Anniversary - 10 years of website

December 6th, 2025 is the anniversary of 10 years since the first article was published on my website, and I think a little bit of “history” is welcomed, to pinpoint the major website redesigns that this website went through with during those 10 years. This is a long-ish article with personal info, some stories, bits and pieces of the “legacy” around my website. If you’re not interested in that, you can definitely skip it because you’re not losing much. Near the end of the article you’ll be able to feast on some charts generated from the visitor data of one randomly-selected month.

Design and re-design(s)

2015

In 2015 I started this website, with the idea of having a place on the Internet where I can write about my experiences with various mobile operating systems (I used to work on both Tizen and Firefox OS), with a little bit of security audits sprinkled inbetween. That year I started working on Hoshi but I didn’t had the foresight to keep a development log. Or maybe I didn’t imagine it going so far, to a fully-usable custom operating system (it did start as a bootloader, though). The website was generated by Hugo from Markdown source files (it still is).

During 2015 I’ve been writing mostly about ways to interact, modify and play with Tizen and its development devices, Samsung’s RD-210 and RD-PQ. My main machine used to be an Apple MacBook Air 11", the 2012 all-pimped-out variant (2.0 GHz dual-core i7 CPU, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD) that I still use in 2025. Cor blimey, ’s reem, innit?

The dominant colors for the 2015 website design were:

And this is how the frontpage of the website looked:

At the end of 2015, the total content on this website was:

2017

No idea why I thought compressing the main website body in a 480 pixels-wide div, would be a great idea. It wasn’t. During 2016-2017 I’ve been writing still about Tizen, as well as more security-related articles.

For a while I had the _@sizeof.cat e-mail address and boy, even though it’s a valid e-mail address, it was impossible to use it for anything. So I got a Riseup invite from Micah and this is the e-mail I’m still using today. I think between 2018 and 2025 I gave more than 50 Riseup invites for free, to people who just asked. Just the way things should be, free.

The dominant colors for the 2017 website re-design were:

And this is how the frontpage of the website looked:

At the end of 2017, the total content on this website was:

2019

In 2019 a full website re-design was in order because I got bored of the old layout, which was way too simple for my taste. It’s this design that I still work with in 2025, improving it. I removed all the Webmention support because it was pointless to have people commenting with emojis to my content. Felt cheap and stupid.

The dominant colors for the 2019 website re-design were:

And this is how the frontpage of the website looked:

2014 was the time I started working on Firefox OS and its development devices, Flame and GeeksPhone Peak, but content-wise I didn’t write on the website about this subject until 2018. In 2019 I started writing one of my most-beloved pages, “Favorite films”, that I’m still updating to this day. Also, 2019 saw the start of the “Life and death” series, which was a more serious way to tackle philosophical issues. At the end of 2019, the total content on this website was:

2021

2021 was the year I decided I needed to have my very own social media microsite (initially called so.cl), and implementing that in a static website powered by Hugo was a feat. The search function was developed using a not-so-small JSON file which contained all the content of the website, and allowed a JavaScript function to search through it. Optimal for a small website, not OK for a large one with lots of content.

That year I decided on two colors that will represent my website “branding” for the future, which would be #5550ed   and #ed1980  . ed is from “Ed, Edd n Eddy”, a cartoon from my childhood, 1980 represents an year (and an era) when the world was very different from today and 555 is a well-known integrated circuit that is used in “pulse” generation. Pulse is life.

At the end of 2021 I had to move web hosting from Exoscale to Njalla because Twitch (actually their parent company, Amazon) complained to Exoscale about a security audit I did on the 2021 Twitch Leaks, and for a Switzerland-based company, Exoscale sure was quick to give me the boot. Amazon complained to Njalla too, and threatened their ISP with a lawsuit over not cutting access to my website, but things calmed in the end.

The dominant colors for the 2021 website re-design were:

And this is how the frontpage of the website looked:

During 2020-2021 I wrote the most music album reviews, also, in 2021 I wrote the best-known article on my website, “Web Browser telemetry - 2021 edition”, and it’s still quoted to this day even though in 2025 I wrote an updated version of it. In 2020 I started working on the largest article so far, with over 40k words now. At the end of 2021, the total content on this website was:

2024

In 2022 I built my first (and only) terrarium and started working with bonsai (I still do that). The South Korean Police asked me nicely to remove a torrent file of the Samsung leak of that year (2022), but I politely declined.

In 2024 I drastically altered the theme and while initially I was pretty happy with the result and the color scheme, it turned out not to be such a great idea. I heavily dislike dark color schemes (except terminal ones, where I use Monokai mostly) and the website was pretty rough on my eyes (and I’m sure some visitors complained about it too). The “old” so.cl section got renamed to notes because I felt like the name conflicted with the so.cl social media website created by Microsoft, long gone by 2024 anyway.

I replaced the original search functions with Pagefind, better suited to search in the powerhorse that turned out to be the notes section, with over 2.5k entries. And I removed all traces of IndieWeb tags because I didn’t want (and I still don’t) to be associated with them and their community.

This re-design featured the tab-favicon-changing shenanigans that so many people complained about. It’s still implemented but no longer features the FBI, NSA, FSB, SVR and Mossad favicons.

No other major functions were added to the website, but the re-design sure took its time to be completed. Almost forgot that I participated in the 2024 Old Computer Challenge with my Nokia Booklet 3G retrobook and had lots of fun with the people involved, on IRC. After OCC, I returned to using a 2012 MacBook Air 11" as my main machine, coupled with a Nokia 808 PureView camera phone.

The dominant colors for the 2024 website re-design were:

And this is how the frontpage of the website looked (the logo pumpkin was there for Halloween):

From 2021 to 2024 I really moved into writing about security, privacy and related issues, but I did continue writing about retro hardware and ways to unlock proprietary devices. At the end of 2024, the total content on this website was:

2025

2025 is the year my website returned to the original color scheme with small adjustments, while the layout of the website was more optimized for mobile browsing (yes, I know). I eveb removed some content from the website.

A simple guestbook written in PHP, which stores its data in a SQLite database, was added to the website, because I got so many e-mails over the years where people just wanted to say hi, and it felt like a guestbook is more suited for this kind of content.

Since I removed lots of content from the website, the word count dropped drastically and I was able to return to the initial website search, featuring Lunr and a simple JSON file. Simple is always good. I skipped the 2025 Old Computer Challenge due to spiritual differences with some of the “people” in the community, and it was for the best because it turned out to be such a politics/pronounfest that split and destroyed everything.

The dominant colors for the 2025 website re-design were:

And this is how the frontpage of the website looked:

In 2025 I replaced my trusty Nokia Booklet 3G retrobook with an Apple iBook G4, and obviously I wrote a lot of articles (actually, a series) about my new old toy. I also bought myself an used Apple iPod Classic 4th generation and an used Apple iMac G5 17", planning to switch my main machine to the aforementioned iMac. I think I mentioned elsewhere that I used to be a big fan of Apple hardware and software (OS 9 and X used to have soul), and currently I massively dislike the present Apple software (mainly macOS being crap) and I could totally live without their restricted hardware. Still using that 2012 MacBook Air 11" notebook until the iMac is ready. And I’m still using the Nokia 808 PureView camera phone that’s still taking exquisite photos.

As of now, the total content on this website is:

Charts

The charts below are generated for the data over a period of one month, April 2025, obviously before the big fallout.

Visitors per day

Operating systems

Web browsers

See you for the 20 years anniversary in 2035!!