Happy birthday to Shoot Up, happy birthday to us!

By | 1 April, 2011

Dimly through the mists of time and clouds of alcohol-induced memory loss I can cast my mind back and just recall that heady day back in 2009 when I published the first article on your soaraway Shoot Up. Uhm, urr, it was on 1st April. Yes, that’s right, Shoot Up is two years old today. So happy birthday us!

I started Shoot Up on 1st April 2009 after becoming jealous of the success of my wife’s blog over at stripykat.com. If she could do it, so could I! So I started off by reviewing blood glucose meters, as at the time no one seemed to give them much thought. My first review of the Wavesense Jazz seemed to go down quite well (sadly the original comments on the post were lost during the Great Database Meltdown of 2010) and so I carried on, moving on to spouting ill-informed and poorly researched rubbish about diabetes.

A chance encounter in the comments section of someone else’s blog led to me meeting my now esteemed co-writer Alison. Alison had toyed with the idea of blogging but didn’t really have technical interest to set one up and I liked the idea of having someone with considerably more experience of diabetes than me writing on the blog. This combination of geekery and experience was a serendipitous one and one that has continued to flourish.

We then encouraged guest bloggers and have been lucky enough to have some brilliant different perspectives from people like Katie, Simon, Annette, Stephen, Samantha, Mark, Shelley, Tom, Sam & Terry, which has added a great deal of value to the blog and given you all a break from our rubbish.

But, of course, the greatest contribution has been from you – our dear readers – without your comments, humour, encouragement and interest (even from you lurkers who read and never comment!) we both would have packed up and given up long ago. Writing nearly 300 articles about type one diabetes ain’t easy but with your help we’ve done it and will, hopefully, continue to do so.

So what have we achieved over the last two years? I hope we’ve been at least slightly entertaining; I hope we’ve approached diabetes in a positive light; I hope we’ve raised a little bit of awareness about living with diabetes (nothing gives me greater pleasure than non-diabetics reading the blog); I hope we’ve encouraged people to question their health care providers.

But one thing I do know for certain is that we’ve definitely created a positive and happy little community on our wee corner of the web and that’s certainly something worth celebrating!

Category: The Blog

About Tim

Diagnosed with Type One when he was 28, Tim founded Shoot Up in 2009. For the diabetes geeks, he wears a Medtronic 640G insulin pump filled with Humalog and uses Abbott's Libre flash glucose monitor.

30 thoughts on “Happy birthday to Shoot Up, happy birthday to us!

  1. Donald Thomson

    and thanks to the wonders of modern technology you can now enjoy a very large slab of birthday cake without worrying about your feet dropping off 🙂

    Reply
  2. Cecile

    A second birthday is not good news – is it now time for tantrums? If I were @annette , I’d throw some, seeing that she too has contributed…

    Reply
  3. Mike

    [url=http://emberapp.com/users/mikeyoung/images/birthdaycake][img]http://emberapp.com/mikeyoung/images/birthdaycake/sizes/m.png[/img][/url]

    Reply
  4. Annette A

    Incidentally, to anyone out there with CWDs – how do you tell if they’re having a temper tantrum or a hypo tantrum? Must be really difficult trying to test a kid with a screaming fit to check! Another reason why all kids should have CGMs – would make parents’ lives that bit easier, I’d guess…

    Reply
  5. Tim Post author

    In celebration I’ve upgraded my web hosting – so you can now see if you can get through the 200GB a month of bandwidth I’ve got available! Go for it chaps!

    Reply
  6. Hairy Gnome

    Happy Birthday SUoPU! May you go from strength to strength!

    Actually, this site is hugely entertaining as well as being informative, thanks for the last two years Tim and Alison, and here’s to the next twenty! The epitome of everything that’s good about the Intermaweb.

    Reply
  7. lizz

    Very happy to have found you. Very, very happy. Ecstatic. I’d like to take this opportunity *wells up* sorry, can’t go on, you know what I mean, you’re all doing very well, very well indeed!

    Reply
  8. katherine cromwell

    Happy Birthday SUoPU how wonderful I’m so glad I found you. Lighthearted banter, serious discussions and a site which seems to attract people of like minded approach rather than I HAVE DIABETES IT IS NOT MY FAULT BUT ANYTHING YOU SAY WILL BE SHOUTED DOWN BECAUSE YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND!!!! I was shocked by Diabetes UK forum (How naive!)

    Reply
  9. Spike Jones

    I’ve only just found this place & love it! It really reminds me of a very good BDA Young adults weekend I once went to & loved. Happy Second Birthday!!

    BTW It was no 2 daughter’s 2nd last week too ;-D Coincidence? I think not…

    Reply
  10. Dave

    I’m new here too and after so long it’s nice to know there are other ‘normal’ diabetics out there.

    The welcome has been very warm and the site is a credit to the people who run it and contribute, and those who dip in and out with sarcasm and encouragement.

    Keep up the good work 🙂

    Reply
  11. Alice

    Hello. I’m new too (although a long-term lurker). It’s so lovely to have found such a sensible(!) bunch of people – Happy Birthday Shoot Up and many happy returns!

    Reply
  12. jason

    Happy Birthday guys! Love your attitude and love the site, really well done 🙂

    Reply
  13. aileen

    Happy Birthday to you…. happy birthday to you! Wow almost 300 articles and you still make me laugh! A very happy birthday!

    Reply
  14. Siobhan

    Happy birthday. I’m another newby and lurker. It’s a mine of information on here. Love the site.

    Reply
  15. Megs

    Happy Birthday Shoot Up. Im an ex lurker with 33 years of type 1 under my belt along with my pump. I wish sites like this had been around back when I was diagnosed. Well done love your site.

    Reply
  16. Nig

    Ok, ok. I’m another long term lurker forced to comment by Tim’s provocative remarks above…”even from you lurkers who read and never comment!”

    Happy birthday, and thanks for the healthy doses of sanity/realism!

    Reply
  17. Tim Post author

    Welcome to lurkers one and all! 😀

    Don’t be strangers – now you’ve set up an account do feel free to pitch in with your comments – they’re more than welcome (unless you’re like that Nazi-guy a while back, whom I had to kick and ban…!)

    Any more lurkers out there? 😉

    Reply
  18. Stuart

    I’m another lurker, although I’ve visited a lot since discovering the site last year I’ve never posted. I was diagnosed 18 months ago at the age of 25. It’s been a steep learning curve but one this site has helped loads with.

    Thank you and happy birthday! Keep up the good work.

    Reply
  19. Alison

    Happy Birthday to us, I can’t believe that’s 2 years of my life I’m never going to get back. And how exciting that some of the lurkers have slunk out of the woodwork to say hello – that’s the best present ever 😉

    Things have certainly changed. Two years ago when I went on holiday, it only took me a minute or so to catch up with the comments I’d missed on ShootUp. I’ve been away for a week and I think I’m going to be trawling through the site for a few hours yet!

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *