2000th Post

Gosh. This is the 2000th post on Frugal Bastard. To think that I started it back on the 30th of March 2004 and it's been going for six and a half years. I'd say that the style has changed over time - First post. Just over 71,000 visits later and what have people received for their money? Not much, really.

Why did I start Frugal Bastard? Well, I guess I'm a bit of a mouth on a stick and if I have something to say I like to say it. Blogger gives me a mouthpiece to shout to the world. It's just a case of 'Is anyone listening?' Perhaps I've become more spiteful during my time as a blogger but I also realise that you have to be careful what you put in print as it stays there, on the Internet, in some form or other for eternity.

You may wonder where the name comes from. The guys at my previous job noted that I was tight when it came to spending money. One of my colleagues referred to me as a frugal bastard and I thought that that sounded like a great name for a Website. And the nickname has stuck. Some things never change.

My first experience with blogging I called Japan/Korea Blog and that's had some 84,000 visits which isn't too bad considering that it's only 36 posts in total. Not sure when I started that as all of the posts were published on in March of 2004 so that they appeared to read as a diary of my first trip to Japan and Korea. I uploaded scanned photos to a storage facility on the Web as Blogger didn't even have storage back then.

Blogger has become much easier to use. Nowadays you don't have to know much about HTML to link to a news story or other article on the Web whereas when I started it was quite important to know. The storage of photos, as mentioned, has become much more user friendly (still not quite as good as Facebook). The autosave feature has saved a post on more than one occasion.

Why do I continue to do blog? Well, I get a kick out of people commenting on what I have to say and the feedback is great. Gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling. I've met some great people through blogging even though I've never met them in person. There is a community feel about it. Those that blog are similar to me (Ed - poor bastards). There aren't too many that I follow from my early days that are still blogging though which is a bit of a shame. Man, did I have some material to read in the old days (Ed - old days? It was only six and a bit years ago!). If someone has something interesting to say and you comment (be nice people) then it is easy to make friends. If not, just move onto the next blog. There are plenty of bloggers out there with things worth listening to.

Thank you to all of my readers. There can't be many of you that have stuck around for all of this time.