Happy birthday blog

Well, I noticed it. Happy birthday to Dikkii's Diatribe. Yesterday, it was 1 year since I started Dikkii's Diatribe up again.

I probably should tell you the story of Dikkii's Diatribe.

In mid 1997, I purchased my first computer.

The first thing I did as soon as I had my new computer was to go and get hooked up to the internet. And in September of that year, I uploaded the first of what became Dikkii's Diatribe.

In those days, I began creating Dikkii's Diatribe using, initially, an application called Hotdog Express. I then found that my version of Microsoft Word that I was using (from Office 97, I think) was easier and faster to use for creating web pages, so I switched to that and re-uploaded Dikkii's Diatribe using that.

It's a real shame that none of the Hotdog Express files survived - they all looked wonderfully amateurish.

I've since re-uploaded my old diatribes here in Dikkii's Diatribe Archives, but looking at my first one again, it's interesting to note that even though nearly 10 years have passed since my first post, I have not changed my mind about public arts funding.

In January 2006, I was so pissed off about the raw deal that the Australian government gives to gay Australians with regards to marriage that I began Dikkii's Diatribe anew, this time with help from Blogger.

Why did I use Blogger®? Because when I did a sandbox test, everything seemed so easy. And I think that New Blogger™ is even easier.

(I so wish that Google is reading this - they might pay me for the gratuitous plugging)

Yeah, there are limitations to what you can do with Blogger - have a look at what Orac did to his before moving on to the utter professionalism of Scienceblogs - but it does me.

Initially, I toyed with the idea of using a new name. "The Average Bloke" was one, "Mr Mediocre's Magical Mayhem" was another. I ended up settling on Dikkii's Diatribe because, well, it has Zing! it has Zazz! and it has P'tooie! Plus, I blog about a lot of stuff that really grates my wick, because that's what I enjoy doing most.

Whingeing.

Even though I haven't changed my mind on most of what I blogged about back then, lots of other stuff has changed.

People can post comments on my blog without first emailing them to me for me to cut and paste onto the blog posts.

Google pays me to have ads up for them, and a search field. Not terribly much, mind you, but I can dig it.

RSS feeds alert regular readers through their feed-readers when I've updated the blog. Or better, via email.

Services such as Technorati and Feedburner tell me when someone has linked to my blog, or how many people are reading my feeds.

I still have green as my main colour. It's pretty much Dikkii's Diatribe's only link with it's past.

Anyway, happy birthday blog.

Edit: 19/03/2007 - I have no idea why I didn't use the Wayback Machine to retrieve the old version of this.

Here it is in all it's glory.

Enjoy.