One-thousandth Entry: A Place For My Stuff

Well, as you've probably noticed, especially if you read this blog on the actual website rather than a feedreader, I have rennovated this blog site extensively. IMG_0250.JPG This involved switching to new software, from a 5-year-old Moveable Type installation (the last free version) to Drupal. (my content management system of choice - I've now built or worked on about 10 different Drupal sites and am getting pretty adept at it.) This is just in time for this, my one-thousandth blog entry since starting this blog in April 2004.

What this new system does that is really cool: it's not just a place for my blog entries but it also brings together content of mine from several different sites and services - my photos from Flickr, my book reviews from Goodreads, my videos from Vimeo, my tweets from Twitter and my bookmarks from Delicious.

There are still some things to adjust and tweak here. But as I was building this new site and thinking about how long I've been blogging, I took the opportunity to look back at all the other layers of web stuff lying around in the directory that corresponds to steev.hise.org. I nostalgically sifted through versions of the site and other homepages and projects that I had stashed away and almost forgotten. Amongst them are 2 earlier attempts at blogs. For a few months in 2001 I was keeping a very spare web blog, the archives of which are still around. My favorite entry is a rare, cheery fantasy my much more geeky self dreamed up while living my 6th year in San Francisco:

it's another great sunny day today. i wish i could spend every sunny day just walking around and sipping coffee in sidewalk cafes, lying in the grass. everyonce in a while a friend would call my cellphone and ask if i wantd to meet at a certain park and have an ice cream cone. clients would also meet me in the park and i would r3ecite code to them out loud, and then they'd pay me by the line in cash and leave. also every once in awhile i'd get out my palm-sized music computer and regale the lunchtime crowds in the park with some electronic folk music. some of the audience would then buy me lunch or invite me to a party that evening.

Before that, starting in 1996, I actually had some hand-rolled software I used for maintaining a sort of online diary, long before people were calling them "blogs." Most of that seems to have been me musing about how crazy it was that I live in San Francisco and make a living from the internet.

I can't believe I'm making a living from the internet. From a company that makes its living from the internet. From a company that is leasing a 10,000 square foot building so that it can be in a better position to make a living from the internet. Wacked... who would have thought it?

What different times. Thirteen years ago and it seems like worlds and eras away.
life is your career
I think I'm much more balanced and happy than I was then. More stable, comfortable with who I am, confident with myself and where I am in the world. I'm now not as geeky, maybe a little less angry, and, I think, more conscious of what's going on in the world and what is important on a larger level.

(And to give credit where credit is due, a lot of the improvement in those directions in the last 3 years has been due to being with my wonderful womanfriend Greta. She's really been the source and motivation for a lot of growth recently, and for a lot of happiness. Thank you, Greta!)