Many years ago, I received an e-mail from a reader named Winston Rand, looking for some blogging advice:
Jeff,
I have been to your equivocality site numerous times over the last couple of months and always come away impressed. Having visited many other “blogs” — God how I’ve come to hate that term — I keep coming back to yours as my gold standard. Been thinking of starting my own, even have 2 domain names paid for, but being an engineer and an IT pro, I’m too hesitant to start until most of the answers are quite clear. That is a strength as well as a failing…
In my quest, I’ve looked at many different blogging tools, hosting sites, etc., and am still not sure which route to take. My temptation is to say to hell with all of them and just post my stuff using static html pages (Dreamweaver) since I’m not really interested in feedback or comments that much. But I do like the ability to easily integrate calendar, archives, and other features that most of the blog packages seem to include by default. And who knows, one of these days I may care what other people think of my work.
Among the popular packages, I’ve got it narrowed down to WordPress, Moveable Type, and SquareSpace, but I’m wide open to suggestions and recommendations.
Could you share your thoughts on what you use and recommend? Any advice will be greatly appreciated.
Keep up your excellent work! I look forward to seeing more of it.
I steered Winston towards WordPress, and soon after, he started his own blog at nobodyasked.com. Over time, he developed a significant readership, as he would write quite lucidly about politics, humour, and the occassional geek talk.
Although our blogs covered different things in a different style (Winston called it “[spinning] in a slightly offset parallel universe” when describing my blog in his one-year anniversary post), we would check up on each other now and then.
During one of my last visits, I found out that Winston has died after a 38-hour illness and 3 surgeries. While I never really knew him in person, I still feel like someone close is gone.
And I wish I could explain why.
:(
This is so sad! I have bookmarked his site, so that I can read through his Archives before his site contract expires.
Actually, his wife (also known as the “roomie”) has taken the blog over for him. She was recently fighting AT&T to cancel his services, which they wouldn’t do easily even though he passed away.
What a wonderful thing that he blogged and we have that to come to know him with — whether we knew him in life or not.
I have a friend I have never met in the flesh with whom I’ve been corresponding through blog and e-mail and IM since 1996 or 1997.… we’ve each gone through a marriage and a relationship, and hung onto each other for dear life in our words, many times, when our worlds were smashed.
And we’ve never met.
This really makes me want to go there now.
Quite amazing that you’ve been through so much together “virtually”. I’ve met some amazing people online…I cannot recommend it enough. Take the opportunity as soon as you can.
This is something that fascinates me. As this online business evolves, and we become public figures to many, but still anonymous behind our screens and publishing software, what happens when we go. Who cleans up, sends out the “passed-away tweets”?
I imagine sometime soon we’ll get blog life insurances, assuring that the bills get paid, your pages cached till eternity.
But if we’re lucky, someone will take over and keep our online memories as alive as the offline ones. We’re really only just discovering how to deal with this stuff…
I’ve always considered using a dead-man’s switch to take care of this — in the form of a password sent to my friends — but I haven’t gotten around to it.
I’d like my blog to stay online after I’ve passed. It’s a place where I place tremendous effort and share every part of my being. An epitaph for me.