You Know Jack

Reviving an old blog

September 13, 2026 — my life

🔄 [reconnected after 4,383 days] 🤓

I've been having a good time recently doing a bit of digital data archeology on my own life, digging through old emails, photos, and videos. Not to mention the resurrection of some old cassettes, CDs, and VHS tapes.

As part of this, I decided to revive my old blog You Know Jack (youknowjack.fivewells.com), which ran, mostly on MovableType, from 2004 to 2014:

24 2004 58 2005 25 2006 10 2007 20 2008 7 2009 4 2010 2 2011 1 2012 2013 1 2014

I was never a big blogger, obviously, but 2005 was clearly the peak year, with 58 posts, more than the next two years combined. The drop after 2008 tracks pretty well with the rise of social media. I don't know if anyone read these at the time, but it turns out I was writing them for my future self. ❤ī¸

The blog was full of broken links and missing images, due to a reliance on the permanence of the internet (it's not) as well as sites like Picasa Web (the forerunner of Google Photos), fotolog.net, and Google Videos. đŸĒĻ RIP.

With a little help from Claude Code, I moved the blog content to a static site format using Eleventy. Along the way, I restored my photo galleries on Smugmug and pointed many links the Internet Archive Wayback Machine (donate).

Some of the old posts bring back nice memories. Some are cringe-worthy, but I'll go ahead and own them all, dumb hot takes and all. However, a whole era of my life since 2012 is missing from this blog, but what the heck, maybe I'll start blogging here again. We shall see.

You can find my professional long form writing on YKJ Works and my professional hot takes on LinkedIn. On this blog, if and when I post, I promise only inanity, oversharing, and the occasional Deep Thought.

To close, here are my subjectively-judged top 10 posts from the olden times:

  1. 2008 Comic-Con 2008: This post describes my first SDCC, including an abridged description of the party at which I tried to become Nathan Fillion's friend. I left out the most embarassing part of that story.
  2. 2009 Comic-Con 2009: Memory is tricky. Before re-reading this, I had in my mind combined the SciFi Channel party described with the one in 2008. Both were legendary for me.
  3. 2011 ACL Fest Roundup: That was a great festival year!
  4. 2004 last day at Coremetrics: This post is longer and more contemplative than most on the blog, and it contains some nice melancholic memories of Mom and Dad.
  5. 2008 In Memory: Porch Kitty (2002-2008): PK was a good boy. He had an amazing personality.
  6. 2006 Time Traveler's Wife: Timelines: This post makes the list because it was once mentioned on NPR. Wish I had a recording of the show that mentioned it.
  7. 2009 Fridge Poem: I like to pretend to be a poet sometimes, and despite it's magnetic nature, I've always loved this one.
  8. 2006 i was on national tv: I had totally forgotten about this, haha!
  9. 2006 NY Comic Con 2006: This one brings back fun memories of my first ever Comic-Con experience.
  10. 2005 my first blog entry: The title is a misnomer and a bad joke, but it made me smile. And then Claude and I created the anachronistic All About You for your time-wasting pleasure.