On May 30, 2019 I published the very first post to shellsharks.com, “Getting Into Information Security”. When I first started the blog I didn’t have a particularly clear idea of what I wanted to do with it, but I had the idea to write that piece and one other idea which which was to catalog all named vulnerabilities. Beyond that, I just wrote about whatever came to mind. It’s been 5 years to the day since I got that first piece out and not only has the site come a long way, but so have I.
In the beginning, I think my main focus was to keep the site mostly infosec-related in terms of my writing, but even back then I left the door open to write about other things. Afterall, the tagline for my site has always been “Infosec, Technology, Life”. The first 4 years of the site did end up skewing mostly Infosec / Tech but since discovering the IndieWeb last year, I have made a noticeable shift towards writing more about “Life”, i.e. anything non-tech / non-infosec, and it’s been a lot of fun!
The site has also gone through a number of big aesthetic overhauls and architectural redesigns. There will always be new things I want to add to the site or ways in which I wish I could rearchitect it even further, but for now, I am quite happy with the latest generation of its look-and-feel as well as the functionality itself.
I’ve not maintained the same level of active-ness throughout the last 5 years, but in more recent history I’m quite pleased with the amount of attention I’ve given it, the upgrades I’ve made, and the writing I’ve produced, and I am certainly starting the next 5 years quite strong. I plan to continue to funnel my professional work, technological side quests and life experiences into what I write about.
I really want to thank everyone who has read anything I’ve written, those who have offered kind words over social media or elsewhere, those who have given me meaningful/constructive feedback and anyone who has taken the time to subscribe, like or engage with me or my writing. Like many who start a blog, I had no expectation of building a readership. I started it with the intention of sharing my oft-repeated guidance on getting into the infosec field and as a place to write resources for myself. Over time though I have found that sure enough, there are people out there who enjoy, or get value out of what I have documented or what I have to say and it is undoubtedly a good feeling.
These days, I spend as much if not more effort writing about and encouraging others to start a site and be themselves as I do writing about tech/infosec. My experience with shellsharks has taught me more about what it means to be authentic on the web than it has helped me with my various infosec-related research things. I’m still a cybersecurity professional and as such will continue to make that a focus of what I learn and thus what I write about, but it is clear to me that I’ve developed a passion for IndieWeb advocacy and I hope to continue to inspire others both in my field and abroad to start their own journey in the personal web.
Thanks for reading. Here’s to the next 5 years!
Fun Fact: December 4, 2020 | The earliest snapshot I could get of shellsharks on archive.org
2025 • July 6 - July 13
