Changelog: 20+ Years of Experimenting With Writing

# 2025

• Migrated to 11ty while retaining the old design.

# 2022

• Continued using Olai as my static site generator (SSG).
• Focused on blogging extensively about building life and career “flywheels” under the Gravitas WINS brand.
• Launched a podcast, where I had insightful discussions with over 80 executives. It was a rewarding experience while it lasted.
  

# 2020

• Migrated to OpalStack, a hosting platform founded by former Webfaction employees. I continued with OpalStack because they offered the same excellent service at a similar price.

# 2019

• A family friend requested coaching in November 2019, which snowballed into a full-fledged business.
• Coached up to 50 individuals over 18 months, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Eventually, I grew tired of coaching and decided to walk away.
  

# 2016

• Shifted focus to writing tech articles, conducting experiments with Go and Node.js, and exploring their unique mental models.
• By 2019, I lost interest in technical blogging and removed much of the older content.
  

# 2015

• Frustrated by the spam and poor performance of WordPress, I built my own SSG in Go, naming it Olai after the Tamil "Olai Chuvadi" (ancient palm-leaf manuscripts).
• It symbolized the permanence of static sites.
• After the closure of a startup I began in 2014, I considered turning Olai into a SaaS product, experimenting openly through the “build in public” philosophy.
  

# 2014

• Moved to Panchkula and worked on developing an iOS app, which earned enough revenue to buy my first iMac—a proud moment.
• Documented the app creation process as part of “build in public.”
• Continued using WordPress but increasingly felt drained by spam and sluggish performance.
  

# 2010

• Kept blogging on WordPress.
• Most software projects arriving in India were maintenance-based. These projects used helpdesk / ticketing systems that weren't like the feature-rich Vantive Helpdesk systems of the client-server days. So I attempted to develop a better helpdesk system and blogged about the process before “build in public” became trendy.
• Abandoned the project due to a lack of feedback and time.
• Life moved me in other directions.
  

# 2007

# December

• Stuck with WordPress and started writing more technical articles under the blog name finally{}. The name drew inspiration from the belief: “In the end, everything will be fine. If it’s not fine, it’s not the end." "{}" at the end meant coding.
• Colleagues regularly read and commented on the blog, fostered by WordPress's decent comment features and minimal spam.
• Migrated hosting to Webfaction, which offered affordable plans and robust features like unlimited databases and in-built email.
  

# April

• Moved to WordPress by 2007 while experimenting with different CMS options.
• Content creation slowed down during this period. I was more focused on testing CMSes than on blogging.
• Continued hosting with the ex-colleague who offered these services for free.
  

# 2006

• Experimented with Drupal, which simplified handling non-blog content like travelogs and photo albums.
• Renamed my blog Celebrating the Irony Called Life. You can sense a bit of sadness in the title. It was a challenging period of my life. I was writing therapeutically.
• After I refused a US offer in the company, I had to work in night shifts for two years. I found peace in blogging in those quiet hours.
  

Developed Fotos on Web, a cross-platform photo blogging app, while in Belgium. It gained some traction—earning a $100 reward from a US professor and mentions in European magazines. I didn't know how to make a business out of it and over a period, abandoned it.

# 2004

• Adopted Mambo CMS, which streamlined blogging and publishing.
• Blogged about travels and life musings under the name Musings Along the Way.
• Returned to India during this period.
  

# 2003

• Began blogging during my time in Belgium.
• Bought the jjude.com domain and hosted on a web-host managed by a colleague.
• Manually created HTML pages and uploaded them via FTP—a labor-intensive but thrilling introduction to the web.
• The early blog lacked any specific title or focus.
• I can't believe wayback machine still has snapshots of my website from those days.