In the beginning there was a blog. Its first post was published on Saturday, 13 June 2009 at 22:22, brockmclellan.wordpress.com eventually morphed into Brock at Cliff Cottage. On Thursday, 12 May 2016 at 19:49, it was supplemented with the first post from unitwon.wordpress.com, Unit One, originally used an assortment of personas to write about various topics, before its focus changed to workshop operations.
These personas explored different topics. Jade Marmot looked at video production; Qwerty Asdf specialized in screenwriting; Proton Bletchley investigated science and technology; Alexa Qvam wrote (children’s) fiction, while Billi Sodd addressed art. There were also minor personas: Precious Dollar wrote about the economy, Brigand Brewer about history, Liberty & Modesty Patience about ethics.
In order to write more about industrial design, I usurped my daughter’s blog designeeds.wordpress.com stylized as Needs, Seeds and Weeds, on Sunday, 29 October 2017, publishing my first post at 04:37. She had originally started it Thursday, 19 July 2012 at 13:33. After writing five posts, it was not used after Wednesday, 24 October 2012 at 09:44. It had been dormant for over five years, before I started using it.
These three blogs still exist at WordPress.com. They are currently hibernating, and will continue to do so until their replacement (brock.mclellan.no) is mature enough to survive on its own. Yes, as noted in another post, all three of these have been merged, because it became impossible to distinguish the one site from another.
Despite having written more blogposts than tweets, by more than an order of magnitude, I am still a novice when it comes to blog writing. Writing a blog for me, serves much the same purpose as writing a diary does for others. It also replaces Facebook.
In much the same way that the prefaces Needs, Seeds and Weeds indicate that a post is concerned with (industrial) design, Ethan & Ethel posts are for young woodworkers, Charm relates to travel and photography. Now, Weblog will alert readers that a post relates to the technical, aesthetic and social aspects of blogging. In the future you can expect new prefaces to indicate special topics.
Operating a blog outside of WordPress or Blogger, is a very different proposition to operating one inside. Like a transition to adulthood, there is more freedom, along with greater responsibility. Thus, it has becoming necessary to learn new blogging skills, which will be reported on here using the Weblog preface.