Ahhh, blogs. That thing people use to use to express themselves online that wasn’t a forum. I’ve kept this one going [mostly] since the late ’90s, actually. (it’s a bit broken and spooky but here’s a link anyway — and yes, that’s me from 1999) But social media sent most blogs out to pasture what with their short-form quipiness and fancy mobile apps. In 2008-ish when I made the transition primarily to the Twitter of old, I setup some scripts to automatically pull any of my posts and photos from there to here. Since I owned that content it should go somewhere I also owned. But then, in late 2022 and well after that API no longer functioned, I left the birdsite and this place went stagnant for the first time since I was a freshman in college.
Social media started as a great way to connect people and build communities but, under the control of a select few, that luster gave way to a tarnish that made the sites toxic wastelands of ads and nazis. Seemingly simultaneously, many streaming services (I’m getting to a point, jas) began feeling the weight of their own initial aspirations and spending only to contract and even shelve films and shows we thought surely, since I pay my $9.99/month, would never go away… right? Right? The almighty dollar started sinking heavily into both facets of online life leading back, for me, to this blog.
I’m re-taking control of my own content. Gone are the days of social posts with my musings, photos, and videos. Even as much as I enjoy decentralized social experiences like Mastodon (follow me!) my resolution, coming into 2024 and amidst a landscape of subscriptions and digital copies, is to write and post here and link back from the aforementioned tootsite, LinkedIn (follow me!), etc. I’ll use those sites for conversation and interaction. Here I plan to bring together many of my varied interests personal, professional, and community so they have one place to live that paints a picture of those sides of my life. I hope eventually to migrate things like videos here from YouTube (subscribe!) or to something like PeerTube and would also happily describe some of the other DIY efforts I’m undertaking like a home Plex server for streaming my own copies of films, TV, and music and Home Assistant to move to more local (e.g. non-cloud) control of the smart things around my house — but I’ll leave those to future posts.
Thanks for following along on this renewed journey and, can I just say, it’s so nice to use WordPress for this vs. rolling my own CMS. Gotta love technology! Now where’s that old under-construction.gif …?
Cheers!
~ Kevin