Hold the Mayo

August 31, 2004

Is That All?

As of today, I have been writing this blog for one year. On the one hand, it doesn't seem possible that a whole year has passed. On the other hand it seems like I have been doing this forever. (And I mean that in a good way.) It has been a great first year. My first post - like many others since - was short and to the point

Day 1
Welcome to the Hold the Mayo. Here you will find my thoughts on whatever I happen to be thinking. I hope you find them as interesting as I do.

Terribly droll, and I doubt terribly original. It was all uphill from there.

My path from reader to blogger began with a book. Virginia Postrel's The Future and Its Enemies. This lead me to her blog where I found a link to Rocket Man Blog. I exchanged a few emails with its author, Mark Oakly, who turned out to be just an average guy like me. I took the leap and started up on Blogspot with a great deal of help and advice from Mark. Mark's blog has been silent for a while now as he has joined a company in pursuit of the X-Prize.

Shortly after getting started I got an invite from Ted at Rocket Jones to move over to Munuviana. One of the smartest decisions I've made about blogging was accepting. I have "met" and in one case met, some terrific people.

But enough of the fluff. Lets get to the details.

As of 11:40 this morning this site contained 440 posts and 535 comments. Here's the status of my Site Meter (I missed the actual time for taking the screen shot by a few hours, but since I didn't have Site Meter running the first three days I figure its a wash.) I don't know if these numbers would be considered good, bad or indifferent. I do know that I am entirely too obsessed with them. Not in that I do things just to try to generate traffic, just in that I obsess over what traffic comes to see what I do. I still blog the same way I did when getting visits in double figures was a good day. As of today I am a Marauding Marsupial ranked #1325 in the TTLB Ecosystem.

The post that is by far the most Googled, most read, and certainly the most commented on is this one. It consists of two brief paragraphs and was written on my fourth day of blogging:

John Kerry Lies
Officially announcing his candidacy for president, Senator John kerry stood in front of the USS Yorktown and lied about his vote in favor of the Joint Resolution to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq. Kerry asserted in his announcement that he voted in favor of "threatening" to use force against Iraq. Either John Kerry believes Americans cannot read or he cannot do so himself. The resolution contains the statement "The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate..."
It does not read that the President is authorized to use the THREAT of force. The threat was actually contained in UN Security Council Resolution 1441, I don't believe Senator Kerry got a vote on that. Kerry has repeatedly accused the president of misleading the American people and himself into supporting the war. Now it would seem that it is Senator Kerry who is doing the misleading. And if the American people are paying attention the only one who will be mislead is Kerry himself.

The post that comes in second for google searches is Ozymandius by Shelley posted by Pixy Misa as a place holder when he set up my mu.nu site.

I've been trying for weeks to come up with what I would call my favorite post, but have been unable to pick one. The political post I am proudest of is The New Soldier which has links to PDF files of John Kerry's book by that title. I think it is important that the book get out, and I like to think/delude myself that it might make a difference.

I also rather like The Kerry Ad which contains my first ever Flash animation. I like it almost as much for the hurdles I had to overcome and what I learned along the way as for the ad itself.

One of my favorite non-political posts is Musical Flashback, and another is Talkin' 'Bout My Generation.

My all time favorite link is from Ted at Rocket Jones who described this post as "an analysis binge."

But what does it all mean, all this looking back over the year of blogging? I haven't the slightest idea other than that I've decided to keep going.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 06:52 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment

1 Happy Anniversary and I'm glad you're going to keep it up. I visit here almost every day and one of these days I'm going to make it up to your area.

Posted by: Ted at September 01, 2004 01:09 AM (blNMI)

2 Happy birthday! I keep you on my bloglines reader so I know whenever you update and can come visit. Thanks for all the great writing!

Posted by: RP at September 01, 2004 03:00 AM (LlPKh)

3 Woo hoo!!! Happy blogoversary!!

And, I gave up on being obsessed with Sitemeter and the Ecosystem a lo-o-o-ng time ago. If I have readers; great! If I don't; so what?! I yam what I yam. I've been much happier since.