See The Donkey

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Favourite Posts

RICHARD PRYOR

WHY THE PVR ROCKS MY SOCKS

MIX TAPE FOR MARTIN

ONE TANK

FAST FOOD LEXICON

ITS ONLY A BEER BELLY IF WE'RE NAMING OUR SON "BEER".

FEATURE PIECES

Dr. Seuss' Three Wise Men (or 'Gaspar Sees A Star')

Rabbit Ears

Adopt a Spammer

A Brief History of the Fast Food Industry

A Brief History of Portable Music

The Comedic Wunderband: Yodacock

CATEGORY KEY

See The Donkey first spat itself out onto the Internet on October 26th, 2002. It was my second attempt at weblogging, born out of the need to have someplace to write that my co-workers in Japan knew nothing about. My first weblog, twocanadiansinosaka.com, which I had started in January of 2002, had become a great hit with the Japanese staff at my school and I was finding myself censoring things far too often for my liking.

Prior to starting any weblog I had been writing down my thoughts on bits of paper and handing them out at the train station. I have always viewed this hobby in much the same way, although rarely do I have to put up with the stench of urine.

The name of this site is extrapolated from one of my favourite Simpsons quotes.

When Homer and Marge discover that they get thrills from having sex in public places they decide to stay at a bed and breakfast. While they have sex in the bathroom, the owners of the bed and breakfast are all gathered around a jigsaw puzzle in the adjacent room, oblivious to the hanky-panky going on behind them. As one woman places a piece in the almost-complete puzzle, she finally sees the picture that was obvious all along and exclaims: "Oh, it's a donkey!"

Basically, I like to surround myself with witty and intelligent people who don't need to work too hard to see the donkey.

I know with the wonderful design you see before you now you'll find it hard to believe, but I was not always a very good web designer. The first version of this site, I believe, won the 2002 award for causing the most eyestrain on the Internet (click the image to enlarge).

I'm fairly certain I still have some readers who might remember this version and I'm happy to report they have, over time and with lots of physiotherapy, regained full use of their eyes.

As even I started to go blind coding the thing, a new format was needed. Thus version two was born.

Both versions of the site were hand-coded but I was yearning for something more so, on the first year anniversary of the weblog, I made the switch over to Movable Type. Sure I lost all the archives of my first year (backed up of course, but not a part of the new weblog) but now I could have comments! and categories! and full site redesign within one CSS!

For two years I ran my weblog with Movable Type, the design changing every seven months or so, and then, on October 26th, 2005, things started mucking up real good.

It is unknown whether the problem lay with my hopelessly outdated version of MT or with my ISP, but I was frustrated. I thrashed, I pouted, I threatened to disown the Internet, to send it to live with its uncle Leo in Detroit.

This hadn't been my first problem with the weblogging tool and so, in a fit of defiant insanity, I deleted the entire thing.

I did back up all the writing first, but now we're back to where we began. Hand coding a site, updateable only from my home computer.

Donkey 4.0.

It's legible, won't cause eye-strain, has comments and a rough system for categories and is about all I want and need in a weblog.

Besides, this tedious site history aside, it always has been about the content around here. I'm a writer first and a programmer way down that line. What you see now is how things are going to be looking for quite some time.

More than you probably ever desired to know about any website's origins, but there it is.

Welcome to See The Donkey.