Why?

I wanted to administer a web server. I'm an elected member of the TAG and we spend a lot of time talking about how the web should work. Running my own server is a way to explore the ideas we talk about and better understanding how the pieces of web architecture fit together. So partly, I wanted a playground for web technologies.

I wanted a site that I could easily and quickly update. The ISP that runs my other domains has suffered through a couple of ugly cracking attempts. As a result they've pulled security so tight it's inconvenient for me to login to make updates: I basically have to dial them up directly.

However, the sites they've hosted have run flawlessly for years, they do their jobs well, and they've always been heplful and responsive, so I'm not complaining. If you put me through what they've been through, I'd be a little paranoid too.

This site is an experiment in a web design paradigm that's completely different from anything I've built before. There is no navigation paradigm encoded in the content at all. Everything not absolutely intrinsic to the articles is stored separately from them. How this all works is described elsewhere.

It's a “blog”-thing. I've really enjoyed writing and publishing my travel journals on nwalsh.com, and I've often thought that maintaining a diary or journal might be interesting. I'd been thinking about putting something like this together when Tim Bray launched Ongoing. Yeah, I thought, that looks good. (Four stars, by the way, go read it now, it's a damn sight more interesting than my scribblings.)

I'm by no means convinced that I have the enough to say to justify a blog. I can't imagine saying anything interesting often enough to make it worth your while to visit, but you're more than welcome to stay if you'd like.