The History of this Web Log

1. To be free the list must have less than 2,000 subscribers and send a total of less than 12,000 emails per month.

2. A small and fairly unobtrusive advertisement for Mail Chimp appears at the bottom of email sent from a free account.

I am not likely to run into that 2000 subscriber limit since it's about 15 times the number I have now. And Mail Chimp brings a whole raft of useful features. I can embed a form on the web page where people can subscribe on their own, and importantly, un-subscribe as well with just a single click. It also captures a lot of information about responses to the e-mail that I could never gather from my own mailings. For example, it records who clicked on what link and I can inspect this information. It tries to determine who even opens the e-mail by seeing who loads the mail chimp logo image. However that is not totally accurate as some people do not automatically load images in e-mails they receive.

Based on this I can gauge the level of interest. It's a little dismaying sometimes to see how disinterested most people are. I guess it's to be expected. But there are some who seem very interested, and I do get at least a little feedback, all of which has been positive. Based on this info I have even taken the initiative to purge a few people from the list who never opened the e-mails or clicked a link.

Also about this time I took a trip to Europe with Ann. She also blogs and when we travel together we try to sort of co-blog. I do my posting with photos and descriptions and she also does a more subjective posting on her web log. She has used the term "He said / She said", if that sounds like an argument, it's not. We just give different perspectives and we both post links to the other.

Finally had to pay for something - My Domain Name

Along about Oct 2016 I started getting notices from Mail Chimp that using a personal and free gmail address was going to become problematic due to something Google Mail was changing called DMARC settings.

The gist of this was that I now needed to get my own domain and set up e-mail using that domain. As always, it's just a hobby and economy is very important so I looked at several options. After much searching and checking of options I concluded the cheapest was to get a domain through Google Domains and use their mail forwarding feature to create an e-mail address that would operate by simply forwarding to my existing e-mail account. Cost; $12 per year. (Note: Some options were cheaper the first year but more expensive or undetermined in subsequent years) I think Mail Chimp found a work around for this issue but now that I have the domain I might as well keep it. It's cheap enough.

Having figured that out the next question was, what domain name should I get? I did not want a dot com address, after all this is "An occasional diversion with absolutely no commercial purpose". Dot org is for formal non-profit organizations, which I am not. There are many other top level domains available now, most more expensive than the classics and none really touched me much, certainly not enough to pay extra. So dot net or dot info were the two best possibilities. I had been using the name ZULU-TIME for the web log and it would have been easy to get zulutime.net, but I was never that wild about the name and thought I could and really should come up with something better. Once again I thought and thought, not wanting to settle for something as weak as the first name. I realized after a while that I was thinking too much in terms of a domain name which would only be a couple words long. How can I sum up the way I feel about my unconventional lifestyle and my travels in two words? Impossible! Instead I should (and did) focus more on a name for the web log. Even if it came out very long I could always pick a couple shorter representative words for the domain name. Like, if I decided on "Deans web log with a silly and absurdly long name", I could choose a domain name like "sillylong.net" and it would make sense to that one or two people who might by chance even notice the name at all.

So I concentrated on naming the web log. "Deans World" was a leading contender, not bad really, but it inescapably alludes to that old movie Waynes World. In thinking about this I watched a few scenes on You Tube. In the end I could not link myself to a movie whose main theme was stupidity, funny and lighthearted though it was.

I finally hit on "The Big Back Yard". Not bad, I thought, but was I just ready to settle on something because I was (by now) really tired of thinking about it? Maybe, but it's impossible to really sum it all up in just a few words. "Big Back Yard" at least hints at what I am trying to say, that for a nomad the whole world is like a big back yard. So "Big Back Yard" it was. As it happened both the domains bigbackyard.net and big-backyard.net were taken, as was bigbackyard.info. BUT big-back-yard.net was available. The conventional wisdom is to avoid hyphens in a domain name, but I don't know if I agree with that because I think it makes it more readable. In any case, it's now a done deal.

I set up the new email address, tested it with a few friends and even changed the URL to big-back-yard.weebly.com, it is still free that way.

I had to lay out new non-business card as well. The e-mail address and new URL appears on the new presentation card which I display at the top of this page.

Did I really need to do this?

Since making all these changes Mail Chimp now states that they have some sort of work around for the new DMARC settings and they will implement it in the background. In any case I kinda like my domain name and my new address so I will continue using it. 12 bucks a year ain't so bad for a hobby. It' s actually nothing compared to the time it costs me.

Weebly sells out

In 2018 Weebly was sold to Square. It didn't make any difference at first and I hardly noticed it. It took a while and I don't recall exactly when, I think some time in 2021 the login procedure changed and I log in first to Weebly then to Square. As of the end of 2024 it all still works and the Weebly logo still pops up at the bottom. But I wonder for how long and if Square will eliminate the "Free" plan that I use.

Also in 2023 Google Domains was taken over by Square. Boy they are taking over everything. But I guess I can, with some struggle and frustration, still use it. Although, I have come to loath "Square" as company.

I was looking for an alternative to Weebly/Square in case I wanted to migrate away from them. It turns out that Google "Sites" still works. I kinda wish I had known about them sooner. It allows the creation of VERY basic web sites for free on a Google account, which is all I need.  I eventually figured out, with trial, error and googling, how to connect the website to the Custom Domain that I have had since 2016. I created an Index page on Google Sites. It looks similar, though slightly cruder than, the Weebly version but now you can find it at www.big-back-yard.net instead of the old URL big-back-yard.weebly.com. It took me a while but I finally got that working on 28 Dec 2023. So far only the index is here, it links to the old Weebly pages and to the Google Photos Pages. And it gives me a path to move slowly away from Weebly/Square if and when they become problematic.

It was a pity that first 14 months of travel web log were lost when STIXY went dark. It was an exciting time, the beginning of it all, and I did so much those first month. I had saved the files thinking I might do something with them someday. Well, someday came in 2025. I found a way to republish them on Github and, with a lot of work, got them ready to upload. I started re-releasing them, a few at a time, on 18 Jan 2025.

The Future

So up to now my web log has been pretty strictly a travel log with pictures and a fairly objective recounting of the travels. I sometimes wonder if I should go a little more subjective some time. I have a little article or essay that I have written on the subject of keeping a web log and of keeping diaries. I try to answer the question of "Why?", though I don't really reach a conclusive answer.

I might also write up and make available some practical hints for travelers. Several topics occur to me like using your phone in a foreign country, passports and visas and finding a place to stay.

I could stray into other even more subjective topics, but that is a long way off right now.

But I also want to fill in the gaps in the historical record left by the demise of Stixy and perhaps fill in other gaps to make this something like a complete history of my retirement years, maybe some travel prior to retirement. It would get pretty huge if I did all that, maybe too big and unwieldy. And who knows if I will live that long.

For now  (end of 2024) I just want to keep it current and slowly phase out Weebly, I have moved a few pages over just recently, but will probably lose momentum on that. It's honestly such a low priority.