Today is the anniversary of the first blog post on this website from two decades ago. It was about client side JavaScript to automatically (albeit blindly) select the "active" navigation. Ironically, I'd probably do this on the server side these days.

Admittedly, it's imported from my prior blog and the first time I posted on on this domain was in September, but the post in June counts! But then, my domain was registered a full year before on 13 June 2005 (which neither myself, nor the Internet Archive can remember what was on it!).

I could probably pull up the best hits based on traffic (though my Google analytics were stripped years ago, so I'm not sure how I'd work it out). But I'm not sure the highest traffic really represents the hits to me.

Instead, I'm going to reflect on the last two decades of posts and comment on how what I wrote about has changed.

In the first couple of years of my blog, I was posting regularly throughout the month. Even publishing twice a day.

The posts were a mix of movies I had seen and my excitement in sharing jQuery with non-devs (ie. designers, who back in the mid-2000s didn't have the same exposure to front end code as they do now...I think).

I'm not if it was that the mid-2000s the front end for logic wasn't considered serious enough or... something else, but I always feel like the atmosphere has changed a lot over that time. React has somehow let the trolls out from under the rocks and there's a constant tension around the front end.

Still, my posts in those first 5 years wanted to share technical solutions as simply as possible to newbies and non-devs to show there was a way that didn't require starting your JavaScript journey in 1994.

A personal place

In 2010 Julie and I lost Tia to stillbirth. After a full disconnect from the internet, I tentatively re-entered using my blog as the way to share what had happened and to share our thanks to the overwhelming love we had had from both friends and the community.

Since then I've always used my blog to reflect on another year passing without our girl on, or near, her birth date.

From 2008, I would also write a round up of my year. Something that's celebrated throughout the web blogging community each year around New year (not my blog post! All of yours! Silly thing).

This would also serve as an opportunity to share how our family has grown. Over the years a lot of us (you and I my dear reader) have gotten to chat in person, so it's also fun to hear comments on how our kids have grown. They're a hugely important part of my life, so those comments make me happy.

Ch-ch-changes

Just like a house you've no intention of ever leaving, my blog has had various renovations.

I added my reading records, making an effort to (attempt to) review the books.

I added a short lived Things I Learnt. And a newsletter section, which lasted around a year. And a Things I Fixed (as my experience in hardware grew).

The links section still lives, and probably inspired by Jeremy's links section.

I also added an attic (really, it's a loft, but it sounded more impressive as an "attic") of designs and my ethos page, which is like lifting the lid on my brain and seeing the ideas I try to live by.

In the last 5 years the momentum has proven difficult. The pandemic lockdown cut off a lot of my community connection (through events in particular), and as the years rolled on I've found less and less interest in the web.

Obviously there's AI playing into this. I've written a little about it, and have strong opinions (not all obvious) and I've enjoyed making a lot of personal, offline, projects.

But I don't feel like I've anything to add to the discourse on the web. Maybe I will again one day. I'd love to have the excitement I used to have, but these days, it's just not there.

So my blogging slowed down. It's evident in my archive, and you can see the topics drift away from anything practical and as I got older it's more idea and opinion based. Lol. Like this post!

Your contributions

From day one, I had comments on my site. Those posts that attracted more visitors tended to draw more discussion, which, I mostly approved of.

I had ported the comments from WordPress to Disqus, ejected Disqus when I found they were adding Facebook tracking and landed on commento.io.

At some point during this year (2026), Commento just dropped off the web. First it was hanging requests (which is how I spotted it) and now it's just a 404 holding page. Along with dropping off the web, all the comments you've all left over the years went with it.

A constant side effect of the web: entropy. The lesson there: own your stack if you want to last.

Stick around for some more?

Honestly, the idea of blogging for another 20 years really doesn't sound realistic to me at all! I'll be in my late 60s and frankly, I find it hard to see that far.

That said, in the 20 years behind me, I've published 674 blog posts (excluding this one), 252 links and 188 book reviews. Annoyingly I've got 75 blog posts in draft, some dating back to 2019 (I really need to tidy these up).

My blog is also entirely all my own code - for better or worse.

I'll keep publishing here. I do love my little corner of the web. A mix of musings and code and goodness knows what. Thanks for reading and hanging out online with me for all these long days 💞