Blog Paleontology - 15 years of Blogging

As noted in my post All Personal Blogs Die, But Mine Came Back As a Ghost my blog has gone through many iterations over the years. When I recreated the site after letting it lapse I noticed that I didn't have my full collection of posts.

At some point I had removed older posts from when I was young. This is understandable, as it can be uncomfortable to read one's old writing. Now though, I think there's value in remembering what I once wrote. So I've done my best to restore the old pages.

A look through the post timeline

Thankfully my old blog was kept under version control! So I could scrub through the commit log to find what was missing. The posts span 2011 to 2013. Some interesting stats show a trend:

• 15 posts in 2011
• 2 posts in 2012
• 3 posts in 2013

This corresponds to my senior year of high school and first two years of college. After that I didn't post again until 2018 when wrote about how I made Soup Bot for my first job. [^ I was very excited by the idea of Soup Bot.] After another burst of posts I only wrote a couple posts each year until 2021 when I stopped:

• 5 posts in 2018
• 3 posts in 2019
• 2 posts in 2020
• 2 posts in 2021

2021 lines up with when I changed jobs and was a lot busier. In general I seem to write a burst of posts and then take some time off.

Forgotten Things

Some other fun details I found while going through the commit log:

• I created pages for me to share recommended books, programs, rss, etc. Those pages were never filled out... This is shocking, but not surprising given the fact that I was planning to make those pages on the new version of the blog, but have not gotten around to it. Some habits never change.
• One stylistic difference I've noticed: I used to stuff extra thoughts into parenthesis, whereas now I try to use footnotes instead. [^ See like this.]
• I used to have a +1 button, which was Google's attempt at a like button for the now defunct Google+
• For a while I had a "Fork me on Github" ribbon on the site.
• I had forgotten I joined the internet blackout for SOPA on January 18, 2012.

Have a Read

The restored posts can be found under the new paleontology tag. Instead of just posting them as is, I've added a little bit of commentary and context at the top of the post. I also tried to clean up spelling, formatting, and dead links when possible.

Another detail I noticed was that I initially started the blog because of the trend to "manage your online brand". I was not writing because I enjoyed the act, nor because I wanted to share things with the world. Looking back the reason was more selfish: to get my name out there. I think this explains why the writing was never lasted more than a year or two.

Now I write for the sake of writing and I hope blogging will be a sustainable habit.