Today, August 7th 2021, Confusion is 20 years old. While the domain has been registered for a bit longer the oldest blog post is from August 7th [confusion.cc]. That post, and several that follow are protected, you’ll need a password to access them.
As Confusion turns the big two-oh, it has :
- 954 posts (not counting this one), a little less than 1 post a week, though to be honest the posting frequency was much higher at the beginning, was really low for a while over the past few years and is maybe more stable now days at about 1 a week.
- 307 comments – never my strong point, last comment was in 2014, no one reads my blog, boo hoo. I predate the rise if micro-blogging and social media. Most people who might interact with me get their updates via social media not the wild west of personal hosted blogs.
I setup Confusion as a way to keep in touch with my college friends as I headed off to Europe to finish my studies and take my own grand tour [wikipedia.org]. In the beginning, the site, and each journal post was hand coded. But that didn’t even last a month before I changed to using LiveJournal [livejournal.com] in late August 2001 (post about it here [confusion.cc]. Using LiveJournal allowed people to comment on posts. There was also a forum in the beginning where we discussed the news and school… but that faded quickly. Comments on posts lasted a little longer but eventually the void stopped screaming back.
I switched from writing on LiveJournal and pulling the posts into Confusion a year later, hosting my own installation of Moveable Type [movabletype.com] from October 2002 (post here [confusion.cc]). Before finally, for now at least, moving to WordPress [wordpress.org] sometime in 2005 (no post about the migration).
There are also 172 broken links, a side effect of being on the web 20 years. Because while the Internet never forgets [confusion.cc], it’s violent seething abyss of change; sites come and go, sites re-organize there content and sites prune old content. Even many links that work actually go to dead ends, the content is gone but the site doesn’t even give a 404, just redirects to the home page, search results or something else. Broken links are the price of longevity on the Internet.
I have blogged through a lot in the past two decades, sometimes saying a lot, and sometimes not much more than a title…
- September 11th [confusion.cc].
- The subsequent march [confusion.cc] to war [confusion.cc]. “America’s forever war” as it’s been called, which is also 20 years old, the news tells me Biden is going to bring to an imminent end to it but we’ve heard that before from others. I won’t hold my breath to see if my blog actually outlives that war.
- My adventures [confusion.cc] in Europe, as well as some of my misadventures [confusion.cc] in Europe.
- Finding [confusion.cc], and quickly leaving [confusion.cc] my first post-college job, to join one of my pre-Europe adventure co-workers at a startup [confusion.cc] the would lead me to Singapore.
- The (second) American invasion in Iraq [confusion], and too many other times to link… I never had as much to say about Afghanistan, it was not the moral controversy that Iraq was. Or maybe, by the time it became a big a moral black hole I was too tired of it, I think most people were, and are. How much to we let bad things happen just because we are too tired or distracted to speak out? Maybe I’m just too old, protests are a young persons game.
- The (second) Space Shuttle explosion [confusion.cc] and here [confusion.cc].
- Relocation to Singapore [confusion.cc] – interesting aside, I mentioned Singapore in my post on Bush’s march to war linked above, never imagining I would end up here…
- Marriage [confusion.cc].
- Home ownership [confusion.cc].
- The birth of my first child [confusion.cc].
- The birth of my second child [confusion.cc].
- And many other things besides…
I have no plans to stop blogging despite the lack of audience interaction, (or maybe just the lack of audience). The world has moved on but Confusion is still my tiny corner of the Internet and I will continue to fill it with dull personal commentary with a side order of self-importance [zeldman.com].