It was exactly 5 years today that this Blog began its existence as a simple HTML-page on my University of Tampere pages.  The idea of a “blog” was presented to me the previous fall at a New Media studies course by a prominent Finnish game researcher, Aki Järvinen. This proves nothing but that I’m slow.

The beginnings were more than humble and being first (or among the first) doesn’t mean a thing. My blog was left to the fringe when more controversal, better and more frequent writers took the stage. Pinseri hosted an official Finnish blog-list. I had some pleasure watching the relative position of my blog flactuate. Long term movement was firmly DOWN. I held to a belief that my chosen language was a reason for my poor numbers in readers. This belief was hamppered by a Finnish blog with a better standing that was written in Irish…

The bulk of my readers have been people who already know me from other venues of life, usually from academia. One interesting, yet small group of readers has been prospective employers. Now, I can’t prove anything, but I find it plausible that there’s at least one instance when the attitude of a prospective employer has gone several degrees colder after someone for her organisation had read my blog.

This blog has, in spite of everything, seen one self-proclaimed fan. For me there is no way to defend from this kind of attention, even taking in consideration all kinds of circumstancial matters, I have to admit, if I may, that, Katja, for this reason only, you hold a special place in my heart.

5 years is a short time for almost any kind of human project, for a blog it’s almost a lifetime. Technical, social and numeral matters in the blogosphere have changed immensely. I guess that the subsequent progress from now on will be something a lot different. I have felt somewhat priviledged to see the beginnings of this chaotic and influential and chaotically influential media.