Why this blog

I’ve never had any inclination to create a personal blog, because I doubt that my day-to-day life would be particularly interesting to other people. I do post sporadically on a group blog, fuck decaf, that was created by my friend Carolyn Burke (who as far as I know was Canada's first blogger, starting Carolyn's Diary in January 1995). But I do find other topics to warrant a blog — and I do believe that blogs should be topic-specific (or at least categorized by topic). I recently created a blog to broadcast updates about the severe illness of a close friend (together with a wiki to help coordinate a 24-hour watch once she was in her final days). And now there’s something I want to contribute to the ongoing discussions of “Web 2.0”, something more than is reasonable as a mere comment in one of the many existing blogs that cover the topic. So the next post will be the only one that I’m actually creating this blog for — but once the ball is rolling I may well come up with more. (Posting when, and only when, you have something to say is one of blogs’ wonderful characteristics. To me a blog is pretty much the same thing as a newspaper/magazine column, but with a lot more freedom for the columnist.)