dante's first... yeeeyyy!

I must admit I’m one boring webbie. I don’t surf the net mad like some people do. I tend to stay on familiar grounds that kept my internet activities limited to reading on-line newspapers, downloading mp3s and checking my e-mails. Ho-hum!

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Sometimes i go streaming but my 128 (can't afford faster connection, darn!) makes it more frustrating than interesting. I sometimes go webcamming too but silly people i meet online just makes me puke rather than get hooked on it. So I chose to stick to what I do best - being a boring surfer! Hehehe....

But when some of my friends started babbling about Friendster, Facebook, Flicker and anything F, I decided to end my ignorance. Afterall, I can’t go on nodding my head whenever they talk about those social networking sites, pretending to get what they’re saying when in fact I haven’t got the slightest clue as to what these things are. What a moron huh.

First, I tried Friendster. But even before I started posting my pix, I felt it wasn’t my thing. Besides, I can’t find a pic of mine worthy of posting and getting cutesy comments. Cute. But mushy. I needed something more challenging.

Then Matt invited me to his blog. And, boy was I thankful for that invite coz it introduced me to something that I was unconsciously looking for – blogging.

And so with Blogger.com providing a one-button blog creator for morons like me, Dante Speaks was born. A name that was instantaneous, never took longer than two seconds for me to come up with it. I know it sounds pretty close to one Hollywood film about one vicious volcano. But it wasn’t my intention to capitalize on that film’s fame. It was just the perfect blog name for me coz it carries my name and the one thing that I love doing – speaking (or in this case, writing) my mind out.

My first posting was exactly a year ago. Since then, I never looked back. I was posting new materials as well as old ones resurrected from my vaults - some jurassic floppies, cd’s and flash disks. Writings that I used to share with friends via e-mail.

So after 365 days, 6,200++ visits, 170 posts, countless template changes and one cool banner courtesy of DennisQ later, Dante Speaks is celebrating it’s first year on the blogging world. Yeyyy!

And whatever I wrote and posted – be it trivial, mundane, serious, hilarious or simply crazy, I’ve now reached into a wider audience (okay, I’m over reacting here… haha). But hey, my visitor’s locator says Dante Speaks is now globe-trotting. That is, if this cluster map’s accurate!

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Anyways, I’d like to thank you guys for being a part of this blog. I may not know most of you personally but it was a pleasure sharing figments of my sometimes hyper-active grey cells with you. Don’t know your names so let me just thank you by location (though I can only approximate on the areas):

Canada – Edmonton

USA – Hawaii, California, Washington, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Texas, Georgia, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia (probably my cousins though I don’t exactly know their areas)

The Carribean – Turks and Caicos

African Continent – Libya (I bet it’s Mario), South Africa and Egypt

Europe – Italy, Turkey, Spain, Belgium (Erick?), Germany, France, Ireland, England, Romania, Finland and Norway

Asia – India, Thailand, China, Singapore, Jakarta and Surabaya (my friend Chayadi, is it you?) in Indonesia and Hiroshima and Osaka (I’m sure it’s my niece Minette) in Japan

KSA – a whole lot from Riyadh, Jeddah (my friend Cesar and my cousins in that area) and Dammam/Jubail area (my entire addicque friends led by Raoul, Ega and JunC )

And of course from Mindanao, Visayas and the Luzon area of the Philippines where my niece Myles and Jun C’s dear Linds frequent this site too.

Once again, a big THANKS to all of you. Keep visiting coz I’ll be posting more. Heck, I just got warmed up in this blogging thing. Haha!