the_first_blathe karl the weed does anyone know what the first blathe on this site is? 030914 ... jane time 030914 ... karl the weed well that takes all the fun out of it, youre supposed to SPECULATE about what it COULD be. 030914 ... Dafremen She can't see the D, H, or I directories. She doesn't know for sure that it's time. (Course I could be wrong on that one.) 030914 ... eyedream see thisisblather user24 has some speculation 030914 ... User24 yes he does, if you go to http://blather.newdream.net/cgi-bin/blather?showday;day=980819 you'll see that 'time' was the first dated blather on this site. well done jane! 030915 ... jane wow. daffy proved wrong. somewhere a planet exploded 030915 ... User24 someone searching for blather_history? read the first few entries under ' blather ' it's worth the wait... back then, it seems, blather was words, bunches of words, strewn about in a twisty tangly web.. it seems the pontification, insight and nonsensical delight came later, ya? 030918 ... jane i almost know that first entry by andrew@benicetobears.com by heart maybe i do i blather and bluster almost incessantly. it invariably makes me look silly, but oh well.. 030918 ... Mahayana Actually I'd have to say that "time" isnt the first blather and that "wind" is... cuz if we are going by the idea that time is... than we can assume that Dallas was the creator of time [said first blathe] Therefor we can use Dallas [one of the creators of Blather] as a gauge ... and if you click on his name it pulls up his entire list of blathes dallas 030605 kissing blind say worms fire time* ridiculous faint feel internet groove point wind* Since Wind is on the bottom this signifies that wind came before time ... [i wonder if this is scientificially true that wind came first [hehe] anyhow ... unless someone else can predate dallas on blather my idea is that "wind" was the first blathe... [ somehow its just more so peaceful & calming to me than time is ] 030918 ... p2 that's a good theory, with 2 minor flaws 1) 'dallas' is listed above '030605' when in fact 'dallas' was created before '030605' and dallas posted in 'dallas' before '030605' 2) the early blathes of dallas have no dates attached to them therefore it's possible to assume the database field for the date/time are empty without that field, there is no way to sort those particular blathes (though this doesn't necessarily prove you wrong) 030918 ... Mahayana '030605' is [not] a date it is the title of his last blathe [ie the one on top of his list] whereas the one on the bottom [wind] is the first, the first blathe goes to the bottom no matter lack of date, just as if you blathe 10 things on one day the first thing you blathe regardless of date/or lack of date it goes on the bottom, you know how to make entries without dates test the theory out and you should see what i assume to be correct. I dont know if im right with 100% accuracy b/c I didnt create this site however it just seems structurally logical, since this has been blathers format, its one of the constants of blatherworld. and yes there is a way to sort those blathes it is added to a user's list [in order of addition] to blatherworld checkout your own list and youll see the very first blathe you added here [assuming youve used the same name] is at the bottom and the last is at top, that is the [only] sorting order date then order of entry from bottom up for reference title of blathe: 030605 http://blather.newdream.net/0/030605.html "and what point is grownd zero?" dallas 020608 ~~~ this is the blather date of his last entry not 030605 030918 ... Mahayana The only other oddity to the blather entry order is this... if you blathe another entry at a later date on a title you previously added info to it will not reappear in your ordered list under your name, however this is not an issue since the first entry under Dallas is "wind" 030918 ... p2 i know it's a title which is why i put ' around it look again, 'dallas' was created in 1999 '030605' was created in 2002 030918 ... p2 my second point was that if you look at the entries from "blind" to "wind" you'll see that the first entries by dallas have no date associated with them therefore, they cannot be sorted accurately 030918 ... Mahayana id like to convey that im not trying to be snotty about this at all, i happen to think the topic is rather interesting for speculation like one big mystery to solve, i love trying to solve mysteries ... a few last thoughts ... a. someone else besides Dallas could have blathed first without leaving a date as an entry marker and this would be hard to search manually since blater sorted by way of date lists days that do not even have entries on them... i checked out a few weeks before the 980819 date and hadnt seen anything. of course this doesnt mean much as there could be an earlier entry tucked away hidden somewhere b. i do agree that it is highly likely that "time" was blathed on the sameday as "wind" which would make it one of the first blathes but i still as of yet do not see it as being the first c. i appreciate your thinking/sharing on this puzzle d. another supportive idea that "wind" came first before "time" would be this kristin@newdream.net blathered often times in the beginning of blather right after what Dallas had blathed on what seems to be the same day, which isnt a strong point just a supportive one her entry of wind "leaving me cold when I walk to class making me wish I could bring my down comforter with me everywhere." 980819 also comes before "time" 030918 ... p2 one more thing to cloud it all up dallas isn't the only one with non-time stamp entries sage seems to have a few of his own so who's to say whom it was that blathed first? only the blather_gods know for sure 030918 ... Mahayana i was just responding to User24's statement that "time" was the first blathe, just adding my own thoughts [no biggy really] 030918 ... Mahayana dallas [is who owns the list] 030605 [this is the last blathe] kissing blind say worms fire time* ridiculous faint feel internet groove point wind* [this is the first] if you would just check out his list youd see what i mean http://blather.newdream.net/cgi-bin/blather?who;name=dallas [and ive wasted enough space & time procrastinating so ive said my piece] 030918 ... p2 i agree, this is fun. actually, i thought it was pretty straight forward, until you pointed out non-timestamped entries. very astute! ;) re: kristen if that was a true indicator, then "internet" should be right about "wind" i also don't think she blathed it on the same day. her timestamp indicates 980819, which i had originally assumed was the year of our lord, but happy_birthday_blather suggests it as 980818 before timestamps were recorded from this i surmise that dallas and sage blathered their non-timestamped entries on 980818 and kristen joined the blather party the next day i'm not saying you're wrong, just that there is no way to be sure you're right (except to ask sage & dallas) 030918 ... p2 correction: about -> above 030918 ... Mahayana hey a birthdate only indicates ones entrance into the world... first you have to learn to walk before you can blathe but the 980818 DOB theory as being the date of first non-dated entries is neato, never thought of that also it appears that sage's first blathes were on the same 980818 date as well and from his first blathes i havent seen him do the [nodate] entries as of yet and you are right there is only one way to know but that would sortof ruin my enjoyment of it all ... sometimes i like not knowing its like a fine piece of artwork ... i dont wanna know the artists story behind it, half of the fun is making up my own story and connection to it, and that is also why i do not tell my motivations behind most of my pieces. :] 030918 ... User24 caution: this contains some technical answers, which may spoil the mystery to some degree. or you could check the source, I imagine, though, that the SQL for the who page is simply SELECT * FROM words WHERE who='$who' ORDER BY date; (or something similar) (checking.. SELECT DISTINCT word FROM entries WHERE stamp LIKE "$day" order by stamp desc well, I'm not sure why they're using LIKE "$day", with no percent signs, surely that just like saying = "$day", except that using LIKE will mean the query takes slightly longer, right? but as you can see, it's just ordering by timestamp, so on multiple-entry words, it should just pull out first occurance (unlike recent, which pulls them out order by latest post; SELECT word,lastentry FROM words ORDER BY lastentry DESC) again, why they didn't just do "SELECT word,entry FROM words ORDER BY entry DESC" maybe that wouldn't work.. can't be bothered to think about it right now.. anyway! so the showday page orders by first entry, let's see what the who page does.. SELECT DISTINCT word,name,email FROM entries WHERE $r ORDER BY stamp DESC where $r is either (name="$name" AND email="") or (name="$name" AND email="") OR email="$email" or name="$name" again, not that that's really relevent, the important part is that it's pull words, based on name and email address, ordered by a timestamp (fieldtype: datetime), if this field was left NULL (as it is by default), then these words would appear last in the list, therefore, the first blathe may have been a dated blathe, and a blather may later have been added with no timestamp, which would always appear lowest in a list ordered by DESC, and highest in an ORDER BY xxxx ASC list. However, as you noticed, the next entries were on 980819, so that supports the theory that the dateless blathes were blathed on or before that date. now on to the real spoiler, I'm afraid.. I've re-created the database structure on my local PC (see http://blather.newdream.net/src to find out how I know all this, btw) I then entered a few words with an ascending ID, but no time stamp, then I did the same query blather uses, on the same table structure, and (here's the answer right here, stop reading.) the entries that had dates with them appeared first, in descending date order, as they do on the who page of blather, then, the dateless came, ordered by id number, ie, first first, so, if I created the following blathes; 1 2 3 4 5 d 6 d 7 d 8 d 9 d 10 d where the number relates to when in time they were created (1=first ever), and 'd' represents the timestamp when I execute the query, I get the following returned: 10 9 8 7 6 5 1 2 3 4 see the switch? descending order until no date found, then ascending order, which means that the first ever blathe, is the first in the dallas' list (or perhaps someone else's) that appears with no date. eg, if dallas' list is the one, the first blathe would be: blind But I have no evidence, other than that he was undoubtably the first (or second (to sage) blatherskite, so it's not neccessarily his list we should be looking at. 030918 ... User24 aha, but! as there are other people with 'no time' blathes, we can never know who's first no-time blathe came first overall, unless we hack into the blather database and run a query on it to find out. (and no, I won't even try.) 030918 ... mon has anyone emailed/asked Sage or Dallas? Sage, Dallas, whoever... if you're there please respond....(sounds like a seance i know) long shot but i thought what da heck! ;) lovin the discourse 030918 ... blah-ze i have wondered this for a while. those days must have been rich, when the true gods of blather, the creators of the aether, did write. however, i also believe that the answer should be sealed away in the temple_to_the_gods_of_blather and never released. to desecrate the awe of this subject is to desecrate the very awe of blather itself. 030918 ... p2 yay user24! i also thought that was the case but i was too lazy to test it plus i'd kinda be disappointed if "blind" was the first blathe i like the idea that "time" came before everything else other non-dated users: i (sage) s (sage) eagle 030919 ... u24 although we could look at the 'file created' date of time.html... 031208 ... whitechocolatewalrus i think the creators purposely blathed with no dates the first day (or days as since there is no date we can not discern this (i'm probably wrong though)) just to confuse us blatherskites because they knew we would spend our lives (or half lives or just months possibly) trying to figure out which blathe was the first blath ever. Maybe two different people blathed at the exact same time and the search for the first blathe ever is pointless because really it would be the first two blathes. has no good ideas. 031209 ... u24 that's probably true, actually. I bet if we asked them, they'd tell us to do something more productive with our time. 040622 ... dosquatch The first multiword title, blathed on 18-Sep-1998, is Mountain_Dew. It is the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega, all hail the Dew and partake of its golden goodness :) 040622 ... u24 tis true. well done. :) 040622 ... u24 actually, looking at the blathe itself, kss noticed it an age ago. but still. I didn't know. 040622 ... dosquatch He did, didn't he? Damn. Well, it was news to me, anyway. 040622 ... u24 actually, I think the first ever blathe may have been asdf. go to blather.newdream.net/cgi-bin/blather?who;name=%20 040701 ... u24 it appears before time. 041121 ... u24 though as I discussed at length earlier and evidently subsequently forgot, the order switches for notime blathes, so we can actually say with a fair degree of certainty that asdf was not the first blathe. 070213 ... jane channeling vizzini and i Clearly cannot choose the wine in front of You! 070710 ... u24 this still bugs me a little. 080717 ... dos A compelling argument has been made for several equally plausible words. Of the choices, though, no other choice is as poetically appropriate as "time". Being unable to conclusively say otherwise, I'll go with poetry :-) 080717 ... hsg ^^^ hey! i_was_going_to_say_that! but i didn't say it in_time. 081207 ... jane i forgot i did that vizzini thing. that was funny. 081208 ... meta meta 081208 ... silentbob I love that people are having this discussion because to me it parallels the creation story. And in the tradition of human spirit and imagination, I've decided to ignore all rational evidence and say that the first blathe was platypus. ALL HAIL THE PLATYPUS!!! 090617 what's it to you? who go blather from