Twenty years of my blog

I had the luck of getting to interact with Simon a little at my first real programmer job at Eventbrite. You would never know meeting him that he was one of the creators of Django, (and TIL querySelector!). He was infectiously curious and excited about programming in a way that bubbled over to most people he interacted with. He would also enthusiastically engage with what you were working on, even the beginner project I had at the time. I don't know him well, but my impression was not just of a great programmer, but a great colleague and an authentically positive person.

Congrats on twenty years!

Couple notes related to using the Wayback Machine to recover parts of the old blog:

To list URLs for bulk downloading, you can also directly use the CDX or Memento APIs, which are pretty simple and require no auth. Documentation here,[1][2] though the bulk of the CDX docs in the GitHub repo they link apparently haven't been updated since 2013.

[1] https://archive.org/help/wayback_api.php

[2] https://support.archive-it.org/hc/en-us/articles/11500179002...

Appending if_ to the date part of an archive URL hides the Wayback Machine banner -- the URL format also supports other replay codes and approximate dates. The official docs[3] here are even more outdated; Wikipedia's guide[4] looks like the most complete but still leaves out codes like oe_ and mp_ (which no one seems to know the intended uses of).

[3] http://archive-access.sourceforge.net/projects/wayback/admin...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Using_the_Wayback_Machine...

It’s amazing that Simon just casually invented document.querySelector! I’d retire if I had that in my bio, but he just keeps going!

Simon (and Nat of course) are one of the most inspirational (smartest and loveliest) couples I've encountered in all the weird tech events..

Their honeymoon, creation of Lanyrd and then eventual sale was a lovely story to follow over the years (and it's certainly part of an inspiration to our latest project)

Here's to 20 more years of blogging!

I don’t know how he does it. He even answers beginner level questions in r/sql from time to time. If there is a discussion on SQLite on Reddit or HN, you will find Simon commenting and providing insight.

I want Simon Willson to do one of those 'day in the life' videos. How he manages time to do all that is a mystery.

Thank you Simon, truly an incredible job creating, learning, and sharing with the world. Definitely one of my biggest inspirations as nearly every day there is a new discovery in the feed or on twitter.

Truley a gem of the early "modern web" and a source of inspiration ever since. I remember checking the aside daily for new links in the early days...

I guess I've been subscribed for at least 80% of that time (I've got bookmarks since at least 2008, but I think I'd been following it for two or three years before that). Writing that is consistent, and is consistently informative and occasionally emotionally impactful. Keep up the good work; you remain near the top of my RSS feed.

It’s strange with people you’ve followed for such a long time but never interacted with. I remember that wedding photo with the falcon, and Lanyrd. Then we had different interests for a while, but the last few years I’ve truly enjoyed your perspectives on Twitter, your blog, and lately the piece on architecturenotes.

Congratz to 20 years! Any tips for those wanting to start blogging now (or not)? Could you share a bit given what might work well with all the noise today? If you like writing about multiple things, do you recommend having separate domains for each of those, or keeping it all in one place.

Congratulations Simon!

Here's to another twenty.

I had somehow completely forgotten about lanyrd. It was a really cool site at the time, and I’m pretty sure I had an account. I’ve never been someone who goes to lots of conferences but it was cool to see who was going where.

congrats Simon! its been a pleasure discovering your work as a more recent follower and to see you still documenting yourself so religiously is a sheer inspiration. heres to the next 20!

Reading your writings since the times where you had to manually merge newadmin and geodjango svn branches. Lots of love from south america.

Congrats Simon!

Congrats Simon!!

This is great!