Four years ago on September 3rd, I launched
Cyborg Haven: Blog of a Gamer Girl. I had wanted to start this blog earlier than
2009, but while I was attending CSUN, I didn’t have the time to commit to it,
let alone know what I wanted to write about or how to design it. It would be my very first blog, so I didn’t
know the routine of creating a blog.
I first heard of a “blog”—web log—back in 2006, when
one of my instructors in my previous college suggested Blogger to students as a
method of writing journals for the reading we do for the class. It was an interesting idea: an online journal
for reading assignments. I was new to
doing that sort of thing, and I wasn’t comfortable with writing for the public
quite yet—not the World Wide Web, at least.
I think I just used a folder with fasteners to hold lose paper together
and used that as a notebook for my reading journal.
Then in 2008 I was re-introduced to Blogger in a
Popular Culture course. There was even a
book all about blogging as a recommended text for the course. It is called The Rough Guide to Blogging by Jonathan Yang. It wasn’t required reading. But I knew that eventually I wanted to write
a blog of my own (because for the class we were going to have group blogs not
individual ones). I at least read what I
needed for the blog me and my group would write and maintain, but after
graduation in 2009, I returned to the blog book and read up on Blogger, tags,
HTML, and design tips on things such as font, template and background. I also had to think about what topic I
wanted for my blog: what topic or aspect
about my life would I be able to have something to write about more often than
most? I didn’t want to write about my
everyday life: I wanted a topic I
thought would be fun to update progress or reactions to.
I decided on Blogger as my host because I was
introduced to it twice before and it was one of the simpler ones, plus I
already had a Google account when I made my Gmail, so I just sign in with my
Gmail.
I forgot how exactly I came to the decision, but I
decided that videogames would be the
topic of my blog. Video games played by
me, a girl. But what should I title it? Well, before I realized how much of a robot
enthusiast I was, I came up with “Cyborg Haven”, which made me think of a human
connected to a computer or a television set. This online journal would be a place where one
who is a causal gamer girl (who feels out of place with other girls who don’t
play video games) can go to rant or reminisce or gush or fan-girl about topics
related to videogames, such as favorite characters or new videogames I’m
looking forward to trying out or owning.
I ultimately had to add the subtitle “Blog of a Gamer Girl” because I
didn’t want to confuse other geeks about what kind of blog it is. So the full title on the top of the blog
became “Cyborg Haven: Blog of a Gamer Girl,” which may be longer than it should
be, but I’m happy with it.
Keeping the blog was also a way to keep my typing
skills. In addition, I had a way of
keeping a log of what video game I played and when, and what I did, and how I
felt at the time. I love how I can search
for the video game subtopics by tags that I give them, such as Nostalgia and Reminisce,
Progress, Mega Man X, or Sonic the Hedgehog.
Then the design questions came up. I wanted to put a picture of my own creation,
not someone else’s picture. I spent
about an hour a day for a few days on Microsoft Paint 2002 to draw a cyborg
girl specifically for this blog. NOTE: For the 5-year anniversary of Cyborg Haven, I may place an entirely
different drawing of a cyborg girl for the top of the page. Maybe then my drawing skills will have
improved.
The
reason why the background color is a dark navy blue and the text light gray is
because I figure that if anyone is reading this late at night, it should be
easier on the eyes, rather than having dark text against a bright white
background. It could be dark green…or
dark red…but the blue is a bit more calming than the other colors. Even purple might not be bad if I give it the
right hue.
As for how often I will be posting on Cyborg Haven: I realize that some of my
posts have been few but big. I think
from this point on, I might try something and post more often but keep the
posts down to two big paragraphs or three shorter paragraphs. If I want to update what missions, stages or
tasks I’ve accomplished in a video game, I can list them and talk briefly about
one or two of them in detail. Eventually
when I start working, hopefully around mid-autumn, it may be harder to get a
chance to play a good video game session.
I don’t want to stop writing for Cyborg Haven. My interest in video games should survive
even when my lifestyle gets busier.
Here’s
to another year of blogging about my favorite childhood pastime: playing video
games! And yes, it’s not just a “childhood”
pastime. You’re never too old to try new
things.
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