The Terrible Catsafterme

On September 13, 2011, The Terrible Catsafterme (along with my nephew Adam) turned five years old. It’s been quite a while since I’ve written extensively about the mechanics of this website. While it’s kind of fun to write about such things, it’s not always the most interesting reading. This is currently the 1286th posting. Out of all of these, this is only the third that I’ve dedicated to blabbing about the website. The first one had its merit as it was celebrating the first year anniversary of the site. At that time, I felt like I was a seasoned pro. The second came just six months after that, with the sole purpose in announcing the change of moving from a daily posting to four postings a week. It also speculated that I was about halfway through what I had originally envisioned as a three-year project. This one, as it happens, is here not only to celebrate and reminisce about the first five years of the website – which still isn’t even close to completion, but to point out some improvements I’ve made to the blog. Yes, over the last five years, I’ve made peace with calling it a blog.

A little over a year ago, I realized that an upgrade had given me the option to justify the text margins of the postings. You probably didn’t notice, but one day I began to utilize it, so the right side of each posting was no longer published looking ‘jagged’ – but with a smooth line of text. From that point on, when I looked back at old postings, they seemed rather unsightly – so I began the task of going back through all of nearly-four years of postings and justifying the text.

As I got back to the oldest of them, I noticed something interesting: I really had almost no idea what I was doing when I first started this site. Originally, I had asked my friend Jimmy to create this blog for me as a way to occupy my time and keep me from spending money on online shopping. He added a hidden link on our now defunct website The Wax Apple (Stan’s red apple) and that’s how I directed folks to find The Terrible Catsafterme.

When it came to material that I included, it was an utter hodge-podge with no direction. It’s still somewhat of a hodge-podge, but now there is definite focus and architecture as to how it is laid out. In the early days, you might find anything from one lone funny picture to random nostalgic photos to book reviews to album reviews to a rant about how campy the TV show Superman was. There were entries from my 1980 diary, current events, family gatherings, autographs, celebrity encounters, and vacations. Much of what I just mentioned are still prominent features of the site – but they are now meticulously planned and structured – as if anyone actually cared.

But the way I approached those very things were a bit different then. For example, sometimes I ‘d talk about a current event as I described a past event. If I found new info to add to a posting, instead of just going back and inserting it, I’d create an all-new posting (ie. Christi’s baby shower, my graduation, my grandparents’ wedding photo, etc.). Part of this had to do with the fact that I was doing a daily blog, so felt justified in posting very small tidbits of information on certain days.

All of these growing pains are forgiveable and there is a certain degree of nostalgia in the postings from the early days. However, the fact that some of the postings looked like jumbled messes was not as easily forgiveable. I had the very, very bad habit of including very small photos throughout the body of the posting, instead of using photos the width of the column. Part of this was due to a conscious effort to not take up too much space on Jimmy’s account (where the website was stored until February 2009). And on the other side of the spectrum, I sometimes used photos that were much bigger than what could be contained in the width, sometimes running them under the sidebar. I know…mechanics…boring.

But the good news is that the reason I bring this up now is only to announce that I have gone back and earmarked some 40 postings that needed re-tooled. Upgraded. Enhanced. Restored. However you want to describe it, they either now or will look better. Some just took me going back and finding the original photos and sizing them to the correct width, then inserting them. Some were so messy that I had to create all new postings, using the exact same text, but a completely different layout of photos. I archived the originals in this case – for posterity’s sake.

Below are all of the postings that have so far received these upgrades, some of them more significant than others, most including larger format photos, and several with additional photos added. There will be more…so keep checking the Introduction page for more re-tools (listed under “Updates To Previous Postings”).

In Atlanta / Plains Peanut Festival / Maranatha 2 / The Little White House / That First Month / Plains, Trains, and Americus on Wheels / Savannah / Charley Chase-a-Thon 4 / Savannah Riverboat and Haunted Tour / Game Night with Adam and the Gang / A Nice Day at Denise’s / Convention Kickoff / Smacking the Pee-Wee / Thanksgiving…Here!

Now you might be asking yourself why I went to all the trouble to make these changes. The reason is deceptively simple: because this website means a lot to me. In fact, it is really an extension of my life. It is a way of documenting everything that I do that I deem worth remembering. And when it is finally complete, it will be a composite of my entire life – with virtually every memory that I have poured into it. So I am always looking for constant improvement (you might notice the collapsible dates in the right column, or the ultra-convenient Vacations page that is a great tool for me to jump to any vacation that I’ve documented thus far).

And perhaps even more important than all of  that is that The Terrible Catsafterme constantly serves as a driver in my life – nudging me as I go along to get my butt out and do things that are worthy of an exciting and adventurous existence. I cannot even count on all of my fingers and toes how many times I have been inspired to take some action – or some entire trip – simply for the sake of documenting it on this site. I have always felt that I was accountable to all of those who read it (especially myself) to have something worth saying. Yes, it can be costly and it can be time-consuming – but ultimately it locks memories in my head (and on this site) that I will have forever…and hopefully my future generations will have them too. There is no way to put a price on that. So far, no regrets in that department.

Finally, let’s see how the site has grown since my one-year anniversary in 2007:

**I reported 7000 unique visits and 30,000 page views in 2007. At some unknown point of time, this information was lost during an upgrade and the count started over. The current count is 181,300 unique visits and 549,000 page views.

**I reported in 2007 that the site generally gets between 50 and 60 unique visits, with about 100 pages being hit, within a 24-hour period. The number of hits are now in the 300 range, with about 600 pages getting visited every day.

**There are currently 1969 comments left on the site. People have lots to say.

Admittedly, many of these hits come from image searches on Google, but the fact that this site comes up so high on the Google hit-list can be directly attributed to the number of visitors it gets.

But hey, who’s counting?

Here’s to the next five years of postings…and adventures.

2011 will continue…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 13th, 2011 at 6:36 am and is filed under 2010's - Early, Me Myself and I. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.