It was 20 years ago today…

…that I started this blog! I set it up back in October 2005 as I was between jobs as a new media producer and figured I needed something to keep my hand in as a writer, designer and coder. Some of those professional skills have taken a back seat now but I still earn a living in tech and they even come in handy in some of my hobbies.

old computers
In the spare room of the house I lived in at the time, with the original computers I coded and launched this site from back in 2005 (with the help of Alun Ward from Eyedivision).

Looking back behind the scenes, over the years a fair bit of it looks to have been deleted (I can’t remember why now and I wish I’d kept it). In truth, pretty much no one ever read it regularly (but then does anyone bother with blogs anyway these days?). Moreover my attempt to come top in Google by having a unique URL faded pretty fast when it became clear no one was searching for a largely made up word.

Nevertheless it does have a few popular pages on obscure stuff that I have written about. People visit those from all over the world which is satisfying. It’s sometimes been a target for bots and scammers from exotic countries, and a fairly expensive labour of love (URL and hosting costs for example as well as all the maintenance).

Perhaps most strikingly it was from a time (just) before social media (some of which have come and gone – remember MySpace?). Having got this far I can’t think why I’d want to get rid of it anytime soon, but let’s see if it remains for another 20 years (by which time I…will be a rather old man).

Me in 2005
What I looked like in 2005 when I launched this site, sat at those computers, wondering what was going to happen.

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