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Happy Anniversary to Me!
Bake a cake and drink a beer because 8bitjoystick.com is now one year old.
It has now been one year since I first started this site.
What a long surreal trip it has been. I started this site as a hobby and because I was inspired by the blog of an ex-girlfriend of mine.
This site started as a pure stereotypical web journal. It bounced from subject to subject both personal, professional and general nerddom. I then asked my friends BBQ, Anna and Peter as well as Tim and Gavin to join my site as co-authors.
As this site found an audience it also found a voice and took a more advanced evolved form. I decided to try and make it more of a personally tailored magazine targeted at other nerds like myself who love video games both new and old and the cultural aspects of being an Internet nerd in the early years of the twenty first century. That is not to day that this is it as far as the evolution of where I want to take this. Even I do not know for certain what 8bitJoystick.com will look like in a year.
This site is powered by the ever capable Movable Type software and I don't think I could have done this with any other tool on the market. Sure a kick ass back end alone does not make a good site but it sure does not hurt to use the right tools. It started as a blog but is now listed in Yahoo as a Video game Magazine.
I try to update this site about once a day but it does have it's times of congestion and drought. I still have about twenty subjects saved in reserve that I need to finish and I don't see myself running out of things to write anytime soon and this site provides just the right amount of positive feedback that I find that is worth doing every day.
Some of the more surprising things that have happened to this site are :
Was quoted by a Florida based morning radio shock jock on my doubts of the existence of Dr. Phil's penis and was linked by their site.
I became a unofficial expert at the hands of Google by the result of several bizarre search engine strings.
Wil Wheaton read this site, commented and emailed me.
Women have sent naked pictures of themselves to me because of this site.
I was listed in Yahoo next to publications that I love.
I had Berkley DB crash and die on me twice and I had to switch to a much more reliable MySQL.
I just might get free games out of doing these reviews if I ever get off my ass and submit it to game publishers. (I was waiting until after E3)
Having a site like this really helps your composition and writing skills. It helps you understand web design in a global setting. It gives you a distinct vision about how the global electronic mindscape can work. Thoughts move around at the speed of light and ideas are exchanged freely as conversation but on a hyper archived global scale. You learn by doing and this site open my eyes to the digital networked world of the years to come.
The non-commercial Internet is a very powerful thing and it prospered by allowing people to exchange ideas in ways that commercial media tools like newspapers, books, radio, television and even commercial Internet endeavors can only dream of.
I am just trying to make Marshall McLuhan and William Gibson proud of me.
Jake at May 22, 2003 
Nerd
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Comments
Congratulations. :)
I was inspired to do a blog because of this site (and a couple others) and would like to thank you for your comments and inspiration that you have given to me.
Posted by: l33t k1w1 at May 22, 2003 6:26 PM
See I told you Jake was a time travelling cyborg. As if this site is not a manifestation of J.A.K.E.s inner emoticon processors neural networkworking capability. Sheesh.
Posted by: pete at May 22, 2003 7:41 PM
Oh yeah i almost forgot to say thanks and congratulations on your site being so dope and having so much fun. We need to have a few beers over this when you return from Alpha-Centauri or whatever the hell it is your doing on your "business trip". I will buy the beer since you built the site. It really is amazing that D.A.R.P.A. can build a cyborg that seems so human that it can even drink beer and likes video games.
Posted by: pete at May 22, 2003 7:45 PM
Well I am on East Coast time so I do feel time warped.
Posted by: Jake at May 22, 2003 7:55 PM
mmmm cake... How 'bout I buy a Snickers cake from Albertsons rather than bakeing one...
And I've got a couple of years till I can legaly consume alchohol so we can have Dr Pepper instead!
Posted by: Emma at May 22, 2003 11:09 PM
Hey I heard that you ran into the very cute and nice girl named Naomi while you were bummin around. Of course since you are not actually in RI that is an impossibility. Did you know that she speaks Japanese? She goes to Japan all the time to visit family and friends.
Posted by: pete at May 23, 2003 9:49 AM
Woohoo! Congrats Jake! Cool site. I'll bake you a cake... What the hell I've been baking one every freaking week this month, what's one more? ;o) I'll have to send you a congratulatory gift of some kind - watch your e-mail.
Posted by: Judy at May 23, 2003 11:41 AM
I bet Judy makes a kickass cake too!
Posted by: pete at May 24, 2003 7:40 AM
