LONDON, Jan 29 (AFP) - Ivan Noble on Saturday posted the last entry in his "tumor journal", an online record of the two-year long battle the BBC journalist has waged, ultimately without success, against brain cancer.
"I have written it ahead of time because I knew there would be a point when I was not well enough to continue.
"That time has now come," Ivan Noble admitted in the blog, posted on the BBC website.
The science and technology writer, 37, said in a moving final diary that his goal of fighting cancer and proving it was possible "not to be crushed by it" had succeeded.
"Even though I have to take my leave now, I feel like I managed it. I have not been defeated," he wrote.
The BBC writer's first blog -- an abbreviation for a "web log", personal and unofficial writings often posted on Internet personal pages -- appeared online on September 12, 2002, several days after he was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor.
Two years and four months later, after outlining his fears and hopes in the wearying campaign against the disease, he ended it in order to face what he defined as "the last phase" of his life.
"The last phase now will, I know, not be easy but I know that I will be looked after as I always have been," he said.
Noble's became one of the most popular Internet blogs, each entry attracting 7,000 to 12,000 visitors. His last entry, "the time has come", has so far been read by 35,000 visitors since it was posted early Saturday, a BBC spokesman told AFP.
"Ivan is now seriously ill. He won't write any more," the spokesman added.
He spoke in his writings not only of his tumor and treatment, but also his marriage to his partner in November 2002, where their daughter served as witness, and the birth of a son in July 2004.
From across the world, readers moved by his personal episodes wrote in. At his son's arrival, Gabriela from Slovakia described her difficulty in have children and admitted, "I am so jealous of you!"
While celebrating the end of his chemotherapy sessions in January 2003, Cary in Britain described her own breast cancer and advised: "Longevity is overrated. Have fun, be happy, live now."
But for Saturday's final words, dozens of posted messages attested to the universal resonance of Noble's enthusiasm for life, and his quest to survive in order to watch his children grow up.
"Your wife and your children will certainly always be proud of you. Arrivederci," wrote one Italian. "We will light a candle for you in church on Sunday," said an American.
And many thanks rolled in, for helping them conquer depression, for providing inspiration, giving a voice to cancer sufferers and especially for warning them about quitting smoking.
"If two or three people stop smoking as a result of anything I have ever written then the one of them who would have got cancer will live and all my scribblings will have been worthwhile," he said in the last sentence of the diary.
That quest has succeeded. "When I started reading your diary I was a smoker. Thanks in many ways to you, I am an ex-smoker for the last 16 months". Wrote one, while another a woman in Britain said he had quit because of him in December 2003.
Liz, from England, made common cause with other readers by wishing him strength among friends and family.
"Your incredible spirit will live on through them all," she wrote. "It will also, in a different way, live on through all of us who have followed your diary over the years. You have strengthened and changed us all."

01/29/2005 19:41 GMT - AFP