Categories: It Happened to Me

3rd Anniversary

It’s been such a busy time that the third anniversary of The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century — Wednesday, November 10th — completely slipped past me!

I’m glad to report that 3 years and 3,338 articles later (3,339

including this one), it’s still fun. Like the accordion, the blog has

paid off in ways I never could’ve imagined. When I started back in

2001, I thought it would just be a creative outlet and something to

pass the time as my job responsibilities as OpenCola were being

whittled down (in the end, all I was responsible for was building the

installer and the “About” box for our software). Instead, it expanded

my social circle, gained me a little internet notoriety and a handful

of newspaper and TV appearances, landed me a job, saved my bacon from a girl who wasn’t who she said she was and played a part in my meeting my fiancee. Hooray for unexpected uses of technology; as William Gibson once wrote: “The street finds its own uses for things.”

Or in my case, “The street musician finds his own uses for things.”

Joey deVilla

View Comments

  • Happy Blogiversary man. I now promise never to use that word again.

    BTW, while at OpenCola, were you involved at all in the beverage?

  • Aside from giving free cans to people, no.

    Cory Doctorow, John Henson and Erik "Possum" Stewart came up with the concept over lunch. They were trying to think of a way to promote the open source nature of the product. They asked themselves what the most proprietary product in the world, thought of the jealously guarded Coca-Cola recipe. OpenCola would be the antithesis.

    Two batches of the manufactured version were made. The first batch didn't taste so hot, but the second one was half-decent. When last I checked, there were still thousands of cans of the stuff sitting somewhere in a warehouse in Oakland.

    Amanda Foubister (who undertakes more interesting crfat projects in a week than I have in my entire life) came up with the recipe for the homemade version, which was pretty tasty with a strong cinnamon finish.

  • Congratulations on your blog-anniversary! I just stopped in as I was adding your feed to my Bloglines account, and I see that not only do you have spiffy new design going on here, but a new fiance, too! Mazel Tov and best of luck to you!

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