jotsheet

Well, this is the thousandth entry in the jotsheet. Quite a few, eh? I don’t know whether to be proud or embarrassed. But I thought I’d take the opportunity to look back on the blog, to reflect a bit, and to note how it’s changed in the three and a half years I’ve had it.

Not exactly 1000…

First of all, the number “1000″ is a bit misleading. There are actually many more than 1000 individual entries in the blog. In fact, I probably had a thousand back in 2002 or early 2003. But they used to be shorter—some were really quite inconsequential—and as part of the conversion to Movable Type, I decided to roll all of the entries in a single day into one entry. Thus, many older days have multipart entries (here’s one, for instance). In size and scope, however, many of those multipart entries are actually minor compared to a typical entry today. So, for the sake of convenience, we’ll say this is the thousandth entry and be done with it.

Hand-coded tedium to Movable Type power

I mentioned above my conversion of the jotsheet to the Movable Type publishing system. Before that, it was hand-coded. Yep, for two and a half years, I opened up files and hand-coded the HTML based upon a predefined template with CSS classes and specific markup. It sounds painful, but I was pretty efficient. Part of the efficiency was achieved by using a neat PHP tool called WebExplorer that allowed me to directly edit the HTML files on the Web server through a Web browser. I could edit my blog from anywhere—no need for FTP access. On the downside, I was locked into that markup and my ability to manipulate the blog via CSS was hamstrung as a result. On the positive side, the site was fast and damn if it was straightforward.

Gradually, though, I became unhappy with the hand-coded thang. My blog was made up of monthly pages, I couldn’t link to individual entries without using the in-page anchors of the of the monthly archive pages. Backups were was tedious. I couldn’t do cool stuff like categorization. Enter Movable Type.

It was around the time I converted the site, October 2003, that MT was really getting popular. The biggest challenge for me was converting a couple of large HTML monthly pages into MT’s import format. Somehow, someway, I bungled my way into writing a horrible Perl script that did a decent job of this conversion. To this day I’m not sure how I managed this, but the Good Lord Above probably had a hand in it somehow. Anyhow, I converted 622 days’ worth of entries into MT and all that stuff currently sits in the “old jotsheet” section of the site, which is distinguishable from the regular stuff in that it lacks the granular categorization and you can’t comment on it. (In other words, I refuse to go back and categorize 622 entries.)

Toward reasonably meaningful and interesting entries

I’m always trying to make the jotsheet better. As I think about its evolution over the past few years, I recognize that yes, it’s a lot better than it used to be. Also, in reading some of the old stuff, I recognize that it used to be pretty crappy. I can deal with that.

Blogging has come a ways in the time I’ve been doing it, and I’ve been along for the ride. My very first entry consisted of an observation about me and my life. Fair enough, but also painfully typical. Later, I descended into blogging about my the various ups and downs of my life, which can make for a really boring read. (Perhaps the exception is if you know me and you’re reading this stuff near the time when it’s recorded. It has no shelf life, however. For the most part, let’s leave this sort of rubbish on LiveJournal, shall we?)

Early 2003 brought improvements as the jotsheet jumped into the fray and made friends with some other blogs at Northwestern. This development proved that a rising tide lifts all boats… and blogs. And then the blogs fought (and it was funny). But the Golden Age ended quickly and the jotsheet smoothly passed into its current (and best) incarnation.

Today, this blog is less about me and my life and more about what I find funny, interesting, and potentially useful to others. I spend way too much time on it, but hey, I’m a perfectionist and that’s to be expected. I don’t tool around with the design and layout as much as I used to and prefer to tweak the usability and Movable Type features. I blog about technology, not really for my sake, but to “give something back” in return for all the tech stuff I learn from other blogs. Hopefully, a few people out there learn from the things I write.

What’s next?

I’m not sure what’s coming up for this site. I like the jotsheet right now. It’s evolved into a better blog. I once declared (see #3) that it was stupid and presumptuous to allow people to comment on one’s website. Obviously I ditched that idea; people comment on my blog all the time.

What else might I change my mind about? One problem with the jotsheet is that it’s very unfocused. The strength of most blogs is that they have a particular topic, and that topic allows them to quickly draw like-minded individuals. The jotsheet has no such central, organizing theme. It’s just my angry ranting, which is awesome, of course, but which is also not in short supply from other websites. The biggest way I gain readers is by knowing people in real life and by getting visitors from Google. I don’t belong to a blogging community.

I have a couple of ideas about topics on which I could do “focused blogging,” but I’m not sure about that yet. We’ll see. For the moment, at least, I’m sticking with my “watermelon thrown from a building” approach.

It’s been a good run, and frankly, I think I’ll be at this a while longer!

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