As I mentioned last time, MATLAB Central is celebrating its 15th anniversary. You should head on over there to try one of the two contests, the Scavenger Hunt and the Triathlon. Or compete in both!

This year also marks my tenth year of blogging. I still remember in 2005 when my friend Ned Gulley asked me, “Hey Steve, what do you think about writing a blog for MATLAB Central?” Two thoughts passed immediately through my head.

• That sounds like a really interesting opportunity, and it would be a nice way to push beyond my comfort zone.
• If you do your usual thing of analyzing and pondering Ned’s question for a few days, you’re going to get cold feet.

So I just said, “Sure, I’ll do it!” A few months later, in January 2006, a little bit after Loren started her Art of MATLAB blog, I made my first post.

That first year, I posted about algorithms (such as polygon scan conversion), signal processing concepts (such as separable convolution), Image Processing Toolbox tips and tricks (such as labeling labeled objects), and MATLAB in general (such as my series on how MATLAB image display works).

And that’s pretty much the way it’s worked ever since.

I recall that it took me almost four years to get up the nerve to start posting about Fourier transform concepts. It is such a misunderstood area, and people with different technical backgrounds learn the concepts in different orders and with different terms. But I finally dipped my toes in those waters in November 2009, and now there are 21 posts in the Fourier transforms category.

I’ll leave you with pointers to two other memorable posts. First, just before a summer holiday weekend in 2007, I invited readers to post their favorite uses and abuses of image processing in the movies. I loved the comment thread that resulted.

The other was in October 2006, when I broke my nine-year silence to explain the story behind the default MATLAB image.

That’s it for this post - my 500th!