It has been fourteen years since I wrote my first ‘technical’ blog post.

I say technical because I was posting occasional life updates on my personal website before then, but this was the first time I installed blogging software on my site and posted something through there.

Blogs are the best because you’re the boss

Blogs – and personal websites in general – really are the best.

Social networks, micro-blogs, and photo/video hosting sites are fine and all. But on all of those you’re at the mercy of the platform. The folks who run that platform (or the AI that moderates it) can delete your profile and your entire content history if they want to. And you can’t take all your content and migrate it to some other platform either. You’re always stuck inside their walled garden and they control what it is that you can and can’t do there.

On your blog (or website) your content is always yours. You can do whatever you want with it. You do have to manage the site itself, but these days even a minimally skilled user of the internet won’t find that particularly challenging. And, sure, more functional and nicer looking blogs will cost a little, but running a basic, decent looking site isn’t as expensive as you’d think.

Blogs aren’t what they used to be though

Of course the content of my blog has changed drastically since 24 April 2007. Back then I talked a lot more about random things going on in my life (hence the name ‘random tangent’), the things I liked and didn’t like, the movies I’d watched and music I’d listened to, and what my current interests were.

Most of those topics don’t warrant full blog posts anymore. A couple of photos and 2-3 tweets usually do the trick for me. Often just a simple retweet or quote tweet is pretty much all I want to say on a topic I’m not actively involved in. Also, with a retweet I can share other people’s point of view, not just my own.

What goes on my blog these days are the things I want to remember, process, and revisit in the future. Things I don’t want disappearing into the social media black hole that are then difficult to find later on. Things that, for one reason or another, matter.

So here we are, and here’s to another fourteen years.