fettig.net

Yesterday Michael Sippy realized that he’s been writing online for ten years. That prompted me to take a look through my archives, and I noticed that this August represents a milestone for me too: five years of fettig.net.

I don’t remember exactly when I registered fettig.net, but the Internet Archive has a copy of the first blog-ish site I ever put up. The first entry is from July 2000. That site was updated sporadically for a year or so. By September 2001 I was more clued in to weblogs, and I started editing the site using a custom client-server blogging app that used XML-RPC. Reading my archives in 2001 and 2002, you can clearly see me digesting and trying to implement all the cool stuff Dave Winer was writing about on Scripting News. I was also getting interested in messaging protocols; the “Contact Me” box on the late 2001 fettig.net homepage was the beginning of the ideas that led to Hep a year later.

A few more interesting bits dug out of the archives:

• January 2002: I search for my name on Google and find my own website. Sweet!
• September 2002: I start using Twisted in Hep.
• February 2003: Hep gets some press in the Indian newspaper The Hindu. The reporter was nice enough to mail me a paper copy, which I still have. The site at the time was using PyBlosxom, but the look hadn’t changed much.
• March 2003: I try out Chandler 0.1, and wonder why they’re not using Twisted. By June of 2004, they were.
• November 2003: A new look, which might be my favorite ever. At that piont I’d also switched to Moveable Type (which I’d also used breifly in 2002. Hooray for open data formats: I’ve switched blogging software quite a few times now, but I still have my archives intact back to 2001.
• March 2004: I got my first Mac, and started using Emacs. I’m still using Emacs, but after a year on the iBook I missed Linux and switched to a Dell laptop running Ubuntu. I still love Apple hardware, though: if they ever ship a laptop with a Linux-supported wireless card I’ll buy one for sure.
• September 2004: I get ready for the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco.
• October 2004: In the audience at Web 2.0, I blog about the introduction of JotSpot.
• December 2004: I’m hired to work at JotSpot.

And that brings me up to this year, which has had it’s share of highlights so far: a talk at PyCon, a book announcement, and an exciting new project. It’s interesting to look at how many of these opportunities have come as the result of stuff I’ve written on fettig.net. Starting this site was definitely a good career move, and it’s been fun to keep it going these five years. Thanks for reading!