separating the wanted from the unwanted
It just goes to show how much attention I pay to this thing. I’ve just installed WP 3.01 and noticed that my RSS feed is dead (403). Turns out that it has been dead for nearly six months since I last upgraded and I’m at a loss to understand why.
Any clever chaps who can help out?
For reasons known only to technical wizards (i.e. not to me), yesterday’s tenth birthday post didn’t appear in the RSS feed (unless you know otherwise). I think it may be because I posted it retrospectively (wanting to be clever and make the post time the same as the very first post, ten years ago). Anyway, for you RSS readers (both of you), now you have a reason to actually visit the site so that you can read it.
Now, where’s my coffee?
Cod philosophy from a four-and-a-half year old boy.
Today is the tenth anniversary of grayblog. A great deal has happened over the last ten years, in terms of this blog, in terms of my life and in terms of the wider world. I’ve started a business, met an amazing girl, got married, started a family, had some adventures, had some good times and some less good times. Some of that has been recorded here, a lot has been left out.
grayblog has turned from a diary, verging on a confessional for catharsis, into more of a linklog these days, with sporadic bits of content and the odd recipe. It’s not as good as it used to be (they all say that) and readership is but a fraction of what it once was (hi Gordon, hello Dave, good day anonymous RSS readers), but I keep paying the bills on it and I keep the project ticking over. Maybe, one day, I’ll dedicate more time to it (a redesign might be in order at some point – and perhaps some more content. Hmm, actual content. Maybe even a revival of radio grayblog or the passport project. Who knows? But don’t hold your breath.)
Blogging in general has also changed. When I started out, most of the UK bloggers knew each other on first name terms. Some of us even met up for beer and vodka jellies. I’ve made a few friends along the way and quite a few more acquaintances. Now, thanks to improvements in technology and a general acceptance of putting your life online, just about every Thomas, Richard and Harold is at it in one form or another, even if nine-tenths of them can only muster 140 characters at a go, a path I’ve studiously avoided to date. We’ve seen “social networking” in all its glory come along, which surely is only a form of what everyone has done through history (you know, talk to people, make new friends, use networks of contacts to improve or change their lot, or just to call in favours) but brought up-to-date for this internet age. Blogging in the form that this blog has generally taken will, I suspect, been seen as a phase that communication passed through, rather in the way that stone tablets or papyrus have passed by. Where once this was cutting edge, now it is has-been, a relic of a past time. No reason to stop, though. Not yet, anyway.
Yeah, I’ll keep this going. There’ll be more stuff to write about, from things to do with business, travel, food, drink, current affairs, cats (it is a blog, after all), the weather, Sussex County Cricket Club, Brighton and Hove Albion, music, science, nature and, well, stuff. Life throws up things which are thought provoking – lately, most things thought provoking either come from the mouth of a certain four-and-a-half year old boy or are related to the rather pressing issue of the mortality of our own parents (you’ll have spotted links to various charitable organisations specialising in some rather unpleasant medical conditions). How my concerns have changed over ten years! That said, I’m still up for a beer if anyone asks me. And assuming I can arrange Tom-sitting.
So, there you have it. grayblog. Ten years of tripe and drivel, with a few pictures and some links. Thanks for reading. Stick around, if you will.