Preface

Since its introduction to the internet in around 1995, blogging has become a sensation.

It started when Jorn Barger coined the term 'weblog' on 17 December 1997. Peter Merholz jokingly broke the word 'weblog' into the phrase 'we blog' in the sidebar of his blog in April or May 1999. Shortly thereafter, Evan Williams at Pyra Labs went on to use 'blog' as both noun and verb and also devised the term 'blogger' in connection with Pyra Labs' Blogger product, leading to the popularization of the terms. Pyra Labs' Blogger was bought by Google in February 2003.

Everyday, around 175,000 blogs are created all over the world. Blogging has certainly become the most popular media for publishing ideas, thoughts and opinions. Although the primary purpose of blogs is for personal note keeping, the corporate sector has also entered this area to help get their products and services closer to the people by opening interactive blogs and thereby getting valuable suggestions from the consumers.

And now, there are more than 300 million blogs on the Internet today. Of course, there were only 150 million blogs on the Internet when I started writing this post. That can very much depict the graph of the speed at which blogs are created against the speed at which a new post on an old blog is published. Nonetheless, I do know numerous people who go against the tide to update their blog regularly.

Before the idea of creating a blog came to my mind, I followed, and still do, few other blogs regularly, which had an influence on me. I would like to dedicate the blog and this particular post to those few people who made it easier for me write.

I would like to attribute the initial motivation to Vineet Deshpande. His blog was the first that I read and his lucid posts made writing look like a stroll in a park. Whenever I thought about the writer's block, Rohan Pandit made me realize through his blog that it's possible to write nearly everyday on varied subjects with eloquence. I also follow Madhura Bhargave's blog, where I get to read the different takes on the everyday life with a pinch of the funny side of it. Harshwardhan Pande's blog has posts which are the exemplars of brilliant humor and flawless narration. And then there is Mahua Roy, who truly lives up to her name, which means an intoxicating flower, by having a blog featuring her lovely inebriating poetry and awe-inspiring imagination.

Finally I would like to credit myself for sticking with the blogging. I hope I can keep painting this White Surface with a variety of colors on a regular basis. My art is likely to include everything happening between The Big Bang and The Big Crunch. Although in the interest of this universe, I hope The Big Crunch never occurs and the universe keeps expanding forever. But till then, Peace be the journey. Or as they say in Jamaica, "Cool Runnings" !