Ten years ago today, I posted my first entry on Vintage Computing and Gaming. It was a long, rambling piece about my personal history with computers and video games.

Ten years later, I’m still rambling. It’s been fun.

Little did I know when I started this blog how long I would be doing this, and what it would lead to. These past ten years, I have been fortunate enough to meet or interview many of my childhood heroes. I have been able to contribute, in a positive way, to the world’s understanding of computer history. And I have scanned enough material to wrap around the…

Wait a minute. I’m getting a feeling of deja vu — like I’ve been in this exact position before. Same blog software and everything. Same familiar white form box starting at me with unflinching eyes, yellow JavaScript-enabled editing tags lined along the edges like they want to jump in and join the party.

Oh, that’s why. I just checked, and I have previously celebrated the anniversary of this site four times. Every time, I pretty much say the same thing over and over again: “Thanks, this is amazing.” Here’s the proof:

The History of Celebrating VC&G Anniversaries

• Vintage Computing and Gaming Turns One (2006)
• VC&G Turns Three (2008)
• VC&G: Still Here After Four Years (2009)
• Five Years of VC&G (2010)

There may be more secret VC&G anniversary celebrations hidden away within these ten years of posts for all I know. Either way, that’s a lot of celebrating. To put an end to this, I propose a five year moratorium on VC&G anniversary celebrations.

…Starting next year, of course. For now, I’ve got something special planned.

Ten Days of Vintage

So it’s the big 1-0. We can’t stop celebrating yet — we just have to do it in a more substantial way than usual.

This time around, I plan to eschew the usual navel gazing…and replace it with the most intense navel gazing possible by publishing an interview of myself on this very blog. It’s my way of doing the behind-the-scenes stuff you guys wanted when I asked you back in April.

In addition, every day for the next 9 days, I plan to publish a new feature or anthology interview on this blog as part of the site’s 10th anniversary celebrations. I’m calling it 10 Days of Vintage. If all goes well, it will culminate with a special guest interview with someone who isn’t me.

I was originally going to publish 10 interviews over the next 10 days, but my wife said, “Are you crazy?” (Yes, I am.) So you’ll just get five or six instead. Day 1 of “10 Days of Vintage” starts today with my aforementioned interview.

The Tech World Since 2005

But before we start all that, let’s take a step back and look at this 10th anniversary from a historical perspective.

What has changed since 2005? Pretty much everything. Ten years is a long time in techland. Since November 2005, I have gotten married, moved twice, had two kids, and one of my parents died. I have gone from being 24 years old to 34 years old (ahh!) — my hair is thinning, and I’ve gained maybe 25 pounds (of pure muscle).

Moreover, when I started this blog on November 2, 2005, none of these things had happened (all US dates):

• Xbox 360 launches (November 22, 2005)
• First two Macs using Intel CPUs announced (January 10, 2006)
• Twitter launches (July 15, 2006)
• Facebook opens to everyone over 13 (September 26, 2006)
• PlayStation 3 launches (November 17, 2006)
• Nintendo Wii launches (November 19, 2006)
• Netflix begins streaming movies online (January 2007)
• Windows Vista launches (January 30, 2007)
• Google Street View launches (May 25, 2007)
• iPhone launches (June 29, 2007)
• OS X Leopard launches (October 26, 2007)
• Amazon Kindle launches (November 19, 2007)
• Tesla Roadster launches (February 2008)
• Android (OS) launches (September 23, 2008)
• Spotify launches (October 7, 2008)
• EGM ends its first run in print (January 2009)
• ICHEG opens at The Strong (March 18, 2009)
• Kickstarter launches (April 28, 2009)
• Minecraft Alpha launches (May 17, 2009)
• GeoCities closes (October 26, 2009)
• iPad launches (April 3, 2010)
• Uber launches in San Francisco (July 2010)
• Instagram launches (October 6, 2010)
• Nintendo 3DS launches (March 7, 2011)
• OS X Lion launches (July 20, 2011)
• Snapchat launches (September 2011)
• Steve Jobs dies (October 5, 2011)
• Minecraft 1.0 (full release) launches (November 18, 2011)
• Facebook introduces Timeline View (December 2011)
• Polygon (website) launches (October 24, 2012)
• Windows 8 launches (October 26, 2012)
• Microsoft Surface tablet launches (October 26, 2012)
• Wii U launches (November 18, 2012)
• Edward Snowden reveals NSA eavesdropping (June 2013)
• PlayStation 4 launches (November 15, 2013)
• Xbox One launches (November 22, 2013)
• ET Cartridges unearthed at New Mexico landfill (April 2014)
• Windows 10 launches (July 29, 2015)

That’s pretty much the entire history of the modern tech world right there (minus several thousand major events). This blog had very little to do with any of it, of course, but there it is.

And now, some VC&G statistics, as per tradition:

Number of Days VC&G has been running: 3,653 (10 years, 1 day)
Number of Hours in 10 years: 87,648
Number of Posts on VC&G: 1,010
Number of Comments on VC&G: 10,216
Avg. Comments Per Post: 10.1
Avg. Comments Per Day: 2.79
Avg. Posts Per Day: 0.27 (wow!)

With all that out of the way, I would like to thank this site’s loyal readers for all the support over the past decade. It has been fun and comforting to know there is a crowd of friendly, intelligent people out there I can share things with.

Will I still be here in ten more years? Who knows. But I’ll be 44 then and have 10 grandkids. And a luxury blogging yacht.

Discussion Topic of the Decade: What year did you first start reading VC&G?

Tags: 2005, anniversaries, announcements, News, VC&G, WWW

This entry was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2015 at 6:01 am and is filed under News & Current Events, VC&G Announcements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.