how I used to explain it to myself

You asked for it.

2/22/07

rationale v. 3.0

One word: self-evident.

But if it’s not, then here’s the verbose version. This used to be an anti-blog, for the reasons tediously and torturously detailed below.

I simply can’t call it an anti-blog anymore. Mainly because it’s… a blog. It runs on blogging software. It fits the definition of a blog (and increasingly should as I post more often). I certainly don’t have an anti-blog attitude, as I did when I named the thing.

So: The anti-blog is dead. Long live the blog.

circa 5/1/02

rationale v. 2.0

Let’s just get this out of the way right now: This is the first and best anti-blog, bar none. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the only anti-blog.

But what precisely is an anti-blog? Okay, it’s basically just a weblog, except:

• It’s a fairly weak variety of weblog, since I am too slothful (or otherwise busy) to update it every day or even every week.
• It resides on an “old-school,” hand-coded website of original design, not some template-based, web-based-form-interface, cookie-cutter site. (Am I stupid or merely true to my craft? You decide.) Of course, the truly savvy way to do this would be to use an original design and a labor-saving, reliable back end system. [Eventually.]
• It started as an attempt to ironically transcend narcissism (and probably failed). (Note: though its jocularity disguises a painful kernel of truth, the preceding sentence is self-satire.)

Weak, I know, but I’m stuck with it until I can come up with something better.

The good news is that this site has helped me become a better writer and designer (this is roughly version 3). It might even help me get my next job.

* * *

Todd C. Jenner is an excellent friend and an even better source of humorous concepts, such as the “anti-” concept. Thanks, Todd! [I still maintain that I independently devised the "anti-" concept in 5th grade, when I made a pin-on badge that sported the phrase "ANTI-BUTTON," but whatever.]

Below is what I said about this site when I started it. Some of it still applies.

2/8/01

THE MAKING OF AN ANTI-BLOG, or, Tortured Reasoning, or rationale v. 1.0.

This is not a weblog.

Yes, you read it correctly. This is not a weblog.

No actual subsequent entry in this whatever it is—I’m calling it for lack of something better an “anti-blog” (a term that doesn’t seem to be in particularly wide use as a noun)—will be this long. Humor me, or skip down to the ground rules if you’d like.

A bit of background: I’m 25 [now 26], white, male, middle class, from the US Midwest. [I can't help any of that.] The web took up, oh, about a third of my life from its infancy (roughly 1995) until the fall of 1999. I worked for a growing new media agency, I ate and drank a lot, and lived where I went to college. Nice life, basically. However, a couple Octobers ago, I picked up and left. Without making any employment plans, I went to live in a strange city with a woman I didn’t know well. More about that later.

Meanwhile, I went away from the web for eight months never having heard of a weblog, a blog, a blogger, or anything of the sort. I’d hardly heard of Jeffrey Zeldman or Joe Clark, much less Gael Fashingbauer Cooper.
[This is starting to look like a weblog, isn't it? But it's not.] Now it seems weblogs are everywhere.
There are weblogs of weblogs. Virtually everyone has created a weblog.

Well, I refuse to jump on that particular bandwagon. Why?

1. Who cares? Does anyone care what web sites I’ve visited? With the possible exception of me, no. Do I think anyone else is reading it? Doubtful. Further, could the hypothetical user of my weblog glean any real insight from roughly 50 words of possibly mildly descriptive text? What is the point of that? A weblog is essentially a glorified, less organized hotlist.
2. Everyone’s a blogger. Maintaining a blog is essentially irrelevant, but that’s not the worst part. The worst part is the sheer number and volume of these things on the web. Where did they come from? Did everyone spend the year 2000 hacking out weblogs while I knocked on doors trying to get $36 for MPIRG? Apparently there are some tools that set up blogs without the actual HTML production part. Maybe that’s why—the barriers to entry are practically nonexistent.
3. I don’t have time for that crap. Shouldn’t I be working when I’m at work? Granted, part of my job is to “maintain up-to-date knowledge of web trends, analyze new technologies for applicability to DNR web projects, and develop long-range plans based on evolving technologies… [Task B:] Surf the web for innovative ideas and techniques”—yes, it actually says “surf the web”—but that’s supposed to be 5% of my time. Heaven knows how much time non-”web designers” spend doing this stuff at work each day. [Hmm, the rise of blogs parallels the fall of the economy... naah.] And if I’m doing this at home—what kind of life is that?

So that’s settled.

But

…there are some things I like about weblogs. Their free-flowing structure. The room to both inform and opine.

Therefore

…I think I’m going to do this thing anyway, whatever it is, and set some ground rules for myself. The rules being:

1. This is mostly for me, and my friends. I’ve been really without a creative outlet for a while, and at this point this seems right. Also I’ve never really put anything decent up on the web that represents me. Sure, I had a site in college that was hacked and deleted without a backup. (You may have seen my first web site. It was largely a mercy killing.) And I started to design a site for my portfolio class in college, but never finished. (I got the A anyway.) The other part about this is that my friends are scattered around the country, and I don’t talk to them or email them as much as I should. So I’ll send them here for starters.
2. It’s a multi-purpose site. It’s what I want right now for a personal page: essentially a place to show off. A portfolio. Silly observations that entertain me and about 3 other people. Some links to sites that inspire, amuse, and/or impress me (or directly promote my friends). Plus it’s great practice for design, and using CSS and other production techniques (though I’ve got a pretty good handle on most of those).
3. It’s completely customized and original. Originality, I suppose, is subjective. I’m defining the site as I go; maybe that’s a bad idea, but who cares? It’s a one-man show. The main thing here is that I am doing all of the design and production by hand. At home I use Photoshop 5, Fireworks 2, BBEdit 4.5, and Transmit; at work, if I do anything related to this site there, we’re talking HomeSite, Photoshop 5.5, and WS_FTP.

I’m getting overly serious and long-winded (this site really DOES reflect me, doesn’t it?), so I’ll wind up.

Plus I feel bad. I just read through Rebecca Blood’s thoughtful weblog history and perspective, and I think I’m weblogging after all. I’m just doing it the “old-fashioned” way.

What I hope to accomplish here is, simply, the creation of a web site that is both personal and useful, and that I can be proud of. Anything else is extra.