I just had the epiphany that five years of blogging came and went without me noticing. I've only done one respective after two years of blogging, back when this blog was still on Tumblr.

On April 9th of 2013, I launched this blog on Tumblr of all places as a way to help obtain a better career. I was under the impression, all good developers have a social media presence but I never wanted to use Twitter, and in hindsight, I'm happy I never did. Instead, I decided to eschew social media for something more thoughtful, and somewhat impersonal as I like my privacy. I lived in a different city, had a different job, and was a homeowner. I suppose it helped, my initial blog posts mostly consisted of hot takes on tech news, inspired by Daringfireball and Pxlnv but it didn't benefit anyone.

In 2013, shortly after landing my current job, I realized that long-form posts mattered. I drastically reduced the frequency of blog posts, from near daily to only a few a week, and eventually trickled down roughly 1-4 a month post-2016. In 2016, I moved out of Tumblr to Jekyll as I didn't care for the Tumblr community and never interacted with it. Tumblr added bloat where I didn't need any, I already had customized my Tumblr theme to hide community interaction. With Jykell, I was able to more create an even more minimalist blog, hyper-focused on the reading experience, so much so as to avoid using images except when helpful.

Instead of creating a thoughtful retrospective and wax philosophical on this extended project, (one of the longest in my life), I'll cop out and make a few uninspired statements about the future: I'll probably change the fonts on this blog. The font stack is "ok" but its googlely font bs. I may add a dark mode. There will probably be more javascript posts in the future. I'll post a lot of opinions about Apple and the Mac Pro when the redesign happens (if it ever does). There will never be a comments section on this blog. I'll add a /rss and yet I still won't have a regular audience.

The Best of this blog...

Not all my blog posts are equal, some require hours upon hours of writing and effort. Below are just a few standouts, and posts that are representative of the evolution of this blog.

Top Ten Blog posts of the past five years (as per google analytics)

All page-views are cumulative from dated posted to Oct 18th, 2018. For a blog that's entire strategy is to toss web posts out into the ether, my blog now averages roughly 15k page-views a month as per google analytics (19k if you go by my server stats, + a fraction in RSS). It's surprising as I don't have any sort of compensation, or motivation to post as I haven't made a cent from this, and if you consider the web hosting fees, it's actually cost me money. I do not advertise this blog, nor post about it elsewhere, nor try and drum up traffic for it and my SEO strategy is limited to "put alt tags on images". I'm not part of any online community either thus the entirety of my audience is good ol' organic searches and other people linking my blog.

  1. Setting up MAME Arcade emulation & NeoGeo via OpenEmu on macOS (OS X) - 12/15/2016 - 25.5k page-views
  2. How to fix Far Cry 4 Common Glitches - Black Screen - Uplay stopped working - Save Game will not save - 2014/12/15 - 24.1k page-views
  3. Getting the PPP Username / Password for CenturyLink Zyxel C1000Z Modem - 10/7/15 - 20.7k page-views
  4. Installing PPSSPP on iOS 11 without a jailbreak - 10/16/17- 17.6k page-views
  5. Adding Ringtones - text tones to - iOS using iFile - 12/12/2014 - 15.2k page-views
  6. The Definitive Classic Mac Pro (2006-2012) Upgrade Guide - 05/07/2018 - 12.5k page-views
  7. Converting .bin .cue to ISO with OS X using free and commercial utilities - 01/03/16 - 11.2k page-views
  8. Recommended Mac Pro upgrades & hacks - 05/07/2018 - 11.7k page-views
  9. Mockup Prototyping - Wireframing Utility - App Roundup 2013 - 05/30/13 - 11.0k page-views
  10. Installing a GeForce GTX760 (GeForce GTX770/GTX780) into a 2006-2008 Mac Pro - 10/04/14 - 10.7k page-views

Gaming isn't a regular feature of this blog, three of the top ten (four if you count the GeForce post) dominate my top posts. I did my penance with gamers, having every pejorative to slander ones sexuality tossed at me when I ran a video game cheats site (as it paid the bills in college) and while I play video games occasionally, I'm not a gamer. That experience was LONG before, the rise of "gamergate" in the early 2000s and the only thing that's change is the toxicity has been weaponized. My gaming posts, generally tie into emulation, which is far removed from current events and holds a delicate balance of nostalgia and technical challenge.

Better, there are three posts related to the Mac Pro (four if you count the GeForce post). My blog is ostensibly about macOS, so I'm happy to see those in the mix. Notably, none of my web development posts crack the top ten, although my Pure Scss Circle Progress Bar is number 12 and rising.

So will this blog be around in 5 years? I don't know, but hopefully, I've helped people along the way with annoying problems. That's been the goal, and I seem to be reaching far more people than if I were to do this via social media. I'm proud of that.