I am now well past my 60th rotation of the sun. I recently attended a former teachers funeral and this has me thinking about lots. I’m planning on posting a little more often here as a consequence. Also, I recently read over on cogdogblog ways to use a blog as an aid to your memories. This current blog only dates back to 2020. So to really get a sense of what I have done since the internet arrived in 1995 I’m listing several other blog and social media activities that have formed part of my creative online life. As best as I can remember. Here’s a list on my static site. The idea with this post is to hopefully have an archive of this activity.
From 2004 to 2010 I blogged on blogspot.com, now a google property, and used a phonecam to achieve this. It was called s2art’s mophone photography blog. I was at the same uploading regularly and frequently to Flickr.com. Then I used tumblr for the same ends called lo-res daily. This was just before Instagram became big. The tumblr still exists but my posting frequency is spotty at best. This particular tumblr was actually a Sub-Tumblr as I had already setup a tumblr in 2007 [s2z.tumblr.com] which mainly hosted links and other text snippets; in the beginning anyway.
Somewhere in all of this was a self hosted movable type, blog thanks to Cos. I blogged there from 2006 to 2011, thanks to the way back machine [internet archive] you can still read it.
Instagram became a huge focus for me around 2010. My original account is long gone however. Flickr and Tumblr at this stage were figuring highly in my life anyway. In amongst all of this were dalliances with Facebook, [I have deleted my data at least twice from that space]. Posterus, also sold and rebooted. ello.co now defunct and twitter a site that never really captured my attention. For all intents and purpose twitter has become colloquially, a ‘Hell Hole”. I still have an account there but rarely login to it.
In 2015, I had setup a free worpress blog, [s2zart.wordpress.com], this I ran until 2019, I briefly switched back to blogspot.com for 2 years, then setup this blog on my own server. My concerns over ‘data’, ‘search‘ and ‘privacy’ drove this change, along with ideas about the small web which were beginning to percolate though the internet generally.
All the while I am uploading content to Flickr very frequently. Although these days not chronologically, and of course the ‘Camera roll’ part of flickr forms a part of this process these days too. [This may form the content of a future post.] Other online activities include a Mastodon account, a pixelfed account [an alternative to instagram], a public listing of links/bookmark on pinboard.in a notion website of notes links and other digital artefacts a pika micro-blogging account and a threads account.
Why I do all this has shifted since 1995 when I began, it’s now about leaving a legacy, a digital footprint if you will.
About the author.
Stuart Murdoch is an Artist and Part time Photo Educator, with over 30 years of teaching experience. He has also nearly 40 years of silver gelatin printing under his belt. He contemplates many things photographic. His ruminations include his own work as well other’s and the aspects of technology that impact on the sharing and consumption of Photographs. And of course the act of making and taking photographs in the 21st century. Photobooks sit quite high on his radar too these days.
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