Hard to believe, but much like another project of mine, this blog, blast-o-rama hits the ten year mark this year.

This month, actually.

I can’t pinpoint the exact day, just “February". This blog was a result of me retreating in my head after a nasty break up.

I didn’t want to “just" be on Livejournal anymore. I felt exposed talking about myself personally during a hard time.

This was a time before Twitter and Facebook had grabbed every site, every view, every interest.

The idea was that I’d just ramble and rant about the things that interested me. With a day job that was remedial in effort at best, it was a great way to kill the hours of a work week.

Ten years later, things are very different.

I have a grown ass job. I have a wife. I have a home which I own.

The web as I knew it doesn’t really exist.

I still (like an old) follow many websites via RSS feeds, which remains the perfect delivery mechanism of the web.

No algorithms, no slant, just the latest updates of what you want to read, presented in the order they arrived.

I really admire independent blogging to this day.

Sites like Daring Fireball and Kottke.org seem to stand as the last bastions of what was, but the fact is: they stand. People still read them. People still care.

But I got to thinking, on this most auspicious of occasions, a decade on the web, and especially after reading this great interview with Jason Kottke on twenty years of HIS site…

I’ve tried to make this site bigger. Brought on a staff once. (I’m a crummy editor/leader.)

I tried to update more regularly, but I’m not a /Film or a Hollywood Reporter or any number of other great sites which have a staff, and a beat, and the ability to knock out updates 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

I tried to grow my brand, building FastFoodArmsRace.com, a site that is great in theory, but my execution has been subpar at best.

At the end of the day, I’m just a really passionate nerd who wants to share with the web, and his friends, and any anonymous well-wishers the cool stuff I saw on the Internet that day.

And…why am I giving this stuff to Twitter or Facebook for free? Why do I allow them to continue to control the web, living in the little shared “living space" they give me, when I can build a home of my own?

That is what blast-o-rama should be.

That is what blast-o-rama will be.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to kill off the social media presence of blast-o-rama and Fast Food Arms Race. (I’ll keep the Apple News feed for blast-o-rama going, it actually gets a LOT of views.)

Stuff will be moved to my personal accounts - my personal Facebook (if I know you), and my personal Twitter account (@martyfnday, go nuts!).

So what will I do here?

Well, good news. #FastFoodArmsRace will live on here. My thoughts on random cool shit on the web will stay here. My reviews of movies and other shit will stay here.

But expect the regular posts to be a little shorter, a little snappier. Not sure if you saw those “quick post" tests I was doing earlier, but it’s going to be more of that.

I’m not going to be the first word or the last word on any of these topics. But it’s going to be mine, and really, who else can give you that but me?

And yeah, you’ve probably seen I’ve got a new skin on here.

Simple and clean, just like the new site.

I’ve done this for ten goddamn years. Time to prep myself for the next ten, and the next ten, and the next ten.