on the subject of something: reviving an old website

Below is a mostly reconstructed list of posts made on my old website/blog On the Subject of Something. Many of these posts were written during high school and the first year of college at MIT. The focus was mainly on video games, their culture, and related topics; though, I began introducing the short story series later on. One reason for the focus on games was at the time I had been extensively involved in the simExchange, an online video game sales prediction market. This kept me constantly up-to-date on both the business-side of video games as well as which ideas or topics were trending or falling out of style. On the other hand, some posts, such as 2008-08-06 - On Design Challenge, Part 1, were initial displays of other works I was doing or interested in.

Internet Archive: Wayback Machine has been invaluable in allowing me to reconstruct many aspects of the site after Opera closed down it's blogs (lesson learned, host your own content if possible!). While several posts are missing, and hopefully I can recover them, this is much better than having nothing. However, it also made me realize how insanely fragile our internet history is, and why we need more organizations like the Internet Archive making sure that all the ones and zeros don't disappear into the ether.

In the end, it's fun to look back on what one wrote long ago and how writing styles and focus have changed over time.