2025-02-03 11:57:00
I’m drawn to blogging because it makes me happy on several levels. I love sharing what I’ve learned. I love entertaining people and spreading joy. I love having a collection of the topics I was interested in at various points in my life. I love being able to practice honing my writing skills. And I love having a place on the internet that is completely my own.
I built my own Ruby on Rails app to handle it. I chose it because I wanted to get better at writing Rails apps.
I’ve had a personal website since 1998. It’s had many iterations and name changes and designs. I miss building websites for fun. So I’m doing it again because hey, it’s still fun as hell to do cool things with these computers of ours.
Oh yeah. At first, it was all handwritten HTML, but I’ve tried a few different content management systems like Movable Type, LiveJournal, and Wordpress.
My longer form pieces are often written in TextMate. I’ll launch a locally-running version of my site and test out formatting and whatnot before I copy and paste it into my production site.
My monthly observation posts are mostly a collection of my daily journalistic entries. Around the first day of the month, I’ll slowly re-read what I wrote about the previous month and edit the interesting nuggets down into something coherent.
For my link posts, I use a custom iPhone Shortcut. When I navigate to a URL in Safari that I wanna share here, my shortcut will grab whatever is in the <title>, then grab the URL sans any UTM or tracking params, then drop whatever I may have highlighted into a Markdown quote in a text field. I then type up my thoughts and hit publish.
This approach works great for me because there is almost zero friction to post. It only sucks when I accidentally close out of the text field, or when I write something substantially long1. I also have to remember to navigate to the article to add tags. I should probably add that into the Shortcut process at some point.
I’m the most inspired to write whenever my thoughts begin to run away. Writing forces me to grab hold of a single thread of my swirling inner dialogue and crystalize it.
When I got laid off last year, I decided to force myself to journal every single night. I didn’t lay any other parameters: I didn’t give myself any word counts or topics or agendas. Simply write.
Now that I have a journaling habit, I find that I write my thoughts down often throughout the day. I’m inspired to write whenever I make myself laugh, or whenever I feel a light bulb go off in my head, or whenever I need a break from my negative self talk.
Short link posts are almost always published immediately. Longer posts will simmer for a day or two before I eventually force myself to publish. I am pretty diligent about editing things a day or two after that, as well. For this post, I’m gonna publish it as soon as I’m done here.
I don’t have a favorite. Every single post I’ve made on here makes me cringe when I read it back, even if it’s only 24 hours later.
I plan to keep writing. I should probably upgrade the Rails engine here soon.
I also have this idea of building a “garden” here. I came across the idea of a personal site being more like a garden, and I am really vibing with that sentiment. The first step for me is to build this cool 8-bit landscape entirely in vanilla CSS, HTML, and JS. From there, I’d like to have some self-composed, optimistic lo-fi playing in the background. As one sits in the scene, various phrases and quotes will fade in and out of view.2
I mentioned my journaling habit above, and I think another goal of mine for the year is to keep up the monthly observation posts. Writing down my thoughts is helpful, and getting a bit of distance from those thoughts gives me a fresh perspective of them.
Despite seeing my own site show up in my feed on other people’s sites, I still feel like nobody ever reads this blog. So I’ll admit I felt incredibly dorky writing this post because it reminds me of how these sorts of things used to be hella prevalent back on the web when I was growing up.
But also: isn’t the point of doing these things to have fun and learn how other people approach a hobby that you’re interested in? These “challenges” serve as a collective bonding moment, an opportunity to collectively reflect on why we like this loose-knit community of goofy misfits who know what an RSS feed is.
So here’s how I’ll pass the torch: if you’ve seen these kinds of posts pop up in your own feeds these past couple weeks, copy this and do it yourself and shoot me a note when you’re done. I guarantee you’ll get at least one other person here who will be interested in your stories! 🙋♂️
When this happens, I’ll write the contents out using the Apple Notes app. I’ll then copy that text, re-run the Shortcut, and paste the edited text into the text field. ↩
I’m sure next to nobody will want to look at this thing, but I feel empowered and motivated to build something. And until I can acquire my 3D printer and more carpentry tools, I’ll have to settle for making my virtual space more serene and inspirational. Again, if only for myself. ↩
2025-02-01 12:45:00
Listen.
This blog doesn’t always have to share deep, thoughtful posts.
Sometimes, it pays to take a minute1 and appreciate that we live on the timeline where this moment was captured, uploaded to the internet, and then viewed 54,000,000 times. Humanity isn’t always bleak.
Also, I wish more people were this honest about what they were delivering. Because this video is 100% what you see on the tin.
Or more accurately, a mere 24 seconds! ↩
2025-01-30 12:25:35
This post deeply resonates with me.
Never give up seeking truth, however uncomfortable it is. Search for knowledge. Adjust your worldview. Ask. Rewrite outdated code. Drop faulty hypotheses and unreliable foundations.
Software author is, first of all, a writer. They are a person who stands upright and says: “that’s what I know for now, and that’s my best attempt to explain it.” Having this stance, preferring it to everything else, and hiding behind terms, concepts, and authority are invaluable qualities for long-term project success.
Or, basically, for any long-term human activity success.
2025-01-27 03:46:52
This makes me miss playing in an orchestra, and it also makes me miss playing Pokémon as a kid.
2025-01-26 12:57:00
When I’m in the zone, problems seem more straightforward. Even complex tasks feel pretty doable. Once I notice that, I try to pack my time with high-priority work only. I’ll put off responding to all but really important messages (Slack’s “remind me later” is a great feature). I also try as hard as I can to avoid multi-tasking, so I can keep my entire attention on getting a single task right at a time. If I feel like continuing to work through the evening, I let myself do that, knowing I’ll give myself the time back the next day or the one after that.
When I’m not in the zone, every task seems complex and rife with booby-traps. I feel like I have to proceed defensively and avoid taking risks. On days like these, I try and knock out easy wins and don’t worry so much about prioritization. I do a lot of general talking and bouncing between multiple projects. I don’t feel so bad about stopping work earlier than usual, knowing that at some point I’ll make it up with a period of hard focus
I’ve been reading Sean Goedecke’s blog for a few weeks now, and it is exceptionally helpful to hear these words at this point in my career.
This post spoke to me because I’m working on a project at work where it’s been hard to achieve flow for consistent periods of time.
I’m sharing this to remind myself that it’s okay to have rough days, and the important thing is to be honest with yourself and show up every day, even (especially?) if you don’t want to.
My latest self-improvement experiment is determining what environmental factors will induce flow. I can’t seem to find the right album, the right physical space, the right combination of stimulants and exercise, the right amount of “small wins”, whatever it might be to help trigger the excitement that comes when I get into flow.
The most consistently successful approach has been to completely accept my current situation and problem solve as best I can in that exact moment. In other words, I ask myself: how can I win this moment?
2025-01-26 04:03:00
With you. With my wife. With my kids. With my parents. With my boss. With everyone I work with. With every other Rails developer. With everyone on BlueSky. With everyone.
At least, on some things.
And that’s ok.
I should print this entire article out and hand it to everybody I know. Required reading for anyone who is trying to understand how to articulate the meaning of empathy.
One thing I’ll add: I recently listened to a podcast where they talked about the significance of music played in a church. Basically, at any point prior to the last ~150 years, if you wanted to hear music, you either had to make it yourself or physically go somewhere to experience it.
There was no permanence about music other than maybe sheet music and your memory of it.
Any time prior to 2010, I loved hearing Ignition (Remix). I heard it again the other day and had a visceral reaction against it. I turned it off and moved on.
It’s okay that I used to like the song, and it’s okay that I do not want to listen to it now.
And it’s okay that if I do hear it, I can choose to remember the good times happening all around me with that song as a background track instead of the artist.
This part was also fantastic:
When I type rails c it sure doesn’t feel as if I’ve just given a big thumbs-up to whatever shit-take DHH has just published on his blog. I’m not over here running bundle install fascism.
The thing is, I don’t care about literally anything DHH has to say that isn’t 100% about Rails. I don’t care what sort of moment he’s having or which extreme view he’s decided to cosy up to today. I don’t care about his social commentary. I don’t follow his blog or subscribe to his feeds. I’m only aware of any of his views when those outraged by it decide to push it into my life. It’s those people who are giving him more power, and elevating his status, outside of the one narrow place where he might deserve it.