As a programmer I can’t help myself, it’s an engrained reaction to start every foray into unknown territory with a simple “Hello World!” The simple “Hello Word!” application offers a quick and, usually, painless way for a novice programmer to learn the basic concepts of a language, and for the seasoned programmer offers valuable insight into the structure and syntax of new languages.

This isn’t the first time I’ve attempted to get this site off the ground, and so far every time it has started with some variant of “Hello World!” Perhaps as a first post, or in some cases in the more traditional sense of trying to understand a new language before trying to build a slightly more practical application.

The “Hello World!” application offers a sanity check of sorts. Does this thing work? Is this thing on? How does this new environment stack up next to my expectations? In all honesty I’m still not quite sure where I’m going with this site, but that’s part of the inspiration for the current incarnation.

I wanted something that felt more like a sketchbook, a virtual blank page that I could use as a canvas to express whatever I needed to at the time. So far, with all the previous versions of this site I’ve spent more time tweaking CSS and xHTML, lining up this pixel with that, and little time generating any real content. The issue was that every time I went to make a new post there was some small restriction imposed by the current template that kept me from doing whatever it was I was trying to do at the moment.

At the same time I realized that if I had to markup and design every single post, there’s a good chance a lot of the smaller things would get skipped as I wouldn’t have, or want to spend, the time necessary to create the post. So the current template attempts to keep the basics basic, yet stylish, while providing me with a platform to quickly and easily build my experiments on top of.

So far so good. Lets see where it goes next.