Today I spent many hours learning how to play with the blogging software behind my new Residua website. How to add a new piece of writing? How to edit existing pieces? How to extend the existing pieces with new addenda? The questions multiply as I am getting the hang of the site. The software is rather nifty, as it is put together for the throngs of bloggers that now crowd the world, but there are untold new things to learn. To begin with, the language of blogging is new to me. And so are all the features of the software, the likes of which I have seen never before. But not to worry. It is a question of weeks, or maybe even days, before I become proficient enough to start blogging live. Although comments to my writings will go only through electronic-mail messages addressed to me, and only me, the feedback is liable to pick up in a while. Slowly but surely, I will be blogging for true.

Addendum I (January 10, 2008)

This morning I found two electronic-mail messages with responses to this piece, both of which are very much to my liking. Robin Engelhardt begins with congratulations. “But remember,” he continues, “it is you who invented blogging in the first place.” In the same vein, Damir Čosić is surprised by my use of future tense in the last sentence: “You will be blogging? You have been blogging for so many years already!” But then comes the clincher: “Residua is the mother of all blogs!” Both of them experts in information technology, Robin and Damir cannot possibly be mistaken about such things.

Addendum II (March 12, 2008)

When I was fiddling with my new website a month or so ago, I discovered all kinds of forms the unfamiliar blogging software asked me to fill. One such form asked me for the weblog’s tagline. I had no idea what this was supposed to mean, or what it was for, but there was a short description under the box. “In a few words,” it said pithily, “explain what this weblog is about.” Without giving it much thought, I typed Damir’s felicitous line into the empty box: “The mother of all blogs.” Now I bump into the tagline whenever I search the World Wide Web in connection with something I have written. Connected by a dash, my website’s name and nickname are now inseparable. And the nickname invariably makes me crack a smile.