I wouldn't be at all surprised if the asterisk that appears between the date and the title of each Boidem column - the link that leads to this page - goes completely unnoticed by most, if not all, of my handful of readers of these columns. Of course I don't mind if readers actually do click on it and in that way glimpse one of the ongoing side-projects of the Boidem, but I have my doubts that they do. After all, even though it's blue, it's small, and easily overlooked. That tiny asterisk, however, holds an honored place in the development of the Boidem. As I noted in an examination of the development of the hypertextuality of these columns on a page that made up the concluding section of my thesis:

Perhaps they showed up first in the date links which became a traditional part of the Boidem, and were, for a certain period of time, my favorite. The date links essentially consisted of two different elements: excuses for why I didn't really upload the column on the given (or planned) date, and links to significant occurrences that took place on that same date. These latter also divided into two: dates with personal significance to me, and dates connected to some sort of unsung or no-longer significant technology. In almost all of these cases the link served as a means of connecting to something that wasn't an integral part of the ideas raised in the column itself (and thus didn't belong in the main body of text).

So in a sense it was the date links that set me down the path of an expanded concept of what a Boidem column, a web essay, could or should contain. And, in a sort of snowballing effect, almost as soon as I accepted the possibility of allowing more playfulness with the hypertextual possibilities of the text, adding more and more links became almost unavoidable.