jtnt://life/unedited

I’ve been thinking lately my goals for this site. What is the reasoning behind updating this when I do?

Sometimes I see it as simply an online diary. For years, from about the eighth grade until sometime in college, I kept a regular paper journal. I’d write about any random thought that came to my head. As time went on the journal was mostly updated only when a major event occurred in my life, mostly relating to girlfriends.

Sometimes I see it as an historical record of major world events. But for it to truly be this, I’d have to post way more often. I’m much too lazy and out of the loop for it to be comprehensive. Plus, a focus on a certain kind of event would be necessary. Politics. Sports. Technology. Something.

Sometimes I see it as a soapbox. See previous post. I’d have to think that people actually read this at all for this to keep me going on this track, though.

In the end, I do not know why I update this site. As I reach the end of this thought pattern, I do not know why I am posting this very entry. I think I like the notion of an online, permanent, universally accessible time capsule of my thoughts and travels.

As I have done with my paper journals, I think it will be interesting to revisit these old posts years in the future. So, I guess I update this site for my future self. (In which case, it can be all of the above and more.) I like that thought. Completely selfish and utterly harmless to others. I wish more things in life could be like that.

Checking my stats today, I found the following referers in my logs. I can’t seem to find where they link to me, and some of them are seriously weird sites.

• http://www.tourthai.com/index_t.shtml - This one sent over 30 people my way! Huh?
• http://www.upsaid.com/justdevin/
• http://www.tienneti.com/sezioni.asp
• http://andysucks.org
• http://www.noboys.org
• http://meredith.flutterglubmeow.com/blog/
• http://www.renaissancesistah.com/journal
• http://www.forever-star.com/journal.html
• http://aekituesday.blogspot.com/…

I’m not an active member of blogsnob or any other traffic-enhancing services, so I am really at a loss here. That’s not totally true, as one blogsnob ad does appear in one post a few weeks ago. But after checking my blogsnob stats, I have only received 17 impresssions from those guys. This doesn’t even begin to explain all of the above.

I got an email about a new Meetup.com MoveableType event today. After not voting for a venue (simply becuase all the venues listed were awful), I clicked around to see what some of the locals were up to.

In the internet alter-world bloggers live in, geography is forgotten and indeed looked at as irrelevant. I disagree. And I think Meetup.com is a testament to the fact that geography and the internet can come together. In fact, I think each enhance each other or feed off each other.

Without the desire to get together with like-minded people, meetup.com would not be as successful as it is. Without the internet, it would obvisouly not exist at all.

The very fact that everything is so placeless on the internet makes me even more curious when I do find a site (especially a personal blog) that is produced locally.

Here are a few sites I found while poking around on Meetup.com that were either interesting to read or pretty to look at. All local to the DC area.

• Webcrumbs
• samLife
• Farrellyville