Blog evolution meme

So Hammer tagged me for this meme. I guess he assumed (correctly) that I this is a meme I would enjoy being tagged for. I'm supposed to pick out 5 posts that chart the evolution of this blog.

When I first began this blog, I had no idea what to do with it. At the time I thought I'd just do a clip-blog of things that I thought were interesting or important. An all-linky-no-thinky kind of blog. For the first little while I did pretty well, making 52 posts in about a month and a half.

In looking back at the old archives, I have surprised myself. I was doing then about what I'm doing now. For example, here's one about NASA doing some apparently under-handed data mining, followed by a post linking to the Michael Moore debunking site Bowling for Truth and another about how guns are mis-portrayed in movies.

But then I ran out of steam. I was languishing in obscurity and it was no fun just writing for myself. The rest of 2004 saw sporadic and sparse posting. I did continue to read other blogs the whole time and my blogroll was constantly growing. I just didn't say anything myself. Sometime during this hiatus I discovered the gunbloggersphere. Wow. People were using their blogs to advocate the right to keep and bear arms. Why hadn't I thought of that? Suddenly I had a focus and a reason for doing this.

This post definitely marked an evolution in my blogging, because it was the first time a post of mine was noticed and linked to by another blogger: Lest Darkness Fall. This was also the first time I saw myself on someone else's blogroll. I had arrived. By the way, LDF has been silent for a long time now. I hope you're doing okay.

(This is a two pipe post). I just noticed that in June 2005 I posted twice about anti-self-defense stuff going on at Virginia Tech, here and here. They are not pertinent to the evolution of this blog. I just thought I'd mention them.

Somewhere in here I started contributing to the Carnival of Cordite (RIP). I think this was the first such post.

Things kept plugging along pretty much the same for some time. I moved over to Eponym. And then...

The Guns of Hellsing. I could not then, and still can't believe the traffic this single post generated. It was part of the Carnival of Cordite. Several other bloggers and discussion forums linked to it. Numerous anime websites linked to it. Every single person in the whole world who Googled anything having to do with Hellsing checked it out. Since I had limited bandwidth at Eponym (5 gigs per month), it was wiping me out. I went through two weeks worth of bandwidth in about 3 days. I got a huge rush from all the traffic, but it was going to take me offline for weeks if it didn't stop. I finally resorted to deleting the post from Eponym and reposting it over here. This is still the king of all my posts. Nothing else has ever even come close to touching it.

The next notable evolution in this blog came with my first photoshop. This kind of thing is, for me, the most fun I have with this blog. I wish the muse would visit me more often so I could do this kind of thing more frequently. My p-shopping skills are not that great, but I have a lot of fun with it.

So that's four posts. I should do one more to fit the meme. Uh...well, sometime in there I started trying to do more humorous/satirical stuff like this. I also started recounting some personal experiences, like this.

And then I had to come back to Blogspot. It seems that everyone bailed out at Eponym, and left the lights on. Occasionally a bulb burns out, but there's no one there to replace it. So it seems that I've not changed all that much since I started this thing. Blogging about things that I think are interesting, important, or just plain weird, to include RKBA and other fundamental rights, strange stuff, humor, H.P. Lovecraft and pipe smoking.

So what does the future hold? Probably more of the same, but I do have a couple of new things in mind. Just this week I started on something that will be new for this blog, but it could be several days or even weeks before I finish it because it involves another learning curve.

I never tag anyone for these memes but if anyone reads this and wants to join in, leave a comment and I'll link to you.