8 Years from the First Blog

The first of many blogs

Eight years ago on the 8th of December 2003, I wrote my first blog at http://akin.blog-city.com it presented an opportunity to gather me thoughts about a whole range of issues and publish them as a journal and an opinion column.

Over those 8 years, I have seen bloggers come and go, some engaging, some disparaging and others who should not be let near a keyboard for reasons far too many to mention.

Blog-City served me well, until August 2010 when they decided they could no more run the blog service because of other commitments.

Where we are now

Since then, I first simultaneously published blogs on http://akin.blog-city.com and http://akinblog.nl whilst literally copying my blogs one at a time from the old site to the new.

My last blog at Blog-City was published on the 1st of August 2011 and the blog is set to close on January the first 2012, however, I must celebrate the 1,731 blogs posted, the over 4,250,000 hits and 1,215 comments on a whole range of subjects for which I have received accolades and brick bats.

Now, everything happens on http://akinblog.nl and I want to thank all my readers, fans, the linkers, the people who have left comments and most of all, the many friends I have made by reason of their reading my many stories of sadness, joy, childhood, anger, rights, sickness, survival, trials, victories and more else.

Thank you all for being there.

My blogs are at http://akinblog.nl

It is a long farewell

It is farewell to http://akin.blog-city.com from today as I have now posted the last blog there and decided to concentrate my blogging efforts at http://akinblog.nl.

A year ago, I was informed that the blogging service at Blog-City will close on the 1^st of January 2012 and it lead to a scramble to move all my material, over 1,500 blogs written in just under 7 years to a new location.

I had opened a blog at Blogger for the purposes of posting comments in early 2007 but from the end of 2009 as if I was prescient, I began publishing my blogs simultaneously on http://akin.blog-city.com and what became http://akinblog.nl.

The house move

There was no easy way of migrating my blogs that I really had to do it over about 7 months brick by heavy brick until all was done.

With my paid subscription running out at http://akin.blog-city.com I have decided to allow the blog to run in Read-Only mode, which means no new posts will published there until the blogging service expires on the 1^st of January 2012.

The statistics front, I have to-date had 3,828,382 hits since 8 Dec 2003 with 1,730 blogs, it is now time to drive my readership to http://akinblog.nl

Thank you everyone for reading my blogs.

Last blog on http://akin.blog-city.com

Dear Friend, Reader, Visitor, Fan, Inquirer & Search Engine,

I will not more be updating this site after almost 8 years of posting here, I started blogging here on the 8^th of December 2003; all new blogs will now be hosted on Google Blogger at http://akinblog.nl however, this blog whilst in read-only mode will remain active until the blogging service of Blog-City closes on the 1^st of January 2012.

Over the last few months, I have successfully copied all my blogs to Blogger and simultaneously published in both places.

Please ensure that all references made to http://akin.blog-city.com are now changed to http://akinblog.nl, the theme of my blogs remains Akin About Things Too Concerning to Ignore.

Thank you for visiting and following my blog and writings, though I am saddened that Blog-City is closing at a time that I have consistently exceeded 100,000 page views a month, the crew at Blog-City have always be responsive, helpful, considerate and kind – I wish them the very best in their future endeavours.

You can however still support my blogging efforts by clicking on the Donate button at the top right of the blog.

For my latest blog posting, please go to http://akinblog.nl

The RSS feed for my news blog is http://www.akinblog.nl/feeds/posts/default

With the kindest regards,

Akin Akintayo

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Blogger: Go and sin no more

Caring for my baby

It would appear one would have to take extra breathing classes to contain the stress levels that might arise from the dangers of losing one’s blog.

In 2003, when I chose the platform offered by http://www.blog-city.com it appears I had a vision that extended beyond that of the owners – I cannot say I had planned to blog for as long as I have been blogging but now into my eighth year, I am still at it and hopefully consistently too.

I first opened an account and blog on Blogger in January 2007 only for the purposes of being able to post comments to Blogger-hosted blogs that had restrictions in place that favoured only Blogger members.

Defaulting to Blogger

However, as 2009 came to a close, I noticed that there was very little innovation on Blog-City and on the day of the 6^th anniversary of blogging I began simultaneously posting my blogs to both Blog-City and Blogger.

Maybe I am prescient, I do not know, but in August 2010 Blog-City announced they were bored with the project and planned to close down the service in January 2012.

I panicked as I found there was no easy way of moving 1,500 blogs from Blog-City to any other platform, basically, they had lagged behind the curve so much, I was at risk of having a dud blog becoming a dead blog.

Why backup a blog?

A blog in my view was a repository, a data bank, if you like an online journal and by inference backed up by its presence online – in essence, there is no point having a backup of a blog if you cannot read back the data with a simple restore process.

In the end, I decided to cast my lot with Blogger and began moving my blogs manually, brick by heavy brick; stone by rugged stone until it all was done by February 2011.

I have maintained Blog-City as I have tried to divert traffic to my Blogger blog which I acquired a domain name for and is addressable as http://akinblog-nl

Over time, I have added features to help ease the navigation of the site and I have generally been happy with it.

It wasn’t broke, so they broke it

This morning Blogger was down, apparently, it was supposed to be down for just an hour of maintenance, it lasted 20 hours because some gremlin had entered the works.

It got me thinking and wondering about the major decision I made in August 2010, with a behemoth like Google behind Blogger it is a surprise that this ever happened, it was like cowboys were let loose on the corral shooting their guns and scaring the buffalo into a right roaring stampede.

Before that maintenance window, I do not think anything was broken on Blogger, it is fine that they need to keep adding features to keep up with the competition like WordPress or Tumblr, but this is a case of them ignoring an old mechanic’s advice, “If it ain’t broke, don’t break it.”

The blogs I wrote on Wednesday and Thursday have disappeared though we have been assured they will be restored, I have seen sorry but a humiliating grovel by those who did this might only start to comfort me, I will reserve the greater sense of displeasure for another time.

Blogger, go and sin no more.

The Blogger is Back note.

Imagine having blogged for 7 years

In gratitude

Imagine belongs to a day long ago that set the course that became a journey, it is my mind in the words that make up this blog.

Sometimes I read what I have written and how I have disembodied to sail in the waters of my blog to all the seven seas to beaches I dare not land as myself to wonder and to alarm but never in fear, even hostile coasts melted into welcome berths, the earth had become my dock.

More recently, it has been very personal; my story in chapters of pain, angst, recovery and hope, my succour and voice in therapy as I rose from the depths to climb with clambering hands to arms that were outstretched to help and relieve.

I can only give thanks to all those who have visited my blogs, inadvertently or as a routine, as readers who have become acquaintances and then become friends, you have drawn me out, lifted me up and created the profile that makes 7 years of blogging such great fun.

To you I commend the closing of http://akin.blog-city.com and the rise in its place of http://akinblog.nl my main vehicles of expression and a future as long as we could desire.

How wonderful you all have made it. Thank you very much.

Imagine!

This opera is shrill

Now doing Blogger

I feel I must address this issue once and for all and hopefully from an objective perspective. When I first started blogging, my blog hosting platform at Blog-City was one of the leading providers in the midst of the many fledgling offerings in 2003.

Just 2 months ago, Blog-City informed us that the service will close in January 2012 and thus began the race to re-host my blog on a platform that would not pull the plug at whim.

I eventually chose the Blogger platform because I had already started a blog there in 2007 and from the 6^th anniversary of my blogging I had begun co-hosting my blog there.

From the statistics of market share [1], WordPress leads Blogger which has consistently been second for at least 4 years.

The new life of Blogger

The lesson learnt from having patronised a small Scottish firm for a service I did not realise might end has been to acquire a domain name for my blog http://akinblog.nl something that would have made it easier to move traffic from my old blog to the new location.

In a sense, my using Blogger offers a sense of security and if I do have to pay for the service at least it might come with better exercisable rights than those I’ve had with Blog-City.

With Blogger has come the menace of spam something Blog-City protected me from including legitimate comments when the readers failed the numeracy test.

Pulling my hair at comments

Whilst I do appreciate those who have left comments on my blogs I am beside myself with a whole set of generic comments that could go on any of my blogs that they are beginning to have the appearance of benign spam.

Typical ones like, “I find this article from Google, it's really useful for me, hope I can post this in my blog.”

“It took me a long time to search on the net, only your site explain the fully details, bookmarked and thanks again.” This appears on a few blogs without context or purpose.

“I am doing research for my college paper, thanks for your helpful points, now I am acting on a sudden impulse.” On a blog on slips, slippers and saunas – I had to reread the blog, helpful points, maybe I need help.

Moving on from what is persistent nuisance I got this, “I think, that you are not right. I suggest it to discuss. Write to me in PM.” From Anonymous who wants me to send a private message to challenge my assertions to corroborate his opinion. Did I say, he? The person could as well be gender indefinite and possibly not human; I have seen primate type letters on television.

For compliments, I get the acceptable, “Thanks for the post.” To which one could plausibly say, if you have nothing to say, say nothing at all.

When, I got the comment, “Absolutely with you it agree. In it something is also idea excellent, agree with you.” My perspicaciousness for correctness and annoying propensity for pedantry in grammar could not be excited for the want of trying.

This Opera is shrill

However, having made my case about choosing Blogger which is generally a popular blogging platform with no particular frills, it goes without saying that one would assume that readers would be using of the popular browsers to view by blog.

As I responded in a comment recently, my blog is more text-based than having multimedia content, I simply have not mastered that tack yet and really whilst the razzmatazz of pictures, audio and video can spice up a blog, they might well be a distraction from the writing. I try to be good enough at writing to obviate the need for glitter and bling.

Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome browsers gets used by 46.45%, 29.33% and 9.00% of the market respectively [2], adding up to 84.78%. A long-standing but somewhat obscure web browser in September 2010 comes a distant 6^th with 3.19% of market share on the pie chart and 5^th on the tables; it is called Opera.

Ranking below Safari and Mobile Internet, users of Opera must be enjoying the show in an empty theatre waiting for the fat lady to sing, but she has long since gone to bed.

My blog on a popular blogging platform with basically no frills displays well on the leading Internet browsers, I would not know how to reconfigure the broad and basic format of the Blogger platform to shoe-horn its aesthetic viewability into the narrow spectrum of Opera.

I am being asked or it is pestered to make my blog viewable in Opera, I don’t think so.

Sources

[1] Which Blogging Platform Do You Use? | Peltier Tech Blog | Excel Charts

[2] Usage share of web browsers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Brick by heavy brick

Each heavy dusty brown brick of a blog entry

“Brick by brick”, she said, “stone by stone” she continued, “we build a house to call our home” – the strains of music written by Anna Wilson for Habitat for Humanity International, I wonder if that song is now for me.

I have been cast as an eccentric Howard Hughes with enough money and the madness to buy up the Great Wall of China and rebuild it at any other location that satisfies my whimsical fantasies.

The metaphors are apt, after almost 7 years of blogs numbering about 1,500 and 2,750,000 hits; I have to move this blog elsewhere because my blog hosts are bored with this venture and will close on the 1^st of January 2012.

Compatible to none

I have agonised about where to re-host my blog considering all the formats the host offers are not at present compatible with import formats for Blogger or Wordpress.

Painstakingly, blog by blog, jot by jot and tittle by tittle I have been taking each blog from the 8^th of December 2003 and moving it to this location at Akinblog.nl there is still a lot to be done.

References from Wikipedia, journals, researchers and bloggers might be lost, the comments my readers have offered, the footprint that akin.blog-city.com had and so on – yes, I feel like I am trying to move the Great Wall and its history to another place and time.

At least, I hope Google does not get bored of hosting blogs, the small Scottish company move-proofed its asset of bloggers with proprietary formats and now I have a good headache about migration, I have been assured a tool would eventually help our move but I wonder when that would be available.

Thanks for the wheelbarrows of support

I have already moved all that I have written in 2003 & 2004, 2005 is almost done and everything in 2010 is already here.

I want to thank you all for following me here and hope you will continue to be interested in my views, opinions, rants and controversies at Akinblog.nl.

Brick by heavy brick, we would move, completely – however for the time that Blog-City continues to exist, I will simultaneously publish at both locations.

A Blog-City Quit Notice

Like a quit notice

I got notice on the first of August from my blog service provider Blog-City that they are closing down their service on the 1st of January 2012.

This might seem a long way off but not for one who has had a blog running for almost 7 years; it is like disastrous to say the least.

My blog is the core part of my large footprint on the Internet, it is the online expression of my views, in some other cases it journals my life, experiences, thoughts and much more which I cannot recreate.

The thought that it is about to lose its web identity has occupied my mind for most of the day, it has not sunk in yet and I am losing sleep already.

Getting out not keeping up

The service is being withdrawn not for financial reasons but because the owners do not want to commit any new development time to the service when others are better with more functionality.

I had noticed that we were not keeping up but it did not matter as long as my blog was hosted and I could do the simple things I have always done on my blog, a few links and not too much whizz.

A growing sense of loss

In 2003 when I decided to start blogging, it was like a pioneering thing, I could use my name on any of the available services, now, uniqueness would almost mean the obscurity of starting all over again – all records, all histories, all references lost.

It is almost like losing a mobile phone, it is not the phone that matters but the contacts list and even more importantly if you communicate a lot by texting, all that is lost too – the gravity of this development is reverberating and I am not being melodramatic.

I chose Blog-City for its ease-of-use and accessible functionality, it was a small Scottish company that I felt would endure and it is why I took out a 5-year subscription and I should have been suspicious when that offer was no more available on renewal, the novelty of blog hosting has worn off and the gurus are on to new exciting things, I suppose.

What happens next?

The concern now beyond backing up my almost 1,500 blog entries is how to keep the content online beyond Blog-City, maintaining the publication dates and possibly the formatting on another hosting site – that job must start now rather than wait till 2012.

I guess it is time for me to register a domain name too, if only I can just keep that screaming thought out of my mind for just one second – What is going to happen to all my content? – I might be able to see beyond the breaking of what was essentially bad news.

I hope Blog-City provides every possible and useful means of help those of us who have been long-term supporters a smooth transition to new platforms or hosting services and I hope I can provide you my readers and supporters a managed transition to wherever else we might end up.

How could I have been so naïve as to think even blog hosting can be permanent – such is life.

6 Hurrahs to Blogging

On the 6th anniversary of my blogging hosted at Blog-City, I have decided to simultaneously post my blogs there and here. However, the blogs would appear here a bit later than when they are originally published.

There would be a link from this blog to the original location too. Thanks for visiting and reading my blog.

To blog one must

On the 8th of December 2003, I believe I was in a hotel room in Berlin watching a news story on this seemingly passing fad called blogging or web logging as it was originally known. I thought for a moment, this sounds like an opportunity to just put my everyday thoughts on “paper”, there is lots I would like to talk about but without the company or companionship necessary to share these thoughts with your mind is in constant overdrive.

I had done some experimental writing before, some friends had before encouraged me to try technical writing and at one time I sent out a religious newsletter that related to very personal matters to a closed group of friends.

That day saw the first blog of now almost 1,300 blogs now.

Where to start and how

Blogging appeared to be a good outlet from where I was; after surveying all the different blogs online, I decided on a young Scottish company with the catching community feel of Blog-City.

Somehow, I felt the service can be better tailored in a smaller outfit than the megaliths that were reviewed on that programme.

Beyond that, Blog-City offered the easiest registration and management functionality I could find then – the landscape has changed.

Within a month, I had published over 20 blogs on all sorts of topics with many of the blogs exhibiting a rather complex writing style and recording great reading scale difficulty that I have had to work on without necessarily compromising the essence of my voice.

I also decided to keep the faith with Blog-City and took up a subscription with a 5 year duration, it was necessary to allow my blog a professional and uncluttered look with the adverts, pop-ups and other things I did not publish but were inferring by the service provider’s initiative.

Fun and more blogs please

I did not know for how long I would keep blogging up for, but it was fun to maintain but I think it was not until early 2006 that I really got into it with consistency and a broader range of topics which cover Nigeria, human rights and the bizarre.

I have created in the right gutter a section called My Themes which links to related blogs I have written with that particular theme.

Nowadays, I try to encourage other friends who have stories to tell to start blogging, they do not have to write a treatise, probably just two paragraph about the simple blogging concept of yourself, your views, your environment, how things affect you and maybe what that could mean in general.

You cannot tell your story in another man’s voice; it is why I do not read pretend autobiographies of the successful non-lettered cadre who have their pulp non-fiction ghost-written by some hungry arts major.

You have a voice, give it volume and let it be heard, I had to improve my writing from difficult to easier, you can improve your writing too from what it is now to better, it takes practice and review, apparently, only a blog can give you that kind of training.

Thanks

Finally, this is a note of gratitude to all who have read my blog in the last 6 years, more so to those who have left comments and ever more so deeply to those who regularly read my blog for all sorts of reasons.

And really, without Blog-City, where would I have had a soap-box to bellow from, now and again. Though it has changed from its humble beginnings, it still behoves me to be thankful for their consistently prompt, professional and friendly service.

Here’s to another 6 years of blogging.

A Blogger from Blog-City

Why am I here?

I do not intend to start a secondary blog from my blog on Blog-City, but this allows me to enter comments on blogger sites that do not allow anonymous comments.

Update August 2010

My blog host has decided to close the service from January 2012, so I am busy moving my whole blog here.