First Post IM… with NotsoSoft
Darren:
give me some thoughts about your first
posting:
Darren:
“7.2.00 I don’t think I’ve
ever really counted myself as a fan; I just like what I like. Although, now
I come to think about it, I did go through a phase of thinking that I could
marry a certain pop star. Hey, I was eleven. (If you want to know who it was,
tell me why you need to know and I’ll see…)”
Meg:
Oh christ.
Meg:
um
Meg:
er.
Meg:
Well, I started out about a
year before, collecting mad/interesting/relevant links – I was doing it for
a thing called hot sites, which involved a weekly pick and a bunch of blurb.
(there’s a whole saga behind that, btw). When I stopped doing that, I was still
collecting sites, because i just can’t resist exploring……..
Meg:
…the internet for me is a
bit like a massive, weird, ever expanding landscape…. worth exploring, always
finding things which relate to other things…..my bookmarks became the travelogue
of my journeys on the web….
Meg:
….the weblog grew out of
emails that I was sending to whole groups of people – you know, here’s a funny
site, have you seen this story, that kind of thing. The weblog became the scrapbook
for the snapshots of a web journey, to stretch that metaphor just a little bit
further.
Darren:
yeah me to
Darren:
I looked at Robot Wisdom and realised
that I was doing exactly the same in email…
Meg:
That’s not actually the first
weblog post ever, though – there’s a text file somewhere for half of january
– but february was the first attempt at designing it. And although
my blogging style has changed enormously since I began, that first post eerily
echoes forward to a lot of what I do nowadays – I make a statement, provide
a link, relate it to me and then ask for feedback. The difference now is that
people actually write to me when I prompt them to – and I love it. :o)
Darren:
reading your blog archives is interesting… because there is a lot of development
there and the aims of nss
seems to have changed a little.. it starts off as a real linklog and becomes
more “plasticbaggy“…
Meg:
uh-oh
Darren:
i meant that in a good way…
Meg:
;o)
Meg:
When I started, I was in a
phase of finding interesting links and figuring out a way to make them relate
to my life. Like a kid, making sense out of her environment by becoming the
central focus for it.
Darren:
it’s interesting… how little control I had over the development of LMG…
i assumed it would be about tech support links and comics. my subconcious had
other ideas.
Meg:
Me too – I intended to keep
it pretty much “here’s a site. interesting,.. eh?”, but that’s clearly not happened
:o) Every so often I get pissed off at how much of me I’m giving away, and I
try and reign myself in again.
Darren:
:-) I don’t have that problem… my friends are starting to read lmg and that
is making me shy away from personal stuff even more… I think you strike a
good balance.
Meg:but then
I figure that frankly, the reason NSS works well (when it does, that is) is
because I don’t try and make it into anything. Unlike some bloggers, for example,
I don’t have a strategy for popularity or ingredients for the perfect weblog.
My weblog is me, being, digitally and sequentially, I guess. I just kind of
do my thing, whatever that is, and am stunned and amazed and insanely flattered
and kind of confused and a bit embarrassed when people like it.
Darren:
nss and plasticbag
seem very similar to me for some reason… when you’re both in a “weblogging
groove” you make it look so easy and natural…
Darren:
same with lukelog… I sweat buckets
[sometimes] over lmg
and never feel I get that ease…. it always feels less spontaneous
Meg:
interesting that you say that
– i think nss and pb
are *very* different…don’t know why, specifically, but though I like tom’s
work very much, it always seems much more considered and planned (and edited…)
than the stream-of-consciousness stuff i sometimes put up
Darren:
interesting, I never felt that about tom’s blog until recently when I noticed
that he does edit his stuff as the day goes by… [you can often tell by looking
at the recently
updated uk blogs list… his often updates but nothing much seems to have
changed, whilst if nss
updates 95% of the time there is a new entry]
Darren:
unless you are redesigning
Meg:
heh
Meg:
now now, no need to point out
how often i redesign ;o)
Meg:
though i think this one’s a
keeper…
Meg:
i even added a
foxy pic to the front of the site.
Meg:
that’s commitment ;o