Cureless

If had a baby in 2002, the child could have turned 5 last Sunday. And my baby did just turn 5!

I’m talking about blogging, my blogging. My earliest entry in this blog dates back to December 2002. Prior to that, however, as I mentioned in an entry two years ago, my first published entry is actually dated June 10, 2002.

testing! he he! is this really free? really really free? am i imagining things? maybe not. i’ve just woken up and logged on to pitas.com and… got a blog account! gosh!

Blog Tools

I already forgot the URLs of my other blog archives in Pitas following that particular one before my transfer to Blogger (prior to Google’s purchase). I was hopping from one blog service to another until someone offered a hosting space for me. There I explored further and found out how to host my own blog using GreyMatter. Back then, free blog services don’t offer much feature (image uploading, commenting system, group by categories, etc.) as they do now. Thus, hosting your own meant a more customizable and feature-richer blog.

I stayed with GreyMatter for around a year. I also installed it in my own server hosting account when I purchased cureless.net in 2003. Not until the CGI-built software started having issues with the server. I abandoned GreyMatter and my blog named “Countryside Junkie”.

I started over again with Blogger, then published 3 blogs (guised as columns) on the domain during the early part of 2004. I had an English blog, a Tagalog blog, and a literary/inspiration repository. I think those are the times when my entries make sense and turned out the way I wanted to express myself. I didn’t feel obliged to please anyone since I didn’t have a commenting system, whatsoever. I was enjoying my artistic license of sort by changing my site layout almost every month.

But then I missed the features of my old blog. I wanted to publish from my site again. The closest blogging system to GreyMatter that I could learn was MovableType. Back then, there were already the PHP blog tools such as b2 but I didn’t have much time familiarizing with them. Besides, I thought MovableType was the most robust free blogware during that time. I was running MT version 2.x until May of last year. I also installed WordPress 1.5 in one of my subdomains, hoping to build it into my work accomplishment log.

I already had a CMS-like structure of the site using MT. But when they announced that the blogging tools won’t be free anymore starting with its 3.0 version, I had no choice but to look for another one.

Using the blog built using WP came across my mind. I merged the work log with my personal blog/site/work folio on the main site. I had to learn using the WordPress tags since I just can’t blog without my signature layout in it. And born was Cureless ~ in Pastel, which evolved into what the blog is now.

Blogging Style

I never had a blogging/writing style, although I can say that my content 5 years ago is pretty much different from now. I’ve dealt with emo posts, mostly; raves, rants, fandom posts, everything about my “random passions” and experiences. I’m not saying that I’ve grown over my past tendencies to blog whenever I feel like cheering for Wesley Gonzales and the Blue Eagles or saying that Kira Sakuya is hotter than your boy b!atch. I still do. This time, however, it’d be to fan over an activity I had with Fluffy and not so much about how I adore fictional (and almost) characters I mentioned.

Blogging as an art

Literally, for me, it’s also about expressing myself through ways other than writing. Creating layouts, which are very much part of my blog, for instance, somehow show part of me that I cannot explain through writing. I love my layouts and sometimes, I just don’t care if people wouldn’t like them. (But, hey, I try my best to adhere to web standards, ok?)

Blogging with a shadow overhead

I’m aware that this blog is just but one tiny speck of grain in the blogosphere, much like our tiny planet in the universe. It was never in the limelight (except perhaps for a few days where my theme won an award), nor exceptionally interesting. But it exists and it’s mine.

I’ve seen my blogging “contemporaries” abandon their blogs and domains for a handful of reasons. That saddens me because I’ve lost my “original niche” which I could most closely categorize as the anime fandom in the Philippines. But somehow, I managed to stay just as I had hoped it to be. It’s been 5 years and soon, new technologies will come to outshine the blog’s apparent dynasty over the Internet. And I’m hoping for the same thing. Surely, it will evolve in some way or another but it’d still represent a part of who I am.

Plans for the future

One major task that’s left for me to do is the Works gallery. Sure, most of my works are so outdated but I’d still want them there, no matter how novice-looking they are.

I have no plans of changing my layout, yet. I’ll just spend time updating my free WordPress themes. (Oh, I so remember my 2006 revamp notice a year ago.)