I started this blog ten years ago today. I was in a room at the Doubletree in Tarrytown, NY. It was a Sunday and it was the weekend in-between my first FEE seminars. I ordered a pizza and some ziti from Capri Pizza and decided to tear down my old HTML site and give blogging a try. I figured out how to install WordPress 2.5.1 and went to town. Here is what the site looked like:
Here is the post that started it all.
Since then, I went on to work at FEE and move to NY, passing that Doubletree regularly. I blogged for a year straight. I’ve lived in 5 different cities and posted from every single one. I’ve written 763 posts on this blog since then and I average about 20,000 unique visitors a month according to my server logs.
The blogging has paid off. Here are things that have come from my blogging and showing my work:
- Photography gigs
- Selling my photos
- Photos published in dozens of newspapers, magazines, and websites because they were licensed as Creative Commons
- The Light Graffiti Guide Sean and I wrote has been used by teachers all across the world.
- Photos being shown at the 2008 Nuit des musées at Le Compa, Conservatoire de l’agriculture in Chartres, France.
- More contract gigs than I can count
- My second full-time job (eResources)
- My third full-time job (Praxis). Here is the post that put Isaac over the edge.
- Weekly emails from people who found my tutorials helpful.
- Meeting authors whose books I wrote about
- Invitations to meetups and discussion groups
- People using my code for their own projects
- I’ve served up appliance repair manuals to hundreds of thousands of people. I let my Dad upload the ones he had back in 2008 to so that people could find them for free. Just doing our part to keep the Right to Repair/Fix It movement strong.
Also, not only is today my 10 year blogging anniversary, it is also my 5 year wedding anniversary! Amanda and I had just started dating when I put this blog up, so she’s been here since the beginning. Little did I know that we’d get married exactly five years later.
It’s been a fun ten years and I’m not done yet. cagrimmett.com is here to stay. Check out my archives and stay tuned for more.
