Would you believe that I'm 36 years old, have been online since the 80's, and have never had a 'blog' entry?  Well, at least not in the term as it is used today.

25 years ago when I ran a multi-line BBS and was involved in that community most us SysOps used to write about our day-to-day adventures as a way of keeping in touch with each other. Who's doing what, who's going to the convention or show, how to upgrade to the latest software, and so on.  It was, in a sense, 'blogging' but in a more open free-style method of writing.  There wasn't a specific place where we would write our thoughts down but rather our entire BBS community reflected who we where and what our personality was like.  With the advent of the WWW browser hitting in the mainstream in the early 90's most of the local BBSs died.  Some of the larger ones stuck it out for a while and some communities made the leap to the web.

And that's when everything stopped being so personal.

For the most part a web site doesn't truly reflect the personality of an individual but rather it's visitors as a whole.  No longer was it listening to the tones of your modem reaching out to talk to a PC in somebody's house, making you a virtual guest to their home, but instead it was launching a graphical browser to reach a server in some hosting center.  With broadband connections now being commonplace the sound of the modem has even been silenced.  Silently your PC now instantly displays a web page.  The personal touch was gone. 

Sure, some sites are very good at developing interaction amongst it's visitors, but what about the person who runs it?  For the most part they are just another visitor to the site.

Enter the modern day blog.

When the blogs first hit the scene they were little more than personal diaries exposed to the world.   But slowly they caught on.  Perhaps as a backlash to the impersonal web or it was people simply re-discovering the experiences of personal communications.  Perhaps it was sheer volume... so many people wanting their individual voices to be heard in a sea of web surfers that the mass alone propelled blogs to the next level.  Whatever the reason was, they grew.  Fast.

Where does all of this rambling meander leave me? 

I figured it was time to join the rest of the world.    Who knows what I'll write in here or how often but as the mood strikes me to tap on the keyboard I'll jot down my thoughts.