In the rush of getting ready to travel overseas, I forgot to note it, but this blog was two years old on 21 June. It seems a lot longer ago than that to me. During that time I’ve moved the blog twice, and seen many other bloggers come and go, and in some cases return. There have been some big changes in the time I’ve been paying attention to the blog world, not all of them in line with what I would have expected.

Although the number of blogs has grown over time, there hasn’t been the explosion I expected to result from the capacity (in my experience highly addictive) to publish your thoughts to the world on a daily basis. By the way, this is a good time to invite anyone who thinks they should be on my blogroll to write and tell me[1].

The relationship between blogs and the print media has reached something that looks like equilibrium for the moment. Most journalists know now what blogs are, and most who engage in political and social commentary are aware that their words are going to be dissected by mostly-hostile commentators (I try to accentuate the positive, but even so, most of my links to articles in the mainstream press are critical).

Of course, as bloggers are to pundits, commenters are to bloggers. This blog developed a robust group of commenters early on, and has sustained lively debate ever since (much of it, unfortunately, lost in various database failures).

fn1. I’m generally happy to link to blogs in the listed category, though I reserve the right to make arbitrary judgements, and to put off updating the roll until I get a round tuit.