February 3, 2002.

The date I started writing some of this down. Two years. Wow. It is very addictive. I get jittery when I go more than a day or two without posting. Writer and Famous Blogger Cory Doctorow calls his blog his "outboard brain" and explains just how handy a blog can be. [via Halley's Comment]

Writing a blog entry about a useful and/or interesting subject forces me to extract the salient features of the link into a two- or three-sentence elevator pitch to my readers, whose decision to follow a link is predicated on my ability to convey its interestingness to them. This exercise fixes the subjects in my head the same way that taking notes at a lecture does, putting them in reliable and easily-accessible mentalregisters.