The Fox Hole

Well, for the answer, we must now visit the pages of ancient history (ancient history in computer terms means more than 10 yrs ago). I belong to the age of dinosaurs. Pre-1990's we were connected via modems at slow-poke speeds of 300bps, 1200bps, 2400bps etc. We chatted via Bulletin Boards, which many people in Singapore run, out of the goodness of their hearts. Nothing was commercialised. No money was involved. Files uploaded and downloaded via BBSes were all compressed with .ARC at first, then later on a better one called .LZH appeared. Soon after, the author of .ARC made a new compression algorithm, and called it .ZIP (recognise it now?) and it became wildly popular, in part due to the reputation of his original work on .ARC.

When Internet started to become prevalent, the gahmen decided that BBSes were a threat to Singnet, and started to require all BBS operators to "register" with them to get a "license". Notice how suddenly this only became a requirement when Singnet started? Naturally, almost every single BBS in Singapore closed almost overnight.

It was back around 1994 or so, that I first got "connected" to the Internet via Singnet's Kermit technology. Yeah back then I was on a text-based interface connection to the Internet. So were many people. Netscape (affectionately known as "Mozilla") was king, IE was an unknown browser that Microsoft was trying to promote, and people who wanted to know if their friends were online FINGERed them.

So, being an ex-owner of a BBS, I needed my own "space" on the Internet. Hence, I did my first webpage and uploaded it to my free space that Singnet offered... an incredible 1MB of space! The webpage was simple, no graphics, just text.

Soon I found many of my old BBS friends had their own homepages too. But, there was something missing. We needed to write stuff, to vent. Back on our old BBS systems we could always write "articles" and post them up on the BBS, and people who logged in can read them. So, I created a "soapbox" area on my homepage. A place to read my hand-crafted HTML page about stuff I wanted to write about. Yeah, "blogs" used to be known as "soapboxes" back then. Why a "soapbox"? Because in western countries, if you had a problem with something, you took a soapbox (ie a small crate) out to a street corner, stand on it, and start speaking. People will stop walking and listen to you.

As the years rolled on, I jumped from Singnet to Pacific Internet (and now currently on Starhub). As I jumped, my "free web space" address changed too, and lost readers. Registering our own domain was unthinkable - it was US$50.00 (damn I wish I had registered google.com back then!). Eventually I found a FREE webhost that is independent of my ISP and I had a whopping 10MB of space! Beat that, Singnet/Pacnet! However my joy was short-lived. The free homepage provider closed down and I had to move my pages AGAIN.

By now, a new phenomenon had started to sweep the Internet world. There was this new thing called a "web log", or a "blog". People could actually write stuff and have it put up onto the Internet, without knowing a lick of HTML. I wanted one of those!

I didn't find one till about 2003 or 2004, called Blogger.com. Even after locating it, and thinking it was a perfect way to continually update my site without me hand-crafting HTML pages, I still didn't really use it much. Notice that Blogger had been around a couple of years prior to me discovering it - I just didn't really look for one till it found me one day :)

So, slowly I started to backdate all my old soapbox entries onto the blogger platform till about 2001 (I gave up on those before 2001). As you can see from my Blogger profile, I joined Blogger in 2004, but I have entries starting at 2001 and very sparse entries between 2001 and 2004. Reason being, it was hard work hand-crafting HTML pages just to post my thoughts, so I didn't do it regularly. In fact if I remember right, I didn't post anything at all in 2002.

So, fast forward a few years. In 2006 I slowly started to pick up on my "blogging", but I have left my homepage alone too long. It looked dated, using HTML technologies from pre-2000. Traffic to my "blog" or even my "homepage" was practically nil. Usually all I see are just Google and Yahoo search hits. I needed a revamp, but never found the energy to do it.

By this time I was slowly but surely starting to read blogs, and discovering RSS. Making money from my blog was the furthest thing from my mind (I still don't depend on my blog to make money now). What I needed were readers. I started to hang out in forums, giving links to my homepage and blog. I started to write comments in other people's blogs. That only helped my traffic situation a little. From under 10 hits a day, it increased to just under 20. Almost 100% increase, not bad huh?

Then in 2007, on one of the more obscure blogs I happen to stumble into, featured a prominent ping.sg button. Clicking on it, I registered.

And the rest, as they say, is history :)