Celebrating 10 Years

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. Iâve lived in 5 different cities and posted from every single one. Iâve 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 musÃ©es at Le Compa Archived Link, Conservatoire de lâagriculture 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

Iâve 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 sheâs been here since the beginning. Little did I know that weâd get married exactly five years later.

Itâs been a fun ten years and Iâm not done yet. cagrimmett.com is here to stay. Check out my archives and stay tuned for more.