2006 - the year of the blog

You can imagine my disgust when I turned on the radio last night and listened to the usual 'end of year review' drivel. On several occasions they described 2006 as 'The Year of the Blog.' Now, if you've taken the time (and if you're a considerate soul you will have) to read my first blog entry you'll know how I feel about joining something late - there's only one thing I like less than joining something late and that's joining a bandwagon late.

Listening to that show I began to realise that they were ridiculing the vast numbers of people who wrote blogs - perhaps ridiculing is too strong a word. They were mocking them in the way that people mock radio hacks as being nerds - but in a mass population kind of way. The thing is I used to agree with that point of view - in fact - sorry for the overuse of - - I kind of still do.

But back to the point. The pain I feel knowing that I joined a fad after the vast majority of the world's population. You have to know me to know how competitive I get over the smallest of things to understand my angst. It doesn't help that two good friends have been blogging for years and encouraging me to set one up. I ignored them.

Dave Van P, a determined blogger since 2005, never stopped poking me in the eye (metaphorically - Dave could never do something so violent) urging me to start typing. The main reason I did was probably to get him to stop.

JLo - Mr Lofranco has also been blogging for years. He writes for Maisonneuve magazine and used to do a hockey blog for them - he once quoted my somewhat controversial comments on the Belfast Giants and started all kinds of outrage. Did that spark my interest enough to begin back in the days when people were going 'blog? what's a blog?' I'm afraid not.

And so I must content myself with being a johnny-come-lately. But if I am going to do that I want to do it properly. I didn't just join as everyone was joining. I joined long after. An open message to the BBC - 2006 was NOT the year of the blog. in fact last year you said that 2005 was the year of the blog; and a little bit of research shows that, in fact, 2004 was the year of the blog. 2006 was the year of Youtube and the video blog. Oh yeah. And as DPV and the pupils I force to watch my videos will attest, I've been doing that for years!