➡ Updated 7/3/12: My website turns 12 on August 7th!

➡ Updated 1/16/12: I’ve checked the age of my domain name (raoulpop.com) and I purchased it on the 7th of August, 2000, so technically, my website is 11 years old, not 10. It will turn 12 this August. While I published my first article in August of 2001, the website was up and running in 2000, so I’ve updated the post and the site header to reflect this.

My writing efforts reached an important milestone back in August. Ligia and I were so busy with work on her new book that I didn’t even notice.

I published my first article on August 3, 2001. It was called “How to keep your exercise goals“. Back then, I wrote it in HTML, using one of the first versions of Dreamweaver, and published it to a domain I’m no longer using (amalgamy.com). As I upgraded to better publishing platforms and new domains over the years, I moved my growing collection of articles and posts along, keeping their original publish dates, so that I’d have a proper archive.

So here we are today… It’s October 9th, 2011, and I’ve been writing and publishing online for over ten years. It’s been an interesting time, during which many, many things have happened in my life.

My articles have had a surprising amount of influence — particularly my reviews. I’d often find, privately, that CEOs and senior executives were reading them. When I needed help, they’d step in and help, in spite of the critiques I leveled at their products. Even now I cringe at some of stronger language I used in my reviews, so I’d like to apologize for all those instances when I let my frustration get the better of me, instead of looking at the situation more objectively. I’d also like to thank all the people who’ve helped me after they got to know me through my website. Thank you!

Another thing that took me by surprise is the tail traffic, which is impossible (for me) to predict, but which provides a steady stream of traffic (and comments) on articles that are fairly old.

If you’ve been a long-time subscriber, you might have been frustrated at times by the diverse number of subjects you find here. You might have wished for a more focused list of topics. I’ve even been told that my website could have been a lot more popular if I could choose one or two subjects and only write about them. I’m interested in a lot of things, and I like to write about anything that catches my attention. Sure, there are some things I keep coming back to, like tech or photos and videos, but even there, I tend not to write about specific things. So I’d like to thank you for sticking around (if you have indeed been sticking around)! 🙂

The one thing I regret is not writing more. I get so many ideas, but there’s so little time. With better time management skills, I could have written and published more, so that’s something I need to work on.

That’s about it for now.

Cheers!