A Collection of Bits and Pieces

Hello, World!

aka It's Been a Minute, 25 July 2024

After several years of silence I've decided it's time to reclaim some time and space online.

Things are a bit hectic in the world right now, yeah? Maybe you've noticed. But right this minute I can't decided if I should use "a.k.a." or "aka" in the title for this piece.

My name is Robert and I've been waiting about 25 years to get my name as a dot-com domain. Finally I gave up and decided to add my middle initial, since that's how I sign my name, even though nobody uses my middle initial and I probably won't answer to it, ever, if someone tried. I'm no Michael J. Fox.

A very long time ago I had the distinction of being called an early adopter of LiveJournal and I really enjoyed that site for several years. I left before it was sold to the Russians but that wasn't due to any special insight or anything. Instead, life got too complicated to keep up with it. But I enjoyed having a blog where I could say what I wanted, online, and with just a few clicks it was available for the whole wide world to see.

This will not be like that, at all.

For one, this is a fully self curated site and my goal is to keep the back end coding stupidly simple so that I have fewer opportunities to fuck it up.

But I do agree with the recent trend which says that it's important to maintain your own space online away from the social media giants for all the reasons stated elsewhere but mainly so that you are the one who truly owns what you post, and that you maintain the final say on your material. If I take a post down it won't be because it angers the algorithm gods or the social media owners. Most likely I've just reconsidered the point and changed my mind.

I've built this blog from the carcass of a Responsive Web Design template, appropriately called Blog Template. I've removed all the sidebars and just streamlined it to the central column you see here, built up from css cards, which I like very much. It's nice because it also gives me an opportunity to post my own photos as part of each entry.

Still here?

So, as I said, I felt like it was time to get back in the water.

In addition to maintaining a general blog I also expect to use this space to talk about some of my other projects, which include two musical pursuits and one video game pursuit. Oh, and maybe a little bit about photography every once in a while, should I get back into the swing of things. Those things will also have an online footprint and I'll say more about them once their homes are finished.

Is that enough of a hello? Maybe at least for now.