The last page

If you followed some random link and are looking for ways out:

September 16th 2006

It is almost a year since I stopped updating this. I left the last page unarchived to remind me to finish it off properly. Rather like leaving the paint out to remind me that there is just one corner to finish on the wall. It rarely works with the painting, so I don't know why I thought it should work with this. I never did finish it off neatly.

Partly, I think, because I didn't want to finish. Reading random old pages, I'm embarrassed at how awful it is, and I can't imagine why people read it. But I enjoyed it. I enjoyed scribbling (well, typing) about things. I enjoyed commenting on things I knew nothing about. I enjoyed teasing Alan through it. I enjoyed making my own little corner on the web with my own stylesheets. It's come a long way since 1998: I didn't even know how to make a link to another page then.

But one thing and another made it more trouble than it was worth. The demands for RSS feeds. The discovery of my photos on websites with names like "dog or not" and discussions of who could bear to fuck that. The leeching of my bandwidth to do that (now that is cheek). The mass archiving, backing up, mirroring, grepping and data-mining on the web. A generally confrontational climate everywhere on the net where trying to be polite gets you called names, and the loud people get the final say. And a plain and simple loss of interest in running to stand still just to understand how to use anything mechanical.

To be fair, there was also frustration at the corner I had written myself into. This all started as a commentary on Alan's diary. Without that, it had less reason to exist. The stuff I did continue to write just wasn't diary-shaped. Or didn't fit into this diary, at least.

So, for now, this diary is going to sleep. I have had a sort through the website and pruned some of the rubbish (and all of the photos). I have left the old diary entries alone. I shall probably continue to scribble, on and off the net. In fact, I discovered I couldn't stop scribbling, so took to writing in a proper paper diary again. I may even resurrect a different diary on the web. If I do that, though, it will be very different from this one in style and content. I may even give in and use some blogging (ugh, how I hate that word) tool for it; although that still won't make it a blog. (Just to be clear on that.)

Thank you to all those who have emailed me over the years to comment, to explain, or just to laugh. I have really enjoyed reading and replying to those.

And of course, if Alan ever starts his diary up again, then the other side of the story may have to return.

I've been asked for a more obvious feedback route. So there you are! But please note: This should be clear from the above, but: I am not a kernel hacker. I am not an anything hacker. "Is this diary true?" will get answered. (It is.) "I have a problem compiling the brainsplat module under the pre-sliced option terminator; I am using the mutability framewedger on the standard infernalisation build" will not. (Well, it might be answered in a similar vein, but for a real answer, look elsewhere. It's much safer.)