Author: Aneesh Sathe

As I start to build up my web presence during, what seems to be the fall of twitter, coming across article like these is heartening.

Glen says:

The hardest thing we can do, but the most vital, is to start building amateur websites again! […]

Building amateur web pages increases the quality of content on the web as well. A status update or a tweet on a huge social network is a lot like fast food; it’s immediately satisfying, but it’s not good for you, and ultimately leaves you feeling empty. But writing content for your own site – something that you feel so passionate about that you needed to build your own site to get it out into the world – is like cooking your own meal from scratch. It’s immediately filling, and satisfying in the long run the way fast food could never be.

But it’s not enough to build our own site. We need to connect to others. Geocities was one of the pioneers of early web hosting, and even though it’s gone, there are still lessons we can learn from it. When you built a site on Geocities your site was sorted into a neighborhood, along with other sites that shared a common theme. This is a concept that we can borrow and build upon. We need to get to know our virtual neighbors and build a community around common interests, linking each other’s websites to form our own microweb of related content.

So seek out new and interesting sites, and link to them on your site. Reach out to them, and see if they’ll link to you. Start a dialog. The way to build a better web is to build a better web of people.

Little feet waddle over the bookshelf. Little hands grab books made for little hands. It’s his favourite, a cardboard box of four books: numbers, animal sounds, alphabet, and objects. Illustrated by Eric Carle, each page has one a lovely illustration accompanied by one or two words. We pick a book, as we do several times a day and what feels like several hundred times on the weekends. Usually the routine goes we open a book, I point at the picture and say the word often with some sound effects. Usually Aarin makes encouraging noises, stays till page four then goes and does the next thing but not today. Today is different.

Feet waddle, hands grab, a book is selected. It’s animal sounds. I flip to the first page, it’s a picture of a sheep with the word ‘sheep’ under it. This is no surprise of course, being that’s it’s a book for infants the mystery is kept to a minimum. Like so many times before I point to the sheep and say “this is a sheep, and sheep goes Baa!”. Then I repeat this time with a questioning tone “Sheep goes….”. Pause for effect and I normally answer myself “Baa!” Not today. Today Aarin has a big smile and a giant loud exuberant “BAAA!” thunders forth from his little mouth. He’s done it! He’s learnt something and I’m proud, over the moon even!

Convinced my child is a genius I point to the next page. Spotting a cow, are also known for a lunar missions, I ask “Cow goes…?” And of course he confidently opens his mouth, as I knew he would and proclaims: “BAAA!”

Yup, cow goes baa!

That was several weeks ago, for a while everything went Baa! Now Aarin knows several words, cats go miaou, cows go moo, and bellybuttons are found under people’s shirts. While I’m happy with his progress, I’m also a little sad because the cow going baa moment all too short.

All the animals in Aarin’s world make the proper sounds now. In my heart though, there will always be a little pasture saved just for the cow that goes baa!