This is the 500th post on Octopushat. It has been 18 months and some 80,000 words after I started this endeavor, and I'm pretty happy with the way things have gone. Sure, I wish I updated a little more regularly (but it could be worse) and I wish my readership, google-juice, and blogoriety was greater, but all-in-all I think I can safely call the site a success. After all my #1 reason I started my adventure in micro-publishing was to exercise my writing muscles, and I certainly feel that I'm a stronger writer than I was 18 months ago (even if it isn't always evident in my posts.)

I've learned quite a bit through the act of keeping this public journal, and even though I originally envisioned the site as a portal of cool techy stuff I'm very happy with the direction the site has settled into.
Blogging scratches the itch to communicate my thoughts, feelings, and opinions with others (even if there isn't anyone listening) and it has really changed the way I look at the world around me. Knowing that I always have a place to express my thoughts, and an audience (at the very least more of an audience than would be reading a traditional pen-and-paper journal) to read them has helped me digest and evaluate all the minutiae of life, and therefore in some way to live a fuller life. What is the quote about the "unexamined life?"

I think that I just said blogging has made me a better person.

I had set out to make this a kind of retrospective post highlighting some of the highlights of the past 18 months, but I'm really too tired for that. So, I will end with this thought instead: From the first spark of flame to the most advanced nano-genetic-laser-computers, TECHNOLOGY has been a double edged sword. For every life it has bettered the juggernaut of progress has crushed another. For every plowshare there has been a sword. For every time a new mother has placed a phone-call to her distant husband there has been a soldier calling down artillery fire. Technology is not inherently good or evil, technology is not inherently anything. We have the technology, lets all agree to use it for good, and not for evil. So make something. Craft something. Create art. Make love, not war man! Take a stroll with more music than our ancestors had heard during their entire lifetimes. Snap some photographs and beam them across the globe. Send some instant written communication to your mother (or better transport your very voice directly to her ears.) Take your hover-car to the space port and buy a martian a drink. Oh wait, you may have to wait until tomorrow to do that...