The tragedy of lost archives
I’ve been a fool all along.
Those who have known me for a while also know I’ve been at this whole “blogging” thing for some time. Except of course when I started they weren’t really called blogs, they were called “E/N sites”, but the idea was generally the same. You had individuals (or in some cases groups of individuals) who posted on a site about whatever. For me, I posted about random gaming crap and other inane topics that a teenager talks about. That was the very start of it actually, the thing that got me into web development at all.
Way back when (1997 if I recall correctly) the first real web presence I had was working with another guy on a site for Star Wars: Rebellion. The game itself ended up being horrible, but the practical experience it gave me doing some real web development was invaluable. I was already a good programmer at the time (C, C++, and other strange languages), but web development was something new, and obviously catching on fire like nothing else at the time.
Soon that grew from a fan site for a single game into good old Strategy Command. It’s been defunct for quite some time now, but for a short while the site was doing fairly well and had a considerable following. After a while I wanted something a little more personal and so Charged Particle was born. It was there in 1999 that I had my first site that would be recognizable as what we now call a blog. And then of course there was the various subdomains, liquience.org, and now this.
That brings me to the point of this article. Because a strong part of me values consistancy, cleanliness, and other things that would get me labeled “anal”, I had a strong tendency to start over, time and time again. The result? Six years of archives are gone. Sure, the quality of what I used to write wasn’t exactly what it is now, but there was a history there and it would have been interesting to see the evolution. Also, it would have been nice to have the proof that I’ve been at this thing (on and off admittedly) as long as most anyone has.
So the solution going forward is to be more careful, and to not blatantly disregard the archive. In some sense this tool isn’t just a way to put my voice out there for everyone to hear, but also for me to look back and see where I once was.
January 17th, 2006 23:27
You and I are in the same boat, Naim. JAM Sandwhich?
And not only do we have a lot in common, but hell, we started together.
Quite literally.
May Larry rest in peace.
January 17th, 2006 23:51
So very, very true. BMF was an inspiration, a kick-in-the-pants, and probably was more an influence on me in my formative teenage years than I’d admit at first thought.
Those were good times that I still think back to now and again. It’s a shame an archive of that doesn’t exist either.
I should note that a lot of the really early work on my sites (before I moved to tools like NewsPro and so on) was archived on my system. Too bad the drive it was on melted, what, 4 years ago now?
P.S. Larry was a true BMF.
January 18th, 2006 19:12
Man, Star Wars Rebellion. That game was ass, but that’s how we met up. It was like rebellion zone or some something to that ring. I still have those files lingering on my hard drive. Gg you were also called Nemo back then. LOL!!!!
January 18th, 2006 21:00
Nemo! Your own sight on Charged Particle, before you made CP our commie-infested site, was called Nemo’s something, wasn’t it?
January 19th, 2006 03:36
I’m sure you guys recall Sno. I knew he crossed over between BMF and Relic Forums (http://forums.relicnews.com). GG was he entertaining
January 19th, 2006 08:19
Yeah Luke, I belive it was. Though sadly I can’t recall exactly what I called it, I do remember it. Those were good times.
January 19th, 2006 19:58
Sno was great…
The cool thing about Bad Mutha Forums was that it was a forum of no specific purpose and people were attracted there for a variety of reasons.
January 19th, 2006 21:35
Man, those were the days, back before all this damn competition.
March 16th, 2006 02:00
I remember sno as well. What ever became of the guys at Chachi Online?
June 27th, 2007 13:40
Whoa, I was just thinking about bmf and did a search and this place Naim’s site came up. This entry is about a year old but if somehow you check it, here is a link to archived BMF. Not everything is there, but a lot of the good times are. Hope you enjoy it and it’s good to know that people are still around.
http://web.archive.org/web/20010408013613/badmutha.jedinights.com/wwwthreads.pl
June 27th, 2007 18:18
Hey man, long time no see! That link is a trip. It’s been a while since I took that trip down memory lane. A lot of my old sites are on there too… Thanks for that.