Hello there. Ftrain.com is not a weblog or a blog. When you write about it and call it a blog, and call its author a blogger, you're wrong. There is a “classic” weblog on the bottom left of the front page, but that's just one component of the site.

This distinction may seem pedantic, but as a writer I feel words are important and the accuracy of words matters. Here are the issues:

1. A log - a ship's log, worklog, etc - is a linear form; the log in the word "weblog" refers to the consecutive, chronological nature of such a site. Despite appearances, Ftrain is not linear. Order of composition and order of posting often do not correspond, and the structure of the site is a leaf-and-node linked flexible hierarchy.
2. Most blogs link to things. Ftrain mostly links to itself.
3. Few blogs have explicit narrative goals. Ftrain has the goal of achieving self-awareness by 2050, and is slowly integrating an increasing number of AI-related technologies into its backend.
4. I started doing this in 1997. I've been called a diarist, journal writer, homepage author, and weblogger by whichever community was ascendant at a given time. These things come and go; weblogging will go away as a new form arrives on the scene, complete with its New-York-Times quoted pundits, scandals, and camp followers. Remember Justin Hall? Kim Rollins? Alan from Heinovision?
5. A great portion of Ftrain is fiction, even when it looks like personal narrative.
6. I don't want to write a weblog, and I don't feel I do.
7. I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of the weblog community.
8. “Blogging” sounds scatalogical: “I blogged SXSW;” “My blog is brown ( #7d4100 ) and filled with nuggets (of information);” “I left a big blog in the bathroom”;
9. My non-Web friends call me a blogger and then chortle with laughter at how stupid it sounds.

This site is created by the sweat of my brow, and I give it away for free to strangers. I work hard when I work on it. It's about half a million words overall. My goal is to create a system that allows one to build non-sequential, flexible, interlinked narratives and give it away to anyone who has a need to build such a thing.

And, all that said, I don't like being called a blogger. I like being called a writer, and I like for my site to be called a site. “Paul Ford writes Ftrain, a web site.” I think that's best. You could also call me a site artist. It's pretentious, but I like it, and I wish I could be introduced that way at parties: Paul Ford is a site artist for Ftrain.com. Which would broaden the definition from just writing to include the systems-building, the connecting, the navigation evils.

Because I have never seen such a bunch of self-absorbed whiners, aside from my bathroom mirror, I should say: This is in no way an indictment of the weblog community or the form of the weblog. I don't feel disrespected being called a blogger; I've seen some excellent weblogs and it's no shame to be associated with them. It just seems careless and stupid when people refer to this as something it isn't, and that feels disrespectful, in a why-do-I-bother way. It's like saying Steven Spielberg writes short stories or Joyce Carl Oates is a script doctor. Form is important; artists choose their forms, and their forms choose them, and they commit to them. I commit to the Web and to the broader scop of language.

Did I call myself an artist? A writer? Yes. I have an audience, a form, hopes, goals, I want a pony.

Do not be misled by this entry into believing that I have any interest in discussing weblogs. The discussion about weblogs has beaten a dead horse into a powder, and I don't feel like forming opinions about something that will be of fading importance when the next set of tools and options arrives.

On the other hand, I have a real interest in discussing metadata filters based on Redland/Python and whether it's possible to build an interesting web based RDF querying engine based on a knowledge base filled with facts about characters, locations, and quotes, and if it's amoral to create FOAF data for fictional characters.

Past that, let's not discuss this anymore.