The blogging experiment continues

It is interesting how a blog can reconnect you with people you used to talk to. After rambling about the Internet, I've since reconnected with a few long time IRC buddies. So they are still alive! Wow. But the timezone thing is annoying between Brussels and Perth/Sydney. It's not like Swatch Internet Time would make anything easier, either.

Our old haunt on IRC was #chaty on AustNet (a network I can't believe is still around considering the internal politics behind it). Within our intentionally quiet channel, locked up with +mnstl 5, lurked Steve (who, oddly enough, posted a similar first blog entry to mine), Praetorian (who is all grown up now, terrorising the slugs that live in his part of the world), and Heaven (who has since changed alias so many times I can't keep track, but has turned blogging into journalism, having appeared in the Italian magazine Jack, ISSN 1591-1044-71, page 132). There were others, but these guys all but lived in there.

It makes me really think that the world is becoming smaller and smaller.

During the week, I've been accused, once again, of telling "history lessons". It seems to be common that people, independently, complain about with me. Although some people say they enjoy it, apparently I am turning into a rambling old sod that can't let go of the past. I've been told that the blog would be a good outlet for these tid-bits of history, rather than inflicting the pain and suffering of supposedly long diatribe onto living creatures.

Now, my personal feeling here is completely contradictory to what I felt from my schooling days -- history can easily be an important look into where we are going, because we can understand a lot more about things if we know the origin of them. For example, this is a point I commonly argue against the new generation of computer programmers, the majority of which prefer to remain ignore about the fundamentals of computer science. Logically, if they don't understand how a computer processes data, how can they program a computer in an optimal manner? Unfortunately, they get top-flight jobs in software firms and learn how to hide in their cubical, churning out low-quality code for cheap; but that's a rant for later..

Maybe blogging can be therapeutic, once a rhythm is developed. To be honest, this little personal experiment needs to carry on longer for me to be able to determine it. I'm already surprised how many people have found it (I was expecting nobody would have by now). One week isn't long enough to determine the viability of such a personal project. It has, however, unlocked my previous ability to write obtuse digressive monologues, of which I thought had liquefied a part of my brain, overheated itself and evaporated out of my ears somehow. Yes, blogging feeds my penchant for hyperbole, which may actually be a bad thing.

Anyway, since it's been a week, so I thought I'd celebrate by getting myself an IBSN. No, not an ISBN, they're for books. I know it's odd, but yes, there's an International Blog Serial Number out there. Apparently, ISSN numbers were once, briefly, acceptable for web publications, but have since been rejected by national registrars. There's a lot of debate about the compatibility of ISSN numbers and blogs, but some Spaniards got frustrated enough to start their own registry. The concept is good though - many blogs are of such a standard that could be published traditionally. Some blogs are useful enough to warrant ISSN assignment to assist in libraries archiving their content.

Now... I wonder where my Swatch Webmaster watch is.