New Blog(s)

Many of you know we've been promising for some time to blog our (good and bad) experiences with these legendary Belgian beers. Well, that mammoth task has finally started! Since it is likely to be an ongoing project, with a different audience demographic to this general personal blog, it made sense to separate it out into an entirely separate blog.

I originally planned to call it BelgianBeers.blogspot.com, but I should have expected that name to be taken. I could never have expected such an important name to be taken by such a pathetic blog though? Only one test entry from March 2004 and nothing at all since? And to add insult to injury, its from someone in South Africa? I mean really... Why bother?!

That experience left me with a bit of a hollow feeling in my stomach, a bit like the day that I discovered that Jamie Osborne is (or was) the Queen Mum's favourite jockey, and that I'd probably never own an eponymous website (not the DotCom one anyway). It also left me a little concerned about another project that's been churning in the back of my mind for quite some time.

Most of you know that I take more than a passing interest in environmental matters, and have been known to rant about green issues and "environmental terrorists" on more than one occasion. I have been thinking for a while that it would be nice (one day when I have the time) to actually create a blog that links to all the fantastic sources of green goodness out there on the Web, and ties them with into my own experiences and thoughts into a personalised Green Portal.

So, sparked by that bad experience trying to reserve a name for our Belgian beer blog, I decided I should take this opportunity to reserve my little bit of real estate in the blogosphere for that future project while I'm at it. Hmm... Not such an easy task it seems... Maybe I should have thought of that a long time ago. A quick check of a bunch of names like the following came up empty:

• Green.blogspot.com
• GreenSpot.blogspot.com
• GreenStuff.blogspot.com
• GreenThings.blogspot.com
• GreenRant.blogspot.com
• GreenField.blogspot.com

Well, it is probably unfair to say that I came up entirely empty - some of these actually look like living blogs with some very interesting content - I will be going back to check some of them out soon and may even end up linking them from my own one day. If I originally thought that the South African dude wanting to blog about Belgian beer was bad, though, the silly twats wasting GreenSpot.blogspot.com, GreenStuff.blogspot.com and GreenField.blogspot.com have really got my goat. I mean, where does Kitty Ip get off? Maybe green is her favourite colour or something, but if so, then why didn't she at least choose that as the colour for her blog template instead of that ugly purple and orange?!!! I bet all her friends are stoked that she's introduced them to all of her (two) favourite things.

Anyway, I'll save the ranting for another time, but I really think that it could be time for BlogSpot to do a bit of a cleanup of dead blogs.

So, back to the reason that I started writing this entry. To introduce you all to OUR NEW BLOG (http://belgianbeerspot.blogspot.com). Bookmark that one if you want to find out all that we've learned (and haven't already forgotten) about Belgian beer

While you're at it, I eventually decided on GreenRants.blogspot.com for my future project, so if you are interested in Green Stuff, then maybe you'll want to bookmark that too. I already have several ideas for that, so will try to find time to make a start soon (if only to make sure that the likes of Kitty Ip, "Strange Girl" and Linda can never accuse me of also wasting prime blogosphere real estate.)

I hope you'll enjoy the new blogs. Please bear with us while they build a bit of momentum and critical mass.

Anyway, I'd better go get back into it - We've tried about 70 beers so far, so much work to catch up on.