While tidying up files in the depths of the computer earlier, I started delving through a folder titled “canned” - representing projects that had at some point in the distant past been pushed to one side… consigned to history. The existence of a project folder in and of itself points towards a time in the past when I had time to meddle with all manner of coding projects; a time before social networks, instant messaging, blogging, family life, and children had destroyed any free time I now (don’t) have.
I found all manner of dead projects - among them old websites, graphics, and numerous fragments of programming. What I didn’t expect to find within one of the dead websites was a folder called “backup”. I opened it, and discovered a text file full of SQL - “Structured Query Language” - the language of databases.
I knew immediately what it was, and my jaw fell open. 3 years worth of blog posts.
I had found the posts I had always presumed to have lost… I knew I had begun blogging on a different platform than WordPress, but had no recollection of what happened to the posts, and presumed them gone.
Much to the amusement of a friend who I shared the discovery with, I immediately set about figuring out how to turn the text file back into a database, turn them into something WordPress could understand, and then migrate them into the blog you’re reading now. After an hour of head scratching, virtual machines, and much monkeying with database commands, I had a WordPress import file containing the lost three years of my life.
How best to let people find them ? Head over to the new Archive page and feel free to have a read. January 2003 has my first blog post!