Why here, why now?

Mon, Aug 15, 2011

At the start of this blog, I would like to take a moment to outline my own expectations for what I plan to do here. The thought to start a website at all came from a need for a place to publish code and demos online. Done. Registered the domain and there’s already a bit of code here. The bigger question, though, is what can I do with this here website? What does it represent to me? Sure, the main thrust behind it will be to host my own code, but at the same time, I can use it to express more than my ability to write code.

I had always been hesitant in the past to start something like a blog. I worried about being held to the words I publish online. I feared the likelihood that nobody really has much interest in what I have to say. So why have a blog component to what could be a much simpler website? Despite all my concerns, I have a voice and I should use it. What more, it really is an exciting privilege that I can write these words on my own website. Now, I step into an emerging global conversation on the Internet on my own terms, not on those of any social media platform, not within the domain of anyone else. This is an important point, because in the era of Facebook, on the possible brink of a paradigm shift toward Google Plus, we need to remember that the Internet is more than the websites that are already there. We can take it back and reclaim it as the public and open virtual space it once was.

While I won’t hold myself to a particular topic for this blog, this post should be telling. Code and critical thinking will both be prominent. With that, I’d like to note that there is some code already here: jEditUndo and SelectWithOther.jEditable. Both plugins to an edit-in-place jQuery extension, developed for a much bigger project I’d like to talk more about very soon.