Paying Homage to my Baby

I started blogging on justinhartman.com on Oct 26, 2006 and carried on until I lost my domain to hackers in 2011. I lost all the content along with my domain but after years I've managed to find and restore the old content. This is that content.

Paying Homage to my Baby
Photo by Jan Tinneberg / Unsplash

The first thing you'll notice is the latest article on this website is June 3, 2011. This is the last official item I wrote on this blog after my domain was stolen and I then moved onto publishing content on justinhartman.co.

There are some 269 blog posts featured on this website. It contains personal musings, work, all my projects, social media, things I like, things I don't, and so many more. For five years this blog was very important to me – and later I would learn important to others too. I always wrote from my heart and was always honest. It was a fun time back then and I enjoyed being my authentic self; long before being authentic online was a thing. 😀

When my domain was lost, so went my enthusiasm. Truth be told, I had moved to Cape Town from Johannesburg after selling Afrigator and my boys were aged 4 and 6 months so my blogging days were ultimately over anyway. I tried with justinhartman.co but this became more a showcase of newer projects I worked on but even that has become too much for me to handle.

It has taken many years, lots of trial and error, but finally this blog is back up almost near perfect to how it was when I owned my own .com domain name. The older posts are almost guaranteed to have broken links and some images not loading but I've done pretty darn well, all things considered.

As of now, most of my writing goes into kryptojustin.com where I focus on my passion for crypto and what I think it brings to humanity.

There is so much content and it's so difficult to guide you to what is interesting but there are a couple of key moments from this blog that really stand out for me.

  1. In December 2006 I wrote I was looking for a new job. This was a scary post because even though I wrote very personal things, I had never asked for anything from people before. This was a leap well taken and it lead to me to getting this job which lead to me moving to The Times newspaper. This would take me on to launching Afrigator and, well, the rest is history as that project made its mark on the web back in 2009. I often tell people today that my blog was a profoundly powerful tool, and they shouldn't be scared to write because great things happen when you put things out there. Not bad for a blogger!
  2. Calling David Bullard a wanker was a highlight that lead to a wonderful feud between him, Vincent Maher, myself, and it led to me meeting him for a decadent lunch where we got to laugh it all off.
  3. Writing about the death of my father and then his memorial are two iconic moments for me and were also, coincidentally, very near the end of my blogging days.
  4. Equally important are the amazing family moments I shared including the announcement and birth of Ben, my second son.
  5. I met amazing friends along the way. There is no price I can place on the connections I have made from this site. These are bonds I will forever hold dear.

There is so much more but I leave it in your hands. The best place to start is the All Content page as this is an endless chronologic stream of content.

Be kind, it was a different time back then! If you have a moment, checkout kryptojustin.com, who knows what that journey may uncover!

Thank you for being a part of this journey with me ❤️

Till we meet again,
Justin