My first blog post was on June 8, 2004. This is my 1,059th post. I am amazed that this has been going for 10 years.

In the first few years, I wrote every second day or so. Last year, I posted only 15 times. I enjoy blogging as much as ever and am making the effort to write more often. I’ve learned that the more I write, the more ideas I have for posts. Blogging breeds blogging.

When I started my blog, I worried that I would stop writing my diary. Actually what happened was that the blog took the place of long emails to friends.

I am embarrassed by my posts from the first year or so. It took me that long to work out what I was doing with the blog. Like most public internet diarists of the time, I tried to be zany and spent too much time on things that mattered to me and not to my audience. At least I can accurately reflect on how I’ve matured over the last decade. If I ever become famous, though, I am doomed by this blog.

This blog has had five makeovers. In June 2004, I started using a service called mblog, which was shut down in October 2004. Vera rescued my writings from her Temporary Internet Files.

I looked into what other blogging services were around and moved to Blogger before Google bought it. Blogger looked after me from October 2004 to January 2009. This was when I introduced the coconut icon. Back then, my blog was anonymous (no surnames). The coconut was a hint at my surname (Ko Ko nut) and possibly my zaniness. Hilarious.

I might have been violating copyright on that coconut image for the past five years. Perhaps it’s time for me to pay up… if I can work out where the image comes from.

I think I was procrastinating in January 2009 when a web hosting deal sucked me into buying  my domain name and a two year hosting plan. This was the end of my anonymity and when I started using WordPress.

I have used three themes over this time. They’ve all been blue and white and have become increasingly minimal, following wider design trends on the web.

Thank you Internet Wayback Machine. I did not have the foresight to save these screenshots.