Dylan's Journal

since 02/11/02

Curation

As of January 22, 2012, on the eve of the ten year anniversary of my initial "Hello World" post, I have begun the preservation and digital curation of my previous writing and photography through an archival project. What follows is a work in progress, in which I attempt to use collage and hindsight to resuscitate memories found among 700+ journal entries and 16,000+ photographs.

Origin

Before the age of 15, I never kept a journal. Then, the summer I turned 16, I went to Japan. During this adventure, I brought along my first laptop and kept up correspondence with my girlfriend. My daily writing habit ended upon my return to the US. I suspect that this letter writing inspired my later online journaling endeavor.

Purpose
In 2002, I described the project as follows:

This website was begun out of boredom. Coincidentally, the online journal envelops the period of time since the first I heard of the Germany program to present. Now the website serves the purpose of sharing my experiences with friends, loved ones, and strangers.

Impetus

Around the time I submitted an application to spend a year in Germany, I began an internet-based journal. Essentially, dylapoo.com was a facsimile of the Windows ME word processor. I began with a handmade journal of my own design, which I updated tediously and manually every day. Hence, the title Dylan.txt. Despite the description on the site, in actuality I never believed that others would read my daily musings. In 2002, blogging was still in its infancy.

Management

At the outset, the journal was sorted by weeks, with one week of journal entries included within each .html file. Soon, however, the journal became an unwieldy as it grew, necessitating archive pages by month. Eventually, I ported the original design over to a modern CMS, in this case MoveableType, which was the best (at least that is what Jason Kottke was using). Once MT became license-only, I switched to Wordpress CMS, which was more difficult to control from a design point of view, but much easier from a post management perspective. This curation process represents a complete return to the original substructure of hyperlinked documents without an underlying content database substructure.

Everyday

The first 18 months of writing and design are noteworthy for several reasons. First, I was doubtful my words would ever have an audience. Thus, they are of a very intimate nature. The design featured a prominent image of my own eye, which in retrospect underscored the voyeuristic nature of the journal. Second, I never attended to the journal as fastidiously as I did during the first 18 months, a period during which I posted a blog entry every single day. The everyday exercise was both a challenge and a reaffirmation of the importance of momentum.