The ones that didn't make the cut

9/30/2010

This is actually the third time that I've attempted to keep a blog, not counting blog entries that I made on MySpace (back when I had a MySpace) or notes on Facebook.  Before we get too far into the shared experience that will be Look What Danny Made!, I'd like to take a moment to solemnly remember those who went before.  (Also, this gives me a good way to test my subscription feeds for those who have signed up, without giving them a post full of "Ummm, testing.")

Ocean Size: The closest I ever lived to the ocean was College Station, TX, which is still a good hundred miles from the coast.  Fellow fans of Jane's Addiction will recognize this as the name of the second track on Nothing's Shocking.  Here was my thought process in choosing the name:
What to call this thing?  Well, I like Jane's Addiction.  I'm a big guy.  And that song Ocean Size has the lyric, "Wish I was ocean size / they cannot move you, so no one tries..."  That is deep.
I think in Helvetica block quotes, by the way.

I started this one when I was still pretty fresh out of college.  I'd just moved back to my hometown and started my first job as a programmer.  It was exactly as exciting as it sounds.  There just wasn't much material to write about.  I think I made about three entries, mostly about how I was sorry for not writing more.  Then it sat untouched for a year before I deleted it.

Dispatches from the Western Front:  My friend Laura has kept a LiveJournal since like 1999, and she's great about posting this really honest, funny, searing stuff.  This was back in the day when you needed an invitation to join LiveJournal, so she hooked me up with one and told me that I should try starting a blog, too.  My thought process in choosing this name:
I don't really want to make this blog about any topic in particular, just kind of occasional updates.  I live in Texas, which is West of many spots in the US, or at least still considered as part of "the West."  I have recently seen Patton for the first time, and love it a billion, so I will also try and tie some kind of military reference in to the name.
Voila, Dispatches from the Western Front.  This was the early 2000's, when I was learning how to use CSS.  For non-programmers, that's Cascading Style Sheets, a method of giving your website a very uniform and attractive look across all of its pages without having to code it into each individual page.  It's also very easy to irreversibly screw-up your entire site, as I quickly discovered when I tried to customize the CSS on my blog template.  Goodbye, Dispatches from the Western Front.  I'm sorry you never got a single post.

I can promise you this - in these two instances, you're much better off for not having looked at what Danny made.

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