I did it. A project I’ve had at the back of my mind for God knows how long. After a couple of sleepless nights researching and trying out various tools and platforms, this website is back. I want this to be the final version, the one where all my thoughts, opinions and deep dives will live for as long as I’m around. But before I talk about what I want this space to be, a trip back through time.
V1.0 (2011-2016)
I’ve been fascinated by the idea of having a little corner of the internet I could call my own. I remember the day I bought this domain name like it was yesterday. Debit cards didn’t work online back then. Sometime in 2011, my bank sent an email telling me I could get a new Visa card for online purchases. I got one and thought to myself: what could I buy? A domain name. Every tech personality I idolized had one. I should get one too. And I did. I had no idea what I was going to do with it, but my face lit up when I got the confirmation email from GoDaddy, and I used my coding skills to build my first website.
My blog during the V1.0 era, showing the variety of tech content I was writing in 2014
Twitter was in its infancy in those days (having launched in March 2006) and most people didn’t understand what it was. I had joined in 2010, and as more people signed up, I’d get questions about how it works. I got tired of repeating myself, so I wrote an article titled “How to Explain Twitter to Those Who Just Don’t Get It.” Twitter back then was so small that we all knew each other by username. I wrote that article for myself, so that instead of repeating the same explanation, I could share a link. I didn’t anticipate other Twitter users sharing it with their friends who didn’t get it. Before long I was known as “the guy who explained how Twitter works,” which makes me laugh whenever I think about it. But it taught me something about writing on the internet: no matter how small you are, your ideas can live on. I can still pull up an archive of a post I wrote 13 years ago from archive.org.
V2.0 (2016-2024)
By 2015, I had become an avid Twitter user. Most of the social networks we’ve come to love (or hate) were built around that era. A new company with some interesting twist popped up every other week. I tried many of them, but Twitter and Instagram were where you’d find me most of the time. When Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter, announced he was starting a new company to give writers a tool that would help amplify their voices, I got excited. Medium became the home of my blog as soon as it launched.
My Medium profile during the V2.0 era, showing my software engineering focused content
By this time, I had built a following on Twitter. I tweeted about things I was working on in tech, mentored aspiring engineers, and ran an e-commerce startup. If you were a Twitter user, Medium was a great fit. You could sign up with your Twitter account, and your followers could find your publications. It made sense, especially when Twitter still had the 140-character limit and no support for threads. I used Medium to write things that couldn’t fit in 140 characters. This version of my site was known for a tutorial series called #ReactForNewbies (which I deleted because of how fast it became outdated) and a personal story about why I became a software engineer.
This era was an interesting one. I went from living half my days on social networks to withdrawing from them. From checking what was trending on Twitter before brushing my teeth to deleting all my social media accounts. More on that in another essay.
I got to see what social media companies could do when left unchecked. They optimized everything they showed you to keep you hooked. Attention became a currency. Personal data got mined for financial gain. Centralized power proved dangerous. The Cambridge Analytica scandal showed how 87 million Facebook profiles were harvested without consent to influence political campaigns. YouTube’s algorithms promoted conspiracy theories to maximize watch time, leading users down rabbit holes of misinformation.
I remember the day I found out that when you purchase a digital copy of a book, movie, or music album, you don’t own it. You have a license to access it as long as you are alive. You can’t pass it down to your children or give it away like a physical item. And even if the company you patronize is doing right by their customers, companies are run by people. People come and go. From Twitter to X. From @jack to @elonmusk. $44 billion #LetThatSinkIn
V3.0 (2025-Present)
The V2.0 era taught me about decentralization: putting power back in the hands of the masses, where nobody as a single entity can be trusted, but everything as a collective can be verified. The internet worked this way in its early days.
Before we handed our digital lives to tech giants, people ran email servers in their basements. Websites lived on computers you could touch. Data belonged to the people who created it. The internet was a network of networks, not a handful of walled gardens. We built standards (POP, IMAP, FTP, HTTP) that let anyone participate without asking permission. Then we traded that freedom for convenience, and convenience for control we never had.
I want to go back to the internet that I grew up with. The one where freedom wasn’t an illusion. The one where I could build my digital home without worrying about it being taken away from me.
I wanted full control of everything I own. Ambitious, I know, but I started small. Getting off social media was the first step. This website is the next: a space that is mine, where all the data is one click away, where I can move it wherever I want, whenever I want. The benefits of decentralization are clear: no single point of failure, better security and privacy, and control in the hands of users rather than centralized entities.
Some things haven’t changed. Every essay I write is going to be a response to a question I’ve been asked frequently. Instead of repeating the same answer, there will be an essay. And if I change my mind, that essay can be updated.
Most people know me as a software engineer, but over the last few years I’ve developed other interests I want to share here. Since my last article, I became a girl dad, relocated to another country at the start of the pandemic, moved into a new role in big tech, picked up the piano again, discovered a passion for interior design and took my fitness serious. I want to write about all of it.
If you read up to this point, thank you. It’s been a long time since I wrote anything. I hope you enjoyed this post and I look forward to seeing you again here.
Welcome to V3.0.