Blogging, we started doing it in 1996

Blogging. Such a great idea blogging is. After posting three blog entries in the past week I am struck by how easy it is to do these days! And that's a good thing.

Kane and me at Chicago Botanic Garden, August 2003

Believe it or not, back in the dark ages before Blogger, we used to have to create actual HTML (web programming for you neophytes) if we wanted to maintain a family web site and keep it updated with our current activities and goings-on. What a pain!

Back then, we called it a "web log" which of course became a "blog" as we refer to it today. I registered "udonet.com", our domain, using Michael's friend's "code word" name for fun. From there I set up our family web site sometime in the year 2000 when Michael and I moved with the girls to our first home in Des Plaines IL. Thereafter I lovingly updated it quite regularly late at night after the kids were in bed. 

The process was much more complicated then than it is now:

1. Locate the area of the web site to update. 
2. Create a new page from a saved page template, by loading the template, creating the new content in HTML and saving it locally. 
3. Uploading the new page to the server and checking it. 
4. Process repeat until the new page is done. 

Contrast that with the current way of creating a new blog post:

1. Go to Blogger.com and log in. 
2. Click "Create new Post" and start typing.
3. Save then publish. 

I will admit that in one whole week of blogging I have already gone under the covers in every post and corrected some of the auto-magic HTML that Blogger created for me ;-)

Today, I decided to go back into the "way back machine" - also known as the Prowicz Family web site for proof that maintaining a blog-like presence is really a pain without a blogger.

For the main hint that updating a family web site using the old method is just too time-consuming consider that my last update there seems to be sometime around fall of 2003. That's ten years ago! Granted, since the kids have gotten older Michael and I have focused more on having fun than on lazing around the house, working on the computers in the evenings and we do have a lot more animals and things to do than we did then - but ten years since a Prowicz Family update is a very long time!

I think my next project (because I always need a next project) should be to figure out how to integrate my new blog (this one) into my old one (the Prowicz Family web site: http://www.udonet.com/prowicz)

I did really enjoy looking at the photos of my old pond and garden in Des Plaines (found under @Home, Prowicz family garden if you are so inclined.)

This was the "plow garden" in the back corner of our property. Yes the plow moved with us to the farm; it's in our front yard now. We found it hiding under the lilac tree in our back yard when we bought the house and surmise it was left there by the original farmer who developed the property sometime in the early 1950's. Can you imagine this thing just sitting there for 50 years? Pretty strange...

Our original pond at the house in Des Plaines. I forgot how pretty it was. I notice how lush the Irises are; It must be time to divide the ones I have here now as they nowhere near as healthy looking at these.

Baby Daisy puppy on the stream that fed the pond from our house's sump pump outlet.

Hat-tip to the original version of "random ramblings from the webmistress" which I started in 1996: http://www.udonet.com/laura/info.html