Of Websites and Weblogs

Some of you may know that I have maintained a World Wide Web presence in one manner or another since December 15, 1996. My first shot at a website was simply black text on a white screen. I called it the "Lynx" or "Amish" version. All it contained was a list of made-up disclaimers called the Lawsuit-inspired Legal Fanfare Page. The page was meant to be funny, and was, for about three weeks. Still, it was my website. My official website. I decided to declare its officiality because there was an "officializing" craze at the time; people thought they would get more hits if they called their website "official," as in: "The Official Sony VCR Site" or "The Official Kermit the Frog Site" or "The Official Site of the Color Chartreuse." So calling my site the "Official Benjamin Rotskoff Homepage" was simply a joke that went on too long.

It went on for nine years, in fact. For two years it stayed in that format, a study in negative space. Then came The Official version 2.0, which was purple, and had lots of graphics, and was actually pretty well done for its day. After college, I published version 3.0 on December 1, 2000. It was, to quote a college roommate, "fun, professional, and grey." Yes, it was charcoal grey and had my personal logo and color coding and it went through numerous updates. But, on December 15 of this year, I elected to close The Official for good. Why, you ask? A number of reasons. First, after a while, I never had good reason to update it. This was a sad reflection of the way my life was going at that point in time. Second, I got downright sick of ad banners and guestbook spam. Oh GOD how I loathe guestbook spam. And third, it was just time to try something new. The Official had an amazing run, but now it's all about the weblog. The official weblog. :)