I started archiving my twitter status updates in 2017. Of course I used Rails to import the original data dump into SQLite and then continued appending to the dataset with APIs in background jobs. This freed me up to delete my data from twitter so I could own my content on my own domain. Hypothetically.

I stopped using twitter in 2022. It no longer exists, the same way that you never step in the same river twice. My content doesn’t exist there, that’s for sure. Probably soft deleted I’d guess, but not available to me or the public.

So I’m done there, and have the data here. In theory, all I need to do is hydrate the archive one time, and I’ll be done forever. It’s just plaintext, with some goofiness to inject media and mentions.

The Rails app is old and crufty and still boots. With an hour to kill, tokens to burn, and the help of LLMs, I’m now 90% of the way there to having an archive that is fully hydrated with the embarrassment of my mid-twenties to late-thirties.

I’m no longer battling IE6 like I was in 2008. I don’t miss that.