I actually lost this domain name a week ago. goDaddy sent me the notification the same day it expired. This is ironic because I had been in discussion with Elizabeth that same day about how I’ve been thinking of changing this site and purchasing a new domain name.
I’m afraid, dear friends, the blog is dead. As if you didn’t know already. Thanks to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace (to a lesser extent), browsing on a mobile device, RSS, and a myriad of other technologies in the current fauna of the Internet. The personal blog on a hosted domain is over.
Most of you knew this already. I’m really just staring the obvious. Ask yourself, how many blogs do you read? How many sites do you go to and read a person’s blog post? How are you reading this now? Did you type whereisnathan.com into your browser, or are you looking at a feed reader? According to my site stats and goggle analytics not many of you have actually come to this site. Don’t take this the wrong way, I don’t either. Because in the current technological climate, that’s relatively a lot of work. If I go to facebook I’m bombarded with what people are doing. And in short burst, not long drawn out posts. I personally have tried to keep up with a collection of friends blogs, but thier numbers are dwindling as well.
So besides the convinience factor. The over all purpose of this blog has been out dated. I started whereisnathan in 2003 just before I graduated as a way to allow friends and family to keep up with what I was doing. I found this particularly pertinant given that I was moving to China after graduation.
I kept up with the site while we were in Changsha, and a little during our year in Florida. It proved quite useful when we moved to New Orleans and were displaced by Katrina, and then acted as a travel blog when we went back to China.
At some point being in China no longer felt like “travel” and started feeling like “living”. At which point the blog started to stall out, because I’ve never felt that writing about my day to day grind was very exciting.
I tried to write about other topics like music, IT, entertainment in general but without a defined format that sort of sputtered to.
Anyway, I’m here to notify you that this site is on it’s way out. I have been colaborating with my brother (who also has a string of failed blog attempts) to create a new site that is not a blog (at least not the ramblings of our personal lives) but a site dedicated to a cause we both feel strongly about. The concept is still in it’s infantcy, so stand by.
To those who have stuck faithfully by throughout the years (Rex Trotter, I’m looking at you) I thank you and am humbled by your attention. This won’t be my last post, by just a notification that it’s on it’s way out.
Steel Thunder
February 13, 2010
Well, I don’t get much chance to travel myself and so due to your nomadic nature and our friendship at co-working nature at the college, your domain name has been engraved into my head for awhile. I tried to keep up with it through a feed for a bit when you first tied it to RSS, but that didn’t work out so well. I had it bookmarked on several Windows installations, but bookmarks always get lost into an oblivion of which you say you’ll return, but most of the time you never do.
No, your site is one I’ve remembered and typed in each time through the years to check up on “Where in the World is Nathan.” I’ll definitely be sad to see it go. But I think I’ve got your picasa site bookmarked (hopefully not to become lost with the many other sites listed in my bookmarks … and yes, I love firefox’s search bookmark feature) so that I still may still reference your China adventures.
I’ll miss this blog even more so though because not only was I following the adventures of a friend, but you wrote some really interesting pieces that for someone else finding themselves in the same situations could relate to and perhaps even use your blog as a guide (China the obvious one from the guide stand point).
You weren’t trying to sell anything in your blog. You weren’t being a person who likes to drum up drama. So it really is sad to think of this site completely disappearing. A site/blog actually worth attention is about to disappear. Patriotic funeral please. Gun shots please. Salute!