Twenty years ago this week, a software developer in California ushered in a new era in how we communicate. His name is Dave Winer and on 7 October 1994 he published his first blog post. He called it Davenet then, and he’s been writing it most days since then. In the process, he has become one of the internet’s elders, as eminent in his way as Vint Cerf, Dave Clark,Doc Searls, Lawrence Lessig, Dave Weinberger or even Tim Berners-Lee.

Naturally, Dave also had a personal reflection on pros and cons of his 20 years of blogging.

In 20 years of blogging and developing software for blogging, you meet a lot of people, and some of them do share love with you. To me that was always the wonder of blogging. I remember very clearly, in 1999 or 2000, looking at a blogroll and seeing dozens of names, mostly people I had never heard of, all of whom had blogs. It was at that moment that I realized that it had worked. But I was in for a rude shock when I clicked the links, they were all talking about me, and they didn’t like me! Oy.

You’re a 16th century German prince plotting to crush a peasant rebellion, or perhaps you’re leading an army against the Ottoman Empire or settling a score with a rival nobleman. What’s a guy looking for a tactical edge to do?

The answer, of course, is rocket cats.

The illustrations from a 16th century guide on siege warfare show what looks like cats with jetpacks strapped to their backs. However, it turns out they’re cats being used as fire bombs to set fire to a besieged city. Alex Moore from Death and Taxes wrote:

The idea was set forth by artillery man Franz Helm, who had apparently seen action in Turkey and witnessed first-hand the power of gunpowder. His idea went like this: Rather than try to lay siege to a castle or otherwise protected town, you could simply kidnap a cat, attach a jetpack to its back, set it on fire nearby and release the cat, which would run back home in its panic wearing the jetpack and set the whole town on fire.