On 13th November 2006, I created this blog. At the time I was teaching about e-Learning tools on a Masters in e-Learning programme at the National College of Ireland. Tools such as blogs and wikis, plus the then very new YouTube, were becoming available to early adopters of e-Learning technology, and I was keen to "do as I teach" by being an early adopter myself. So I created a blog, short for Web Log, to show students that it could a useful tools for many things such as reflecting on learning, self publishing their work, and making content available for free to others.
My first post contained a simple message:
It's taken a long time but I've finally created my own blog. Here I hope to publish some thoughts, articles, reports, short stories, other publications - all of my own.
This is my first post!
2,465 posts later, I am marking the 20th anniversary today. Initially, the blog was simply called "Eugene's Blog", but for some time it has had the title "Careful With That Axe, Eugene". I stole the title from a Pink Floyd track with the same title recorded in 1968. My biggest fan was my Dad Joe - he was fond of reading my posts, especially when I was travelling. The readership of the blog was never big, and has declined to almost nothing since I retired in 2020. Sometimes when I share a post on Facebook, it gets a few people looking in.
I have thought several times of terminating the blog, but I decided not to - there is no rule about how many posts you should make. Also - it is mine. This year will have the lowest number of posts since 2007. There was a time when I was working that I thought about it everyday trying to think of something to write. I posted a lot about education as that was my field - I sometimes felt this made up for not having any academic research publications. In 2016, as an experiment, I posted every day - this was tough as it I found it difficult to think of things to write about, and ended up with some pointless posts.
So - happy 20th birthday to my blog!
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