to the RSS feed. If you’ve got something to say, drop me a line.
 
 
If it’s not obvious, I’m doing this in iWeb. This is the first time I have ever created a web page with anything other than BBEdit.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Metafucker