The end of an era

A short era, but an era nonetheless. Roughly a year ago I registered Radio and started blogging earnestly. I'd played around with Blogger a few times and even paid Evan some money, but for numerous reasons, I couldn't really get into it.
But it was different with Radio. Radio gave me things to play with and learn. Things I was challenged by and ultimately frustrated with. Regardless, I came to view it as a rich experience, beyond my capabilities, but rich nonetheless.
It also pissed me off horribly. I don't think I've *ever* used an application with worse ergonomics. Well, that's not entirely true. I've used development tools that suffer from the same defect that Radio does - it expects that the user minimally possess a certain level of pre-existing knowledge and doesn't really provide the user with any serious bootstraps that a user can grab onto an kick-start their education. I also came to think of Radio as a development environment for my website. To this day I've not been able to recreate some of the public-facing features of my website that Radio enabled. Other tools just haven't evolved that far yet - and certainly, may never.
I got this in the email today;
"Greetings from the community server for Radio UserLand 8. This is a reminder that your Radio UserLand serial number will expire soon."
I won't be renewing. I've moved on. Initially to a tool that favored my headspace a little better, but now to a tool that reflects my headspace. I do miss it however.
The renewal message ended with thanks from the Userland team - "And thanks from all of us at UserLand for using Radio UserLand. We sincerely hope you like it and use it well."
I did like it and hopefully, I also used it well.
My sincere thanks to Userland.