The reason for this site is pretty simple: it is one way to actively establish an identity in the “global village” (aka. Internet), which is something I have avoided doing for too long. Speaking of identity, this blog supports OpenID which, despite some weaknesses, is emerging as a long-needed standard. Page footers have links to my identity on other sites; when I find a satisfactory OpenID provider, perhaps those will go away.

Why, in the age of cloud computing, would I bother to set up relational databases, CGI binaries, and so on? I could just say “for the heck of it”, and it would be true. I like to see how things work first-hand; for example, I am (still) the kind of guy that actually prefers to run his own Hadoop instance on a handful of machines, rather than use e.g., EC2! Beyond that, I’m not sure I have a really solid answer.

But enough for a “hello world” post! Welcome, and I hope to see a few people around for things to follow.