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mashby

The personal blog of Michael Ashby

Month / January 2023

Screenshot header from Interpug.com from 2001

My Matt Mullenweg Story

Yesterday was the 20-year anniversary of WordPress, so it felt like a good time to share this story about the time I gave free webhosting to Matt Mullenweg.

Back in the late 90’s and early aughts, I was really into a little handheld computer called the PalmPilot. The Internet was different back then. There weren’t as many channels of information, and one of the carry overs from the pre-Internet were User Groups. I had created a couple of Palm User Groups (PUGs) and since building web sites was mostly done by hand back then, I saw a way that I could help so I created the International Palm Users Group (InterPUG).

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Everything Old Is New Again

Went down a little rabbit hole over the past couple of weeks and thought I’d share.

I’ve been sitting back watching Twitter slowly fall apart as a spectator and rather enjoying it becasue it didn’t affect me directly. All the outrage seemed to be focused on those that used the default client app or web site. Not me. As soon as there were 3rd party clients available back-in-the-day (has it been 16 YEARS?!?), I’ve used them. First with Twitterrific and then I migrated to Tweetbot, which I’ve been using since around 2011. I’ve never had ads, promoted Tweets or timeline shenanigans, so I was immune to all the fuss. That all changed last week.

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