Manuel Moreale. Freelance developer and designer since late 2011. Born and raised in Italy since 1989.
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2024-05-20 00:40:00
Sometimes life presents you with a choice. Or does it? There’s a lesson to be learned here. Maybe not all decisions are important and sometimes what matters is to keep moving forward.
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2024-05-18 13:25:00
Sunny morning after the rain. This has to be up there in the list of my favorite weather conditions.
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2024-05-17 19:00:00
This is the 38th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Om Malik and his blog, om.co
Om is a writer, photographer, investor, and many other things. His blog goes back decades and there are apparently almost 900 pages worth of archive you can scroll through on his site so if you like his content you'll have plenty to read. If you're a reader of this site go check Om's post titled "Write like a human" and you'll quickly understand why I'm a fan of him.
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My name is Om. I grew up in Delhi, India. After attending university and starting off as a journalist in India, I became fascinated with technology and the emergence of the Internet. I eventually immigrated to the United States. Media was part of my worldview, and I knew very early on as a teenager that I wanted to be a writer. The rest of the journey is in pursuit of that one truth about myself. Since then, I have added “camera” to my tool belt — I try to write with my photos as well.
Being so early to the network, it made me realize the importance of publishing to the new network. IT didn’t matter what tools you were using — people still get caught up in the whole idea of tools — when writing to the network (whether with words, visuals or voice) is the main thing.
I was writing on the internet even before we had blogs. I used to publish personal stuff on the web in a hardcoded (hand written) html and post it to my minuscule home page on Pipeline, a local ISP in North East United States. Eventually I joined Forbes.com, which was one of the earliest mainstream media outlets to establish a dedicated web team and website.
I used to have a newsletter - dotcomwala- that I would send to a few hundred people and I shared a lot of “news” I would pick up from my works as a reporter. It didn’t pass the rigor of a mainstream media website, so it was my lightweight take on news, even though I had confirmed it with a one or two people, just not three people a mainstream news outlets expected you to have. Eventually the newsletter gave way to a website - GigaOm — and in late 2001 it became pretty obvious that the idea of “technology magazines” covering technology on a weekly or monthly cadence was a dumb idea. Tech moved so fast, and the print world so slow.
I decided to basically turn my website into a blog — first with Blogger, then with Moveable Type, because it allowed me to have comments and community. In a way, my evolution as a writer happened as the network matured and gave us an opportunity to put the power of the network to work.
My initial focus was core technology— which is what I liked intuitively. It was always a bit more skewed in favor of startups, because I have always liked upstarts with long odds. We in tech at that time were all upstarts. Over the years I have become more explanatory in my writing and do more analysis than just plain news. That transition was a result of personal growth, more experience and ability to be very confident in being able to articulate myself without needing editors.
I would say my grounding in core technology and lessons learned as a Forbes reporter allow me to understand the downstream impacts of technology, and at the same time allowed me to think about the possibilities of what new chips, new photonic gear or new storage could make possible.
For me, blogging is my perfect form of writing and expression. As a reporter I respect the facts, and as an essayist I can make correlations. Blogging gives me the voice, the platform and freedom to be a tad casual, should the topic require so.
My creative process is pretty uncreative really. I am constantly reporting. I am always reading. I am always making notes — either mentally or on paper. I keep a common place notebook — I take notes, write down thoughts and basically leave myself messages. I write with a 100 year old pen and ink made by a company that is almost 300 years old. There is something gratifying about the technology perfected in the past, allowing me to dream about the future.
I often get ideas for a blog post, and when that happens I start writing. I use my phone to draft a post. I use the phone to dictate a document. And then I run it through some kind of tool to check grammar. I use Lex for writing and editing — this is AI powered and smarter version of Google Docs. I use Sudowrite for my creative writing which I almost never share.
I have had editors and collaborators in the past, but now I use a lot of ai tools to fill out the procedural aspect of the writing and editing. I still have half-a-dozen people (including former editors) who I share my ideas and longer pieces to get second and often third opinion. I find that as I have grown older, I want to be more measured (and less bombastic) in my approach.
I am not too picky about where I work — I write in cafes, airports, planes, back seat of a cab, or I will just stop on the side of the road if the words come to me. During the pandemic I converted a spare room into my office, but it is mostly for my other creative practice — photos and photo editing. I have a Mac Studio with a big monitor for editing images. I occasionally use it for writing and zoom calls. But, when it comes to computers, I write on an iPad with a keyboard.
However, most of my writing including blog posts start in a notebook. I buy fountain pen friendly notebooks from Japan. I have a bunch of fountain pens, though my favorite is a 100-year old pen. It is too fragile to travel, so I have a couple of others, like a Lamy AiOn which takes cartridges and is made out of metal that I can taken when I have to travel overseas. I have a couple of others that are almost always in my bag — either with blue or another blue ink.
This is fairly easy. I was on Moveable Type, but I was an early convert to open source, and was an early switcher to WordPress. I think I was in the initial batch of users even before they officially launched the alpha. I have been on WordPress since then. It is hosted on Pressable. It is fairly simple WP installation. I use some plugins, such as Postmark for my newsletter. There are some others for photo galleries and categories, but mostly whatever comes with WP and with the official Jetpack plugins.
So, this is a tough question for me. When I started my blog, it was a personal blog. GigaOM, eventually became a company, and my personal blog ended its existence. A few years later, I started my current blog, On My Om (Om.co) to really revive all my non-professional writing, and musings since I couldn’t publish those on GigaOM, which had become a collaborative publication and was more polished than my casual scribbles. When GigaOM shutdown in 2015, I started publishing more “tech” related writing on Om.co, and since then I have been writing there.
The name, On My Om, is a reflection on the reality — this is just me, and no-one else writing. It is much more like my old blog, as it allows me to be quirky about things that I care about. I recently restructured the blog to reflect the new reality of my writing — for instance, I separated essay and interviews into their own categories. I have a daily blog. And I created two categories — one for my photography and one for my other obsessions such as fountain pens and inks.
As to using a different platform, I have toyed with the idea, but I don’t because I am so familiar with WordPress. Plus, I am friends with Matt Mullenweg and he does good tech support, when I run into a problem. No seriously, though I like what Ghost is doing. I think WP could learn a lot from them in how to seamlessly go between email publishing and blog publishing. On email front, I love what Buttondown.Email is doing. I highly recommend them over Substack or any other large entity because they are independent.
I don’t monetize my blog. I don’t look at stats. I don’t care about traffic. I don’t want to put any ads on my blog — and the reason is that through the luck of the draw and my good fortune, I have been able to make a decent living and can afford to spend a few hundred bucks a year on my blog. For me, Om.co is my homestead on the web, where people come to either get to know me better, learn about things I have learned about, or generally be part of my community. I am on the other end of the whole blog cycle. Almost like I have come a full circle. I had started Gigaom as a means of expression at that time, and then it became a business, and well, here I am again.
As for supporting others — I have subscriptions to about half a dozen newsletters (not tech), and a whole bunch of small and indie publications. I love supporting the small media, but don’t have time for establishment media outlets. I don’t much care for some of the larger blogs as well. And same goes for the larger YouTubers and podcasts. You need to catch them early — that’s when they really are pure and hustling to serve the reader.
I don’t know if I have a must read blog any more — there are many, that I love. If you were to twist my arm, I would say Arun Venkatesan has a low key blog at Arun.is. I like his “design” centric approach and intentionality. I also love Last Word On Nothing, a really great group blog by bunch of science writers. It is fantastic.
Well, this is a good one. I love a photography-focused podcast, Photo Work. I am also in love with The Slowdown Podcast. I highly recommend using Readwise as a replacement for Pocket. It is very good. And my current favorite desktop tool is MacWhisper — it is basically transcription on the desktop and not having to share all your audio with others. I love creating voice memos and using it to transcribe, and then ideating with it on Lex or one of the other AI-enhanced editing tools.
This was the 38th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Om. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and all supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
Jamie Thingelstad (RSS) — Piet Terheyden — Raul Montala (RSS) — Eleonora — Carl Barenbrug (RSS) — Steve Ledlow (RSS) — Paolo Ruggeri — Nicolas Magand (RSS) — Rob Hope — Chris Hannah (RSS) — Pedro Corá (RSS) — Colin Walker (RSS) — Sixian Lim (RSS) — Matt Stein (RSS) — Winnie Lim (RSS) — Flamed (RSS) — C Jackdaw (RSS) — Kevin Humdrum (RSS) — Fabricio Teixeira (RSS) — Rosalind Croad — Frank Meeuwsen (RSS) — Mike Walsh (RSS) — Markus Heurung — Jeremy Bassetti (RSS) — Juan Villela (RSS) — Michael Warren (RSS) — Chuck Grimmett (RSS) — Robin Harford (RSS) — Bryan Maniotakis (RSS) — Barry Hess (RSS) — Chris Jung (RSS) — Ivan Moreale — Khürt Williams (RSS) — Ben Werdmuller (RSS) — Cory Gibbons — Luke Harris (RSS) — Lars-Christian Simonsen (RSS) — Seth Werkheiser (RSS) — Cody Schultz — Brad Barrish (RSS) — Nikita Galaiko — Erik Blankvoort — Jaga Santagostino — Andrew Zuckerman — Mattia Compagnucci (RSS) — Thord D. Hedengren (RSS) — Fabien Sauser — Maxwell Omdal — Numeric Citizen (RSS) — Jarrod Blundy (RSS) — Andrea Contino (RSS) — Sebastian De Deyne (RSS) — Nicola Losito (RSS) — Lou Plummer (RSS) — Leon Mika (RSS) — Veronique (RSS) — Neil Gorman (RSS) — Reaper (RSS) — Matt Rutherford (RSS) — Adam Keys (RSS) — Aleem Ali (RSS) — İsmail Şevik (RSS) — Nikkin (RSS) — Jeremy Felt (RSS) — Hans (RSS) — Mark Pitblado (RSS)
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2024-05-16 04:10:00
Google I/O 2024 is underway and a bunch of articles came out about what Google's changes to its core product (search) mean for the web as a whole. Sean Hollister at The Verge has a piece on the new “web” search option (a piece that starts with “This is not a joke”) while Casey Newton wrote a nice articled titled “Google’s broken link to the web”.
Unsurprisingly Google has revealed that AI is going to be integrated pretty much everywhere, and the goal is to let the AI do the googling for you. Which sounds great, in theory. After all, as the fine people at The Browser Company have eloquently explained to the world, the web is in such a terrible state that the only way out of this madness is to let an AI deal with all the garbage and spammy content that’s out there. I already expressed my doubts about this plan and I don’t think what Google is doing is any better.
Google, as a company, is in an odd position. They are, fundamentally, an advertising company. Almost 70% of their revenues are generated by ads. Ads on the SERP, ads on their various products and ads served by their ad network on 3rd party websites. When they say that they’re going to do the googling for you they don’t just mean the search part. In theory, AI will also go find the information you’re looking for on 3rd party sites so they’ll do the googling but also the actual browsing. Did you spot the issue? How are people going to consume ads on 3rd party sites if you no longer need to visit 3rd party sites? And if AI is going to take over the entire top part of the SERP with its generated answer, why should companies pay Google to appear at the top of the search results if those search results are not going to be seen by the majority of people?
It’s a bizarre situation. The answer to missing ad revenues is obviously going to be more ads. I’m sure Google will figure out a way to inject ads into their AI-generated bullshit.
Some people are obviously freaking out about the recent news. That’s because a huge number of sites out there rely on Google to bring traffic to their websites, sites that are then monetised via ads in most cases. If traffic goes down, ad revenues go down. And that’s a bad thing, right? Right? Well, maybe? I guess it depends. The current state of the web is unsustainable. And maybe AI and AI-generated garbage is what we need to push the current situation over the edge and force some changes.
I think curation, actual human curation, is going to play an important role in the future. In a web filled with generated nonsense, content curated by knowledgeable human beings is going to be incredibly valuable.
I find this current phase of the web incredibly interesting. I have no idea how things will evolve but I’m glad I can be part of it, even just as an external observer.
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2024-05-15 00:25:00
I spend my time doing things online. I design and code websites for clients, I make websites for friends, and I start—and almost always shut down—all sorts of weird side projects. It’s easy to take this online life too seriously. If you go online you’ll immediately find people discussing business strategies and ways to monetise everything they do. Which is fine but also exhausting. The web is so caught up in the hustler mentality that it’s forgetting that some things can just be hobbies.
I interviewed 37 people for my P&B series at this point and if I’m not mistaken, all 37 of them are just happy to have a blog they pay for and have no plans to monetise it whatsoever. It’s a hobby, they enjoy doing it and that’s absolutely fine.
In a few days, I’ll renew the domain for [theforest.link]. That site has so far generated 0$. I spent around 50$ just for the domain at this point. But should I care? Should I monetise this? Hell no. Carl and I built it because it’s fun, because the idea of helping people discover some new random wacky website is fun.
The other day I was doing some design admin on my Ko-Fi because I wanted to update a few of the graphics in there. And while I was doing that I had this completely stupid idea of creating a new membership tier called The "I have F** you money" Club. Do I expect anyone to actually subscribe? Obviously not, I did it because it’s silly, because I hope someone will laugh at the stupidity of it all. I did it because it’s fun to do silly things.
Did you make anything silly recently? If you did show it to me! Send me an email, I want to see it.
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2024-05-12 20:40:00
I usually don’t write about this kind of stuff, primarily because I find these internet controversies to be quite boring. The probably appropriate response to an Apple ad is “meh, whatever” and that was—and still is—my reaction. The ad is uninspiring but there’s one creative aspect of it that bothers me: I don’t understand the connection between the hydraulic press and the visual images of destroying everything to the alleged capabilities of the iPad. Like, I get what they’re trying to communicate but the visual metaphor they decided to use makes no sense to me. That’s the part I just don’t get. But as they say there's no such thing as bad publicity.
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2024-05-12 02:20:00
One of the most frequent complaints about the current intersection of the web and society is that we share too much. Every day more and more content is shared in more and more online places. We share videos, we share pictures, we share audio and written words. And yet, if you take some time to actually look at what’s shared, you’ll notice that very little is actually shared. There’s a lot of quantity, not much quality. And I’m not talking about quality from an artistic point of view. I’m talking quality from a humane point of view.
Maybe it’s just me but the more time I spend online the more I enjoy consuming content from people who are not afraid to share content in a very honest and sometimes vulnerable way. People who share without an agenda, people who share because they think it’s important to communicate both the ups and the downs of this shared experience we’re all going through called life.
Life can be joyful and wonderful and marvellous. But it can also be a fucking nightmare. And yes, it’s important to celebrate the victories and to immortalise the glorious moment. But it’s also important to document the failures, the shitty moments, the dark places our minds find themselves stuck in. It’s all part of what makes us unique after all.
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2024-05-10 19:00:00
This is the 37th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Riccardo Mori and his blog, morrick.me
To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
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Hi everyone, I’m Riccardo Mori. When it’s time to introduce myself, I rarely deviate from what you can read in the About Me page on my website, mostly because I did my best there to condense so much information in a few paragraphs. Anyway, I’m from Italy but I permanently relocated to Spain almost 20 years ago. I’m a writer — I write about technology, design, user interfaces and usability, but I also write fiction. While I wish writing were my one and only job, the daily bread is currently provided by my work as freelance translator and localisation specialist.
My educational background is rooted in the liberal arts. During my university years, I focused on philology, Italian and English literature, and art history. While I was in uni I also did some theatre, both as an actor and also as a dramatist, but that was a brief experience. Something that lasted a bit longer were reading performances, where I used to read some of my poetry in front of a live audience. There were also specific pieces I wrote for specific performances where I was accompanied by jazz musicians. I also did some book designing work and I even worked at an advertising agency for a relatively brief period of time.
How did I end up doing what I do today? Well, my fascination with computers started at a young age, in the early 1980s (yeah, this is sort of an age reveal, haha), and towards the end of that decade I was involved with DTP (Desktop Publishing) and the Macintosh as my primary platform. I had been wanting an Apple computer for a long time, but back then those machines were really out of my and my family’s budget. Having the opportunity to use them for work was a blast. My first workstation was a Macintosh SE with a laser printer and a handheld black-and-white scanner. But I had to wait until 1993 to finally be able to have a Mac all for myself. Up until then, it was essentially PC at home, and Mac at work. Which actually was kind of cool, because I was learning a lot of things about both platforms.
So, as my technical experience grew during the 1990s, I started doing some freelance work as ‘tech support guy’ and consultant. At the same time, I was equally busy on the literary side: between the late 1980s and early 1990s I wrote a lot of poetry and short stories, and in 1993 I started Laboratorio Quillink (The Quillink Workshop), later renamed Quillink Press, a sort of small design & print centre aimed at publishing and distributing my own and other people’s works, which soon became the official brand for all my self-published material.
Since I had been studying English since the age of 4, by this time I was quite proficient and fluent in it, so I did some literary translations as well. Then I was commissioned a few technical translations for computer magazines, and eventually I started freelancing as technical translator (this was late 2000-early 2001). I was a collaborator of Macworld Italia magazine for the better part of the 2000s. Another thing I’m proud of is that in the years 2001-2010, I translated into Italian Bruce Schneier’s Crypto-Gram, free monthly newsletter providing summaries, analyses, insights, and commentary on security. By the way, I strongly recommend subscribing to it and following Schneier’s work if you care about cybersecurity and security in general (and in today’s world, you definitely should care about this stuff).
After relocating to Spain and learning Spanish, I extended my translation services to include Spanish as well. For the past 8 years or so, my translation work has for the most part shifted towards localisation, which means providing translations for software applications and interfaces; and this has its own set of challenges, as you don’t simply translate text from a language to another. You often have to work with UI constraints, and you have to translate following a specific context with its own rules, which may change from project to project.
I really hope this doesn’t come across as me bragging about all the things I’ve done… The truth is, there are people who, right from the start, have a clear idea of what they will do in their lives, and they work relentlessly towards that goal. I’m not one of those people. Sure, I knew I wanted to be a writer, and I worked hard to be a good writer, but I soon realised that writing was simply not enough to make a living. I’ve always been a curious person, obsessed with learning stuff and expanding my knowledge. All the things I’ve mentioned here — and, believe me, I left out a lot of other stuff — just reflect this kind of hunger, and also the need to find my path in life.
When you have so many interests, you end up having a lot of hobbies too, but since this is getting long already, I’ll just briefly mention photography, vintage technology and devices, typography, watches and horology in general, music and gaming. Of course I don’t have enough time to be a real nerd in any of these sectors (apart maybe from photography, which is something I cultivated since the 1980s, in film and digital format), so I’ll typically go through these in a sort of rotation, with periods where I’m more into typography, or watches, or old computers, etc. You get the idea.
I started writing online in 1998, but at first my contributions were limited to mailing lists and Usenet newsgroups. In 2001 I opened an account on LiveJournal, and kept a sort of hybrid between blog and journal for many years there. In its early years, LiveJournal was a fantastic social network, deeper and more meaningful than anything that came after, like Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr. I have ‘met’ people there I still correspond with after all these years; people whom I consider good personal friends and not just Internet acquaintances.
The years between circa 2000 and 2007 saw a real boom for the blog as a form of personal expression, and I was fascinated. So much quality writing, so many interesting subjects, so many interesting people, especially in the tech sphere. But before WordPress came about, having a personal blog meant doing almost everything by hand. Registering a domain, paying for Web hosting, and knowing your HTML (and later CSS and JavaScript) to craft your own website. I didn’t have that expertise, and I didn’t know where to begin. When Apple launched iTools — the first iteration of what would become MobileMe and then iCloud — one of the service’s features was giving each user a small personal Web space (HomePage) to publish online. My first official tech blog was published there using a mediocre Mac application called BlogWave Studio. This was around late 2004-early 2005. It was mostly in Italian.
It was bare-bones, slow to load, clunky to publish. When WordPress arrived in 2006 (if I remember well), that changed everything. I opened an account on WordPress.com (the free blogging service) and published my ‘proper’ tech blog in Italian there from late 2005 to 2010. It was called Autoritratto con mele (“Self-portrait with apples”) to mean it was about tech from the perspective of an Apple user.
To reach a wider audience, and taking advantage of how easy publishing with WordPress was, I started a tech blog in English around 2007, called The Quillink Observer. Having two separate blogs seemed a good idea at the time. I could provide articles and insights for both my Italian audience, and the wider English-speaking audience at large.
But then I started yet another blog in 2008, to specifically talk about my passion for vintage Macs, vintage software and technology in general. It was aptly called System Folder. It’s still accessible, but sadly these past years I’ve only had very little time to update it.
At this point, however, properly maintaining three main blogs was becoming a little too much work. So in 2011 I finally decided to merge Autoritratto con mele and The Quillink Observer into one website featuring articles in both English and Italian. I also decided it was time to own my identity, so I launched morrick.me by registering and paying for the domain and for the Web hosting, and using WordPress as content management system because it was the one I was most familiar with, and still one of the most flexible.
When I was ready to launch my website/blog, I tried hard to find a name that could be catchy and also could really encapsulate my identity. But the few decent names I came up with just weren’t good enough, so my blog’s title is simply my name.
As for the writing style and my main source of inspiration: it was John Gruber and his Daring Fireball blog, initially. He has certainly inspired a lot of tech bloggers and writers over the years, and I have enjoyed his production for a long time. Lately, however, I feel he has lost a lot of his initial objectivity and what I call ‘critical grip’ by being a bit too close to Apple.
At the time of writing, my main blog is 13 years old, and it has gone through three major visual redesigns. Every time I changed its look, it was mostly due to strictly technical reasons: the blog’s WordPress theme was no longer supported, the theme creator couldn’t keep up with WordPress’ updates, and things started to break. At first I tried salvaging the whole theme structure by heavily editing chunks of CSS myself, but it was too cumbersome, and ultimately too fragile. Switching to a better-maintained WordPress theme was more efficient. The one I’m currently using is a paid theme by a small company called ElmaStudio, it’s still maintained, and it’s simple enough to not interfere too much with the platform updates WordPress routinely puts out.
You can see how my blog looked in 2011, and read about other trivia (like the evolution of my identity logo) in an article I published in 2021, 10 years of morrick.me.
I remember one tech blogger writing, many years ago, that the secret of a successful blog was to ‘show up every day, no matter what’. I appreciate those who do, those who indeed publish daily or almost daily on their blogs. But it’s just not my style. It’s not bad advice, but to me it feels like business advice. And for me, having a blog isn’t a business endeavour. I have a blog because I want to share knowledge and perspectives. It’s because I want to communicate whenever I feel I have something to say. Consequently, I only publish when I have something to say. As I wrote in a past article, for something to appear on my blog, three main conditions have to be fulfilled:
I typically apply these rules/conditions strictly, that’s why I generally update my blog 1-3 times per month, sometimes less.
Ideas for articles may come from what’s currently being debated in tech; some important product or innovation that’s been introduced; some product I discovered and I’m satisfied with, which I feel I should review to let more people know about it; some particular user interface that’s worth talking about or criticising (be it the UI of an app, of an operating system, of an appliance, etc.); more general themes regarding technology and its impact on our lives; things like these. And I tend to do my homework before speaking. I don’t like to just talk about something because I feel I have to have an opinion on everything — like a lot of people do today, sadly.
As for the writing and the tools, my workflow is rather simple:
Not really. Whenever I’m writing an article I want to publish on my blog, I typically have a clear idea of what I want to talk about and how I want to talk about it. I’ve written pretty much everywhere — though I will admit I prefer to have a quiet environment around me. I write best at home, at dead of night.
Also, the tools I favour for writing are pen and paper, and traditional computers — sometimes even vintage computers, like one of my old ThinkPads, or my 2008 black MacBook running Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. These are less distracting environments than iPads and iPhones for me.
Both the process of registering the website and providing Web hosting were handled by a dear friend of mine on my behalf. So I don’t exactly know where the domain is registered. Web hosting is provided by bluehost.com, which I would say it’s a pretty reliable service. I only experienced a couple of hiccups in thirteen years. And as mentioned above, I use WordPress as CMS.
No, not really. Maybe the only thing I would do differently would be to avoid free solutions and avoid publishing on Web spaces I don’t own. I would start immediately with having a personal website, hosting, etc. Which is the exact piece of advice I would give to anyone who wants to start seriously blogging today. Use free solutions if you just want to publish something online occasionally and don’t care much about owning your identity. I still think WordPress is the best option because the company has reached a ‘too big to fail’ level by now.
I currently have to pay for two registered domains, and the Web hosting (which is shared between the two). The whole operation costs me about €100-120 annually. My blog doesn’t generate revenue, apart from the occasional donation, and what little I make by selling my two books of short stories (advertised in the footer of my website). Since I have a job, I don’t need to monetise my blog. Some people told me I should do it anyway, because ‘you never know’, but I currently see no way to monetise it apart from resorting to a) advertising, and b) putting some content behind a paywall. And I hate both options.
I hate what advertising has become online. I hate that today if you want a great browsing experience, you need to install all kinds of ad-blockers. And I don’t want to subject my readers to all that crap. You can visit my website with all blockers and trackers disabled, there’s pretty much nothing going on in the background apart from some basic WordPress analytics.
And since my blog is not a news outlet and I don’t have to pay anyone, putting what I write behind a paywall makes no sense to me. I don’t want to divide my audience into a privileged tier and a free-for-all tier. Nor do I want to create special content for ‘patrons’ that is invisible to everyone else.
Time ago I tried a new spin on a consolidated formula, and I called that the Small Fish sponsorship. As I mention on the relevant page of my website:
…The spirit behind this is simple: I’m (still) a small fish compared to other prominent tech-oriented blogs and websites, and I can’t offer their kind of traffic or visibility. Thus what I ask in return is relatively modest compared to those blogs. [€450 for a week-long slot] Still, if a sponsor has a particularly compelling product to offer, what I can provide is potentially more than just a mention and a thank you.
It hasn’t had much of a success, so far, but I’m not complaining. I thought it was an option worth offering. For now, I’m happy with the way things are: I provide free content, and if you really appreciate something I wrote, or you found it particularly useful or illuminating, you can send a donation or purchase my books — they’re only $1.99 each.
Do I like people monetising their blogs and content? I guess it depends on how they do it, what they offer, the quality of such content, and so forth. As a reader, I tend to favour those creators who find a way to monetise their content that doesn’t influence the content itself. I mean, finding sponsors is great, but when your production is constantly sponsored, I start wondering about your objectivity. I generally appreciate those creators who manage to monetise what they do, what they write, by clearly separating the content from the money. An easy example: those who offer cool merchandise as a way to support them. Perhaps it’s not the greatest way to make money, but if you write tech reviews and you have a little e-store with t-shirts, mugs, desk accessories, etc., it’s very likely that I won’t question your integrity when I read the stuff you publish.
Another way to monetise content that’s quite popular today is to use Patreon. It’s not a bad idea, but again, it depends on how the creator embeds it in their production. Some people use it in its simplest form: Support me on Patreon. There are no particular perks, just different tiers for support, from the bare minimum to fan-level support. Others do the same, but also offer some perks if you pick higher tiers of patronage. I’m fine with these options. What I don’t like is using Patreon as a way to basically paywall your content. Like those ‘free’ apps you download from the App Store, which are barely functional in their free default state, and start being useful when you either make an in-app purchase or, worse, activate a subscription.
If 90% of what you offer is a ‘secret’ unless people become patrons, I can’t even evaluate how good (or bad) your stuff is without at least paying you once (by becoming a patron for one month, then cancelling in case I don’t like what I see).
There isn’t anyone in particular I’m supporting in the blog community on a regular basis. But I have shown support for different people in different ways at different times. By purchasing something via an affiliate link. By purchasing an app if the blogger in question is also a developer. By sending donations in difficult moments when the blogger specifically asked for it. By purchasing some merchandise. You get the idea.
Over the years, I’ve become increasingly selective with whom I read. There are a few prominent names in this short list, and chances are you already know them or they’ve already been mentioned by people you’ve previously interviewed. Anyway, here goes:
Other blogs I enjoy:
Picking a person from this list for your next interview is hard, as I’m tempted to just tell you to try contacting them all. I’d give precedence to Nick Heer, Michael Tsai and Lucio Bragagnolo if you haven’t interviewed them already. They’re all busy people, but they’re also approachable and amiable, so perhaps they’ll play along.
I’ll start with a little shameless self-promotion: I’ve written two books of short stories, which I call ‘Minigrooves’. They’re available on Apple’s Books Store and on the Amazon Kindle Store.
I’m currently working on a science-fiction novel called Low Fidelity, a project I started so many years ago. I’ve been working on it for a long time, not because it’s a particularly monumental work (although it’ll be comprised of more than one book), but because I’ve alternated periods of intense inspiration and periods of low tide where life and my main job took extreme precedence over it. You can read a bit more about Low Fidelity on this page at the Crosslines/Low Fidelity website. (That website is a bit old and may contain outdated information, so navigate the rest of it at your risk, haha).
With all this out of the way, here’s a brief list of books I recommend. I won’t add any commentary, because otherwise this interview would never end. It’s enough to say that these are all good food for the mind.
Fiction:
Non-fiction:
While I may listen to specific podcast episodes if they come strongly recommended, I’m currently not subscribed to any podcast. To be honest, I don’t particularly like the medium, but it’s mostly a ‘me’ problem. There are people who are capable of listening to podcasts while doing something else. I can do that with music, but with the spoken word, it gets complicated, especially for someone like me who has to read and write a lot for work.
To properly enjoy a podcast, I would have to just sit and listen to it. And many podcasts — particularly tech-oriented ones — are made of episodes lasting well over one hour and a half each. I just don’t have the time. I also think that it’s a bit disrespectful to commandeer the audience’s time by producing extremely long podcast episodes.
I shall end my response and this interview with a short list of games that I’ve found to be unique in one way or another. Everyone’s taste in games is different, so I’ll just offer their titles and people can check them out on their preferred platform (Steam, Epic Games, etc.). Not all of these are available for the Mac, unfortunately:
Thank you, Manuel, for contacting me and giving me the opportunity to talk about myself and share all this information. All the best, and let’s keep in touch!
This was the 37th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Riccardo. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and all supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
Jamie Thingelstad (RSS) — Piet Terheyden — Raul Montala (RSS) — Eleonora — Carl Barenbrug (RSS) — Steve Ledlow (RSS) — Paolo Ruggeri — Nicolas Magand (RSS) — Rob Hope — Chris Hannah (RSS) — Pedro Corá (RSS) — Colin Walker (RSS) — Sixian Lim (RSS) — Matt Stein (RSS) — Winnie Lim (RSS) — Flamed (RSS) — C Jackdaw (RSS) — Kevin Humdrum (RSS) — Fabricio Teixeira (RSS) — Rosalind Croad — Frank Meeuwsen (RSS) — Mike Walsh (RSS) — Markus Heurung — Jeremy Bassetti (RSS) — Juan Villela (RSS) — Michael Warren (RSS) — Chuck Grimmett (RSS) — Robin Harford (RSS) — Bryan Maniotakis (RSS) — Barry Hess (RSS) — Chris Jung (RSS) — Ivan Moreale — Khürt Williams (RSS) — Ben Werdmuller (RSS) — Cory Gibbons — Luke Harris (RSS) — Lars-Christian Simonsen (RSS) — Seth Werkheiser (RSS) — Cody Schultz — Brad Barrish (RSS) — Nikita Galaiko — Erik Blankvoort — Jaga Santagostino — Andrew Zuckerman — Mattia Compagnucci (RSS) — Thord D. Hedengren (RSS) — Fabien Sauser — Maxwell Omdal — Numeric Citizen (RSS) — Jarrod Blundy (RSS) — Andrea Contino (RSS) — Sebastian De Deyne (RSS) — Nicola Losito (RSS) — Lou Plummer (RSS) — Leon Mika (RSS) — Veronique (RSS) — Neil Gorman (RSS) — Reaper (RSS) — Matt Rutherford (RSS) — Adam Keys (RSS) — Aleem Ali (RSS) — İsmail Şevik (RSS) — Nikkin (RSS) — Jeremy Felt (RSS) — Hans (RSS) — Mark Pitblado (RSS)
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2024-05-10 03:55:00
We’re all familiar with the idea of the web, the www, the global network we pretty much all use daily. When we say “the web” we mean the whole thing, from the biggest of social platforms to the smallest of personal blogs. The web is cluttered, minimalistic, loud, and also quiet. It’s a cacophony, a hotchpotch of styles, ideas, and cultures. Bo described it well:
A little bit of everything
All of the time
And in this eclectic mix, different people have tried to carve out niches, in an attempt to separate some of that content from the rest: the small web, the cozy web, the personal web, the slow web, the quiet web. I find it interesting that all these have one thing in common and that is the very humane scale of the vision. The bigger the web becomes, and the more power we’re given, the more some people feel the need to get back to a more intimate space, a space where things move slower, where connections and interactions are given time to develop.
Or maybe I’m just projecting. Maybe it’s because that’s what I’m trying to find here in this weird digital space I created for myself.
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2024-05-09 02:30:00
Sometimes you have to listen to the messages life sends your way. And today that message is that I have to write something about guestbooks. In less than 2 hours, two emails landed in my inbox—I love emails, if you want to get in touch please do send one—both on the topic of guestbooks.
The first one was from Barry. His site now has a lovely guestbook that I haven’t signed yet because I want to come up with a nice drawing for it. Barry also works on a blog platform called Pika, worth checking out if you want to start a blog—you should—and you’re considering a hosted solution.
The second email was a ping from Devastatia’s website. She wrote a post on the subject of guestbooks because apparently 123guestbook.com, one of the OG sites, is shutting down. If for some reason you were using it to power your guestbook you should consider exporting your content and preserving all the signatures in some way.
Guestbooks are cool. If you haven’t already, go sign mine and let me know if your site has one because I’m going to both sign it and also add it to the list on my guestbook page.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2024-05-05 17:10:00
The more I read and think about the state of the web the more I’m convinced the only way out of this mess is if we all collectively do something to make things better. By we I mean the people who care about the open web, about personal sites, about sharing outside social media. I have a post coming focused on curation but today I just want to do something very simple and that is sharing a bunch of links I think are interesting. I’m probably going to do this more often moving forward because it’s something I personally appreciate when other people do. So without further ado, here’s a bunch of links:
Enjoy the Sunday everyone.
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2024-05-03 19:00:00
This is the 36th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Cory Dransfeldt and his blog, coryd.dev
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My name is Cory Dransfeldt and I'm located in Camarillo, California (a suburban town north of Los Angeles and where I grew up). I studied business in college and minored in economics. At the time I thought it was a practical choice and I was also terrified of the math involved in studying computer science. In hindsight, I wish I'd made a different choice, but don't necessarily regret the one I made at the time.
My first job out of college was working on the website of the local newspaper (I started as a freelance employee during college and became full-time after). This role was focused on updating the website with content the night before the print edition became available and was done in a utilitarian, but reliable Django-based CMS. I picked up some basic front end development knowledge working on multimedia projects and building my own tools to make the job easier.
I began to learn JavaScript by writing themes for Bowtie and Ecoute as part of the MacThemes forum community. I expanded my web development knowledge by volunteering to build websites for metal bands I remain a fan of and friends with like Cynic and Augury. I gained a lot of knowledge and ended up with merch, concert tickets and some really great experiences out if it all.
I've built a career out of being a self-taught frontend-focused developer and have worked at startups, nationally recognized retailers (I've worked on every eCommerce stack short of Shopify) and several different SaaS providers. The backend developer I worked with at my first startup told me to learn languages and pickup frameworks as needed — that advice continues to serve me well.
Unsurprisingly, programming and blogging remain my favorite hobbies, along with searching for and discovering new music (I enjoy everything from artists like Tom Waits to punk acts like NoMeansNo and myriad death metal artists like Carcass, Autopsy and newer groups like Tomb Mold). If I'm not at the computer, I'm spending time with my lovely wife of 9 years, our two children and our 4 rescue dogs (all terrier/chihuahua mixes). I also mentor via Underdog Devs and help organize the Eleventy meetup. I've been getting tattooed more over the past few years and am in the process of completing a sleeve on my right arm but am not sure that qualifies as a hobby.
I started blogging after I graduated from college in 2010 and have managed to recover posts dating back to 2013 that I've imported into the current iteration on my site. I was inspired by blogs like Daring Fireball and MacStories, though I don't follow them quite as closely as I once did. I viewed blogging as both a creative outlet and as a way to continue practicing web development by having my own project to experiment on and iterate with.
I started out on Tumblr, before moving to the first version of Kirby, then on to Statamic, Jekyll, Next.js, omg.lol's weblog service and now, finally (and quite happily) Eleventy. All of these presented me with an opportunity to learn new languages, frameworks, tools and development approaches. I love the simplicity and flexibility of Eleventy and adore the community around both it and omg.lol. I like the simplicity of blogging under my own name and settled on a domain name that reflects both that and the development/technology focus.
My creative process tends to be very informal — I read a lot of articles via the blogs I follow through RSS and enjoy both audio and written books. I'm interested in web development, the state of the industry and music, so my posts typically center around those topics (and, occasionally, how they connect or overlap). I'll often write a single draft, edit it for clarity, brevity and correctness before my confidence in the post wanes and publish it.
I want to grow into doing more research-focused writing to compliment these briefer pieces and am excited about that approach as an area where I can grow as a writer.
I write posts in markdown using Bear and then insert Eleventy frontmatter that I store as a snippet in Sublime Text.
I typically write in an office that I share with my wife — I work from home and have a corner desk with my personal machine (a typically docked M2 MacBook Air), work machine and a lightly-used TV in between. I struggle to concentrate in silence and will typically write and program with death or black metal playing. I find the music helps me focus and the lack of intelligible lyrics keeps it from distracting me.
My blog is hosted at Netlify and I pay for the pro plan while staying well under its limits, but this allows me the piece of mind to rebuild the site regularly to update my now page and other dynamically populated elements like my links page.
I moved my domains to DNSimple last year after Gandi was acquired.
The code for my site is versioned and available to view at GitHub. I use a GitHub action to trigger hourly rebuilds of my site, another to post content from a feed that combines my blog posts, shared links, read books and watched movies to Mastodon, another to add my blog posts to my README, another to test my site's performance using a Speedlify instance and yet another to retrieve and cache the chart data for music I've listened to over the last week from the charts I derive from Plex (this is then syndicated to Mastodon via the aforementioned feed and action).
If I were to start a blog today, I suppose I'd start from where I've arrived at now, but I don't think I could've arrived here without the experience and discovery I went through along the way. I'm not a particularly great designer, so I favor simplicity and performance in presentation and, from a technical perspective, 11ty really lends itself to that. I think I've found a set of tools and a community that I deeply enjoy engaging with.
The expenses to run my site are fairly straightforward: hosting (Netlify), analytics (Clicky) and feed hosting/analytics (Feedpress). A quick estimate for a given year would be around $400 which I'm happy with for something I enjoy so much. There's also a tiny fee monthly for a Backblaze B2 bucket I use to cache JSON used to populate my links page (they're fetched from the Readwise Reader API which is paginated and rate-limited — this allows me to persist link data and puts less of a burden on their service).
I'm not opposed to bloggers monetizing their sites, but I appreciate when, say, content is clearly marked as sponsored. I have a Buy Me a Coffee link in my site's navigation, but nothing outside of that — if someone wants to send something along I appreciate it and, if not, that's totally fine too!
I support a few larger publications that started on and have since left Substack. Among my favorites are Paris Marx's Disconnect and Garbage Day.
I'll start off by saying I love the resurgence of blogs and personal sites we're seeing. I have a blogroll on my site with some of my favorites (they're also bundled into a .opml file that you can download). Robb Knight's blog remains one of my favorites — the design is stellar and he's constantly experimenting with and adding new features. I also thoroughly enjoy Adam Newbold's writing and seeing what he's working on for omg.lol. I could go on and on I love Keenan's writing, Mayank is a gifted developer and similarly talented writer, Sara Joy is exceedingly kind and has created awesome projects like RS.S JOY.lol dev. The internet's changing and seeing everyone writing and building makes me so happy.
If you want to mentor some great, deserving folks, check out Underdog Devs. If you're building with Eleventy we'd love to have you present at the meetup. The best book I've finished this year has been NoMeansNo: From Obscurity to Oblivion — they're my favorite band so, naturally, I'm biased, but it's a fun read and is built around interviews with the band, their friends, family and other popular musicians.
I don't have any active side projects at the moment (but I'm kicking around some ideas) — fitting everything in is tough! I'd love to build something that makes it easier for small bands to quickly build lightweight websites that they can host anywhere and really bring my journey full circle — a static site generator as a service with portable code and easy CMS integration? More robust than LinkTree, with less overhead than Squarespace and more open than both. I'm more interested in supporting musicians than I am in monetizing anything I suppose.
I'm also excited to see what Robb Knight is cooking up with EchoFeed.
Thanks for reading! I post a lot on my site and on Mastodon so come say hi!
This was the 36th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Cory. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and all supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
Jamie Thingelstad (RSS) — Piet Terheyden — Raul Montala (RSS) — Eleonora — Carl Barenbrug (RSS) — Steve Ledlow (RSS) — Paolo Ruggeri — Nicolas Magand (RSS) — Rob Hope — Chris Hannah (RSS) — Pedro Corá (RSS) — Jeremy Sarber (RSS) — Colin Walker (RSS) — Sixian Lim (RSS) — Matt Stein (RSS) — Winnie Lim (RSS) — Flamed (RSS) — C Jackdaw (RSS) — Kevin Humdrum (RSS) — Fabricio Teixeira (RSS) — Rosalind Croad — Frank Meeuwsen (RSS) — Mike Walsh (RSS) — Markus Heurung — Jeremy Bassetti (RSS) — Juan Villela (RSS) — Michael Warren (RSS) — Chuck Grimmett (RSS) — Robin Harford (RSS) — Bryan Maniotakis (RSS) — Barry Hess (RSS) — Chris Jung (RSS) — Ivan Moreale — Khürt Williams (RSS) — Ben Werdmuller (RSS) — Cory Gibbons — Luke Harris (RSS) — Lars-Christian Simonsen (RSS) — Seth Werkheiser (RSS) — Cody Schultz — Brad Barrish (RSS) — Nikita Galaiko — Erik Blankvoort — Jaga Santagostino — Andrew Zuckerman — Mattia Compagnucci (RSS) — Thord D. Hedengren (RSS) — Fabien Sauser — Maxwell Omdal — Numeric Citizen (RSS) — Jarrod Blundy (RSS) — Andrea Contino (RSS) — Sebastian De Deyne (RSS) — Nicola Losito (RSS) — Lou Plummer (RSS) — Leon Mika (RSS) — Veronique (RSS) — Neil Gorman (RSS) — Reaper (RSS) — Matt Rutherford (RSS) — Adam Keys (RSS) — Aleem Ali (RSS) — İsmail Şevik (RSS) — Nikkin (RSS) — Jeremy Felt (RSS) — Hans
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2024-05-02 14:45:00
I spend the vast majority of my time doing creative work. I code for a living, sometimes I design for a living. I code as a hobby, sometimes I do design as a hobby. I also write. Being creative ain’t easy. At least not for me. I sit at my desk, staring at the same screen day after day and sometimes it’s hard to find inspiration. But every time I find myself stuck I can get unstuck with one simple trick: I leave.
My creative environment is when I’m outside, not trying to do anything creative. And this is especially true when I’m walking in nature. I’m not the first one to realise that there’s a connection between walking in nature and creativity. There’s something about moving through space that makes my brain work differently.
Nature is, more often than not, my creative environment. Back in 2019, I started a very random project called From the Summit. It was an attempt to capture this exact phenomenon, the bursts of creativity born from moving through space. It’s easily my favourite digital experiment.
At the end of the day though, the only environment that matters, when it comes to creativity, is the mental space I’m in. That’s why I find nature so useful. The cadence of the walk, the sounds, the light, the smell. All the senses are engaged when I’m outside in nature and as a result, my brain becomes more creative.
The next time you’re creatively stuck, if you can, go for a walk in nature. You won’t regret it.
This post was part of May's IndieWeb Carnival on the topic of Creative environments. If you have a blog, consider writing something for this month's theme. And if you don't have a blog I encourage you to start one. Blogging is fun!
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2024-04-27 15:15:00
The current AI chaos is prompting people to write all sorts of posts and articles about the imminent death of the web. The current debacle surrounding the TikTok ban (forced sale?) in the US is making journalists believe that the internet as a global town square where people can interact is over if governments start banning these huge platforms.
I don’t believe the web is dying. Not for one second. Maybe this specific version of the web is dying, that might be true. Let’s imagine we ban TikTok. And Facebook. And Instagram. And Threads. And all the other huge platforms. There would still be one global town square left. It’s called the web. The web itself IS the global town square.
Sure, it’s a lot harder to reach a million people if you have to start from your own little corner of the web. But you know what? Tough shit. Some things in life are hard. And maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe being able to instantly become viral is not a good thing overall. Maybe we do want some friction in the system.
The web is not dying. People won’t stop creating because silly AI tools will flood the web with generated crap. Photographers won’t stop taking pictures because Midjourney exists. Filmmakers won’t stop creating videos because Sora is now available to everyone.
Creative people are driven by the passion for creation. Writers write because they love writing. Bloggers will keep blogging away because that’s what they do.
The web is not dying. I started People and Blogs last September. I post one interview a week. I almost completely stopped searching for new people to interview because my list of potential guests had enough entries to last a few years. And yet I’m still finding new blogs daily. Ooh.directory has more than 2200 blogs listed. The Kagi small web dataset contains more than 12000 entries. I have more than 1400 sites listed on theforest.link. You could click on a new link every day and have enough new content for the next 40 years. And I am 100% certain that those sites will contain links to other new sites you can explore.
The web is not dying. The web is huge. The web is ever-expanding. The fact that the web is just the same 5 big websites is a fucking lie. It’s like saying the restaurant industry is the same 5 fast food chains. It is not. It’s up to you to decide to stop visiting those 5 sites and stop ingesting their fast food content.
The web is not dying. Start clicking around. Be curious. Follow random links. Search something on Marginalia or Wiby. Make a blog on Bear Blog or Micro.blog and start creating. Join a Webring. Write something for the IndieWeb Carnival. Connect with others.
The web is not dying. The only thing that’s slowly dying is the spirit, the mindset that made the web such a wonderful place to begin with.
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2024-04-26 19:00:00
This is the 35th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Veronique and her blog, veronique.ink
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Hi, my name is Veronique, and I’m an artist, writer, and zine maker. I live in Toronto with my dog, Muskoka. I love making zines and championing small-press indie writers. I enjoy discovering new artists, going for trail hikes with my doggo, making art while listening to tunes, daydreaming, exchanging emails as personal letters, and discovering new personal blogs. Lately, I’ve been teaching myself how to play my late father’s guitar.
I started my blog in August 2022, after stumbling upon a few personal sites. I became enchanted by these quiet spaces away from social media. One blog in particular, TMO (no longer active), inspired me to start writing. His vulnerable, daily slice-of-life posts immediately catapulted me into wanting to document my life through blogging.
My search for a simple writing platform took some time, but eventually, I came across Bearblog, which won me over with its simplicity. I’m not tech-savvy, so the fewer bells and whistles a platform has, the more I can concentrate on what matters—writing.
My dad fell ill in the fall of 2022, and writing on my blog became a lifeline. Writing online created a cocooned arena for exploring my wayward thoughts and feelings and forged an invisible string, tying me to far-flung strangers across the web. Blogging felt like a refuge and reminded me that we’re all sharing this bumpy, precarious timeline together.
I read once that you should write your obsessions. Not only for yourself but also to find your kind. Being an introvert, this sentiment really resonated with me. Connecting through personal blogs can sometimes feel deeper than in-person interactions. Since writing on my blog, I’ve met the most wonderful internet denizens who have morphed into veritable email comrades—and I love it.
My posts are primarily short-form and meant to be a catch-all container for ideas and preserving fragments of ordinary moments. I prefer to write in spontaneous, off-the-cuff spurts. Thoughts, ideas, and links to things I want to share are written in my phone notes app or the myriad unfinished journals around my apartment.
I’ve been fond of writing posts in bullet form lately. It's a quick way to record passing thoughts and share pictures, ideas, and quotes I like. I feel like personal blogs are in constant flux and unpolished by nature, which appeals to me.
I like to write first thing in the morning before I'm swayed emotionally by other people's output.
I’ve romanticized having an old wooden "writers’ desk" in the corner of my living room, but I have a sneaking suspicion I’d still end up on the couch, scrunched up with horrible posture with my laptop over my legs.
I like to blog on my phone when I'm out and about—busy pubs, cafes, or on the bus. Plunking myself in new places sharpens my observational rolodex and removes me from my regular inner dialogue.
My setup is minimal. I write on my MacBook Air M2 laptop and iPhone 15 Pro phone. Bearblog hosts my blog, and my domain name is registered with GoDaddy. C'est tout!
I haven’t been blogging long, but I wish I was more versed in HTML and CSS. I’ve spent countless hours combing the net for tips on how best to tinker with my site. I enjoy it, though, as it feels like solving a mini-puzzle.
The other thing would be allowing people to subscribe to my blog with their email. I need to remedy that asap.
For now, Bearblog is $20 a year, and it costs me about $35 to renew my domain.
Monetizing a blog feels like a touchy subject, and a lot of people are put off by paying someone for online writing. Newsletter fatigue is real, and being hit with member fees in every nook and cranny on the net is rampant.
But from a creative perspective, people still have to pay rent, and people still need to eat.
Artists, writers, and makers should and can make a living doing what they love.
I’m a huge proponent of supporting artists for their work. I allocate about $20 a month to support my favorites through platforms like Patreon, BMAC, Ko-Fi, independent newsletters, and one-off coffees.
I'd love to make a living from writing on my blog. Is this realistic, especially without ads, trackers, sponsored posts, or paywalls? I don’t know, but I spend a lot of time thinking about how to make it work. I keep trying different things and am not afraid to pivot if something isn’t working. It's tough, but it's something I love working towards.
The idea of making money from my writing still feels uncomfortable sometimes. There’s a touch of imposter syndrome, low self-esteem, and not feeling in league with the high-caliber writers of Substack, etc, but I keep pushing through. However, money aside, writing and sharing things on my blog is something I deeply cherish and will continue doing regardless of monetary gain.
There are so many blog gems I love! Here's a few favs:
Lili and Anh would both be great guests for your next interview!
Read more poetry and zines!
If you're an artist/writer, check out Creative Peptalk podcast by Andy J. Pizza and Cody Cook-Parrott's weekly newsletter.
Here's to happy-accident email friendships, shared curiosities, daydreams, and personal blogs!
This was the 35th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Veronique. Make sure to follow her blog (RSS) and get in touch with her if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and all supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
Jamie Thingelstad (RSS) — Piet Terheyden — Raul Montala (RSS) — Eleonora — Carl Barenbrug (RSS) — Steve Ledlow (RSS) — Paolo Ruggeri — Nicolas Magand (RSS) — Rob Hope — Chris Hannah (RSS) — Pedro Corá (RSS) — Jeremy Sarber (RSS) — Colin Walker (RSS) — Sixian Lim (RSS) — Matt Stein (RSS) — Winnie Lim (RSS) — Flamed (RSS) — C Jackdaw (RSS) — Kevin Humdrum (RSS) — Fabricio Teixeira (RSS) — Rosalind Croad — Frank Meeuwsen (RSS) — Mike Walsh (RSS) — Markus Heurung — Jeremy Bassetti (RSS) — Juan Villela (RSS) — Michael Warren (RSS) — Chuck Grimmett (RSS) — Robin Harford (RSS) — Bryan Maniotakis (RSS) — Barry Hess (RSS) — Chris Jung (RSS) — Ivan Moreale — Khürt Williams (RSS) — Ben Werdmuller (RSS) — Cory Gibbons — Luke Harris (RSS) — Lars-Christian Simonsen (RSS) — Seth Werkheiser (RSS) — Cody Schultz — Brad Barrish (RSS) — Nikita Galaiko — Erik Blankvoort — Jaga Santagostino — Andrew Zuckerman — Mattia Compagnucci (RSS) — Thord D. Hedengren (RSS) — Sean Gallagher — Fabien Sauser — Maxwell Omdal — Numeric Citizen (RSS) — Jarrod Blundy (RSS) — Andrea Contino (RSS) — Sebastian De Deyne (RSS) — Nicola Losito (RSS) — Lou Plummer (RSS) — Leon Mika (RSS) — Veronique (RSS) — Neil Gorman (RSS) — Reaper (RSS) — Matt Rutherford (RSS) — Adam Keys (RSS) — Aleem Ali (RSS)
If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can:
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2024-04-25 23:45:00
Self-promotion is a weird subject. It’s one of those things that is strictly tied to who you are as a person. I am, broadly speaking, a shy and reserved person. I don’t like to be in the spotlight, I don’t like to draw attention to myself. I also really care about other people's space and time, which is why I’ve always been incredibly conservative when it comes to promoting things I do online.
Every time I need to do something that is marketing-related, I can feel the tension in my brain as if a part of me is trying to fight against it. And this is for the most benign things. I’ll give you an example. I recently edited all P&B interviews and added a line at the end of the intro that reads:
If you're enjoying the People and Blogs series and you want to see it grow, consider supporting on Ko-Fi.
A line of text and a link. The reason why I did that is because the only place where Ko-Fi was mentioned was way at the of each interview and I thought that most people probably stop reading when they reach the end of the interview. And so I added that single line. But adding that single line was a struggle. Because in my head, it’s obvious that if you do enjoy something and are willing to support it, you’d probably go look for a way to do it. That’s how my brain works. But unfortunately, that’s not how the internet works. Apparently, the correct approach seems to be the opposite one. You have to constantly remind people to like and subscribe, to support, to contribute, and to share.
How much self-promotion is too much? Substack interrupting your reading experience to remind you to subscribe feels too much to me. An overlay interrupting your browsing to ask you to subscribe to a newsletter is also too much. Am I wrong? Am I crazy in thinking it’s too much?
Also, is promoting something I’m doing any different than advertising? I know it’s conceptually not the same thing but for you, on the other side of this, is it any different? So many questions. It’s goddamn hard to do “marketing” with integrity.
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2024-04-24 16:30:00
Yesterday I stumbled on an interesting article by Ed Zitron titled "The Man Who Killed Google Search" that is closely related to my recent post about the growth mentality.
Raghavan is a hall-of-fame rot economist, and one of the many managerial types that have caused immeasurable damage to the Internet in the name of growth and “shareholder value." And I believe these uber-managers - these ultra-pencil-pushers and growth-hounds - are the forces destroying tech's ability to innovate.
If you're interested in the subject and want to get some insights into how the pursuit of growth can be bad, give it a read.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2024-04-19 19:00:00
This is the 34th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Simone Silvestroni and his blog, minutestomidnight.co.uk
I first connected with Simone via email a couple of years ago and then re-discovered his blog thanks to a link in someone's blogroll. The blogroll on his site is excellent btw, definitely worth checking out and the reason why I'm going to rewrite mine—if and when I can find the time.
To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
If you're enjoying the People and Blogs series and you want to see it grow, consider supporting on Ko-Fi.
Born in the early 1970s, I was raised in a small village on the North-East Adriatic coast of Italy. After studying music and getting a degree, I moved to Milan in 1996. To fund my music activities, I worked as a print designer and editor for a large publisher, which got me into technology and computers. Seeing it as a natural evolution of my day job, I fell in love with the early internet. Using my pre-existing skills to learn web design, I deployed my first site in 1997. Been honing the craft for all these years, while keeping up with sound design and music activities at the same time.
In 2011 I moved to the UK, where I worked for a large gaming company. A year later I co-founded a design and development company in London. Got married there, changed city, and released a concept album on the 30th anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall. I now live in Cambridge with my wife, Silvia.
In 2002 I suddenly lost a loved one to suicide, experiencing a downward spiral of depression that made me feel detached from everything and everyone. I decided then to open my first blog, called Morula. It was an anonymous and safe place where I could express pain, anger, and direct frustration towards an inexplicable trauma. Since those pages were excruciatingly intimate, I erased the site a few years later, even sending a deletion request to the Internet Archive. I own a complete copy printed on paper, so every now and then I unearth an old post that I still deem relatable, to be published on my current site. Someone called this practice necroposting, a definition that I like.
In 2017 I released the current incarnation, Minutes to Midnight, named after the moniker I chose for my music releases. It was a work-related website for a while, later split in two, and now merged into one again. I needed time to understand how to present myself online, after the dark ages of the personal brand era.
I don't have a defined workflow, I only start a post when I feel like I have something to say. I tend to write about things that I either personally experienced, or that I've researched. It starts in a plain text editor, usually iA Writer on my computer. New drafts stay there for as long as needed, later to get refined and completed in Sublime Text. When I feel ready, I send the post to Silvia, which proofreads and gives me invaluable suggestions. Even though I absolutely love personal stories and storytelling, something is still preventing me from sharing more of those. I'd rather have my blog full of posts like Andy.
Ideally, I would enjoy living in a place where only the sounds of nature can be heard. However, I have this mysterious ability to detach from my surroundings, finding an inner space where I can lose myself and start writing. The most productive day in the last few years happened in a busy and packed Feltrinelli cafe in Milan, next door to Microsoft HQ... It doesn't alway work, so when it does it's precious.
I worked with HTML and CSS from 1997 up to when I discovered WordPress. It was the 1.5 release, and I liked it to the point of staying with them for a long time. I ditched it in 2020 to go back to my roots, this time with Jekyll as a static site generator. I don't use frameworks, and since I have a knack for minimalistic and fast performant websites, I have no reasons to add Javascript or other inessential tools.
Coming from PHP, I've found Jekyll's Liquid template language easy to pick up, yet powerful enough to replace what WordPress offered. I wrote a couple of tiny Ruby plugins to adapt the HTML build process to my needs, and went through subsequent degrees of complexity before realising the inner beauty of simpler things. Two aspects that I take great care of are sustainability and accessibility. In my web dev line of work, the latter in particular is an area where I strive to constantly expand my knowledge.
I currently buy and renew my domains with Gandi, preferring to keep the hosting separate. While I'd been deploying all my sites to Netlify, I've recently migrated to a traditional Apache server by Mythic Beasts, which is a non-VC-funded business based in the UK. Very happy about this transition: not only I moved my data over to Europe again, with a stable and transparent company, but particularly because the suggestion came from Leon Paternoster, one of the best bloggers I met along the vague but exciting perimeter of the small web.
I'd pick a different moniker. While Minutes to Midnight has a clear connection with my upbringing, I should have done more research. I only found out about the Linkin Park album and the Iron Maiden song when it was too late. Tech-wise, I would avoid bloated CMSes, and stick to essential tools.
I have two fixed costs: £10 for renewing the domain, and £30 for the hosting. Since both are annual costs, the final tally is less than £3.50 per month. People can do whatever they prefer with their personal websites, but when I stumble on someone who's clearly writing as a way to make some money, I become suspicious about the nature of what I'm reading. It usually ruins the experience.
It's a matter of perception and transparency though. For example, I feel like the model used by Jason Kottke, or your 1 a month, are genuine and well thought. The fact that monetising a personal blog is not my thing doesn't imply a disdain for who does it in a mindful way.
Here's a Top 5 out of the many blogs I follow.
I started looking at how language is used on personal websites, finding that most people I know tend to publicly identify with their job role. Something along the lines of: Hey, I'm Simone, and I'm a web developer (or whatever). It's unsettling to me, maybe because I used to do the same until a few months ago. There was this inner voice saying "that's not who you are, it's what you do". Tired of this lifeless corporate lingo, I wrote posts about de-branding and the way we present ourselves on the internet, ending up rewriting large sections of my website.
Anecdotally speaking, it's something that I've mostly observed outside of Europe, particularly the States. I think it's a crucial topic. Personal blogs are not part of the commercial web, so why don't we present ourselves as people instead of shallow business cards? I've grown tired of having to remove the work disguise to get to know the person I'm talking to.
This was the 34th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Simone. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and all supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
Jamie Thingelstad (RSS) — Piet Terheyden — Raul Montala (RSS) — Eleonora — Carl Barenbrug (RSS) — Steve Ledlow (RSS) — Paolo Ruggeri — Nicolas Magand (RSS) — Rob Hope — Chris Hannah (RSS) — Pedro Corá (RSS) — Jeremy Sarber (RSS) — Colin Walker (RSS) — Sixian Lim (RSS) — Matt Stein (RSS) — Winnie Lim (RSS) — Flamed (RSS) — C Jackdaw (RSS) — Kevin Humdrum (RSS) — Fabricio Teixeira (RSS) — Rosalind Croad — Frank Meeuwsen (RSS) — Mike Walsh (RSS) — Markus Heurung — Jeremy Bassetti (RSS) — Juan Villela (RSS) — Michael Warren (RSS) — Chuck Grimmett (RSS) — Robin Harford (RSS) — Bryan Maniotakis (RSS) — Barry Hess (RSS) — Chris Jung (RSS) — Ivan Moreale — Khürt Williams (RSS) — Ben Werdmuller (RSS) — Cory Gibbons — Luke Harris (RSS) — Lars-Christian Simonsen (RSS) — Seth Werkheiser (RSS) — Cody Schultz — Brad Barrish (RSS) — Nikita Galaiko — Erik Blankvoort — Jaga Santagostino — Andrew Zuckerman — Mattia Compagnucci (RSS) — Thord D. Hedengren (RSS) — Sean Gallagher — Fabien Sauser — Maxwell Omdal — Numeric Citizen (RSS) — Jarrod Blundy (RSS) — Andrea Contino (RSS) — Sebastian De Deyne (RSS) — Nicola Losito (RSS) — Lou Plummer (RSS) — Leon Mika (RSS) — Veronique (RSS) — Neil Gorman (RSS) — Reaper (RSS) — Matt Rutherford (RSS) — Adam Keys (RSS)
If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can:
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my awesome supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
2024-04-16 21:55:00
Someone asked me about my stance on not having comments on my blog. I’m not a fan of comments in general and I think commenting on something should be done in one of two ways:
Setting up your server to send a webmention is an extra bonus point but I don’t consider that to be necessary. That’s the ideal commenting setup in my opinion but I’m sure some of you out there disagree.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2024-04-12 19:00:00
This is the 33rd edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Tracy Durnell and her blog, tracydurnell.com
To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
If you're enjoying the People and Blogs series and you want to see it grow, consider supporting on Ko-Fi.
I'm a writer and graphic designer in the Seattle area. I can't get enough writing; on top of blogging, I also write speculative fiction. I love reading, mostly fiction, and use my website as an alternative to Goodreads to write reviews and track reads. Over the past several years, I've added more and more things to my site: listens, playlists, recipes, follows, accountability tracking, big questions.
I work in sustainability, previously in local government and now as a consultant. My background is in ecology; I thought I wanted to be a wildlife biologist, but after one field season studying lizards in the Los Angeles suburbs, I realized the itinerant research biologist lifestyle was not for me.
Now I stay connected to nature through my wildlife garden. My yard backs up to a greenbelt, so on top of ripping out our lawn and planting native plants, we also restored the natural area adjacent. (I ran a blog devoted to Pacific Northwest nature for ten years!)
This probably makes it sound like I blog a lot about the environment, but I get enough of that in my work life, so not much actually! I'll keep notes from webinars and bookmark articles related to work on my website since they're related to learning, but I try to preserve my blog as a non-work thinking space for me to play.
I started my current blog at tracydurnell.com when I encountered the idea of a digital garden* in 2021. The concept appealed to me for its looseness and built-in acceptance of incompleteness and imperfection. On my previous blog, Cascadia Inspired, I'd locked myself into a narrow pool of topics that no longer matched my life, and felt constrained. Releasing myself upon a boundless format with lower expectations unleashed a deluge of thoughts I hadn't realized had no outlet before (or that I hadn't really given myself space to think).
*(Having learned more about digital gardens, the blog itself is more of a commonplace book, but I feel it's fine to trick our brains however we need to to grant ourselves permission to create. Some people write in all lowercase, I tell myself my blog is a garden.)
I'd had a handmade HTML portfolio site parked on the domain for years because I felt obliged to have one, but it was a huge pain to update without a content management system. Letting go of that was a great relief in itself, and then reinless blogging was joyfully liberating. (Ironically, this means that one of the last things I now rely on a third party site to host is my design portfolio 😂)
That switch from professional portfolio to blog is why I've done so little to personalize the design of my website: I used the base theme from the year I launched the blog and tweaked the colors slightly, but otherwise only add CSS to solve specific layout or display issues. For too long, I'd been paralyzed by the need to design and code a fully customized site that "represented me as a designer," so I decided to completely release myself from that burden and use the absolute simplest design option. I chose to not care whether people judge me for using a generic template because the purpose of the site is the information on it, not its aesthetics. As long as the styling works to convey the info I want, I'm happy to leave the default. (This prioritization is a design decision in itself, which I suppose represents my practicality when it comes to design 🤷♀️)
I first started blogging twenty years ago, when I went to college, to share what I was doing with my family. In that initial blogging phase, I focused on writing about "mini adventures" I took -- but after college I found I didn't do enough to warrant writing about because I was too exhausted after work. I half-heartedly tried some commentary style blogging, but it didn't stick.
In 2012, missing that creative outlet, I started writing at Cascadia Inspired as a way to connect more deeply with Washington nature and explore creative processes. I hoped that having the site would prompt me to go on more hikes, which worked for a while, then became an albatross.
When I started blogging at TracyDurnell.com, I then faced the conundrum of what writing belonged on which blog. More and more, I shifted my writing over to the new site. Now that I was letting myself write about anything, I wanted to. Finally, I put the Cascadia Inspired blog on hiatus last fall.
Since going freelance, I've also been posting weeknotes to help me recognize the progress I'm making on long term projects and keep myself honest about how much I can do in a week. My website is a toolbox in itself: a tool for thinking, a place for storing information, a non-corporate means of tracking my intake, a method of self-kindness and personal growth, an outlet for reflection. It's endlessly adaptable and expandable to my needs. Part of the fun is that it's always evolving.
As an adult, I learned my grandpa had been a letterpress printer, as had his mother; it tickles me that I have wound up in design and (digital) publishing too.
Most of my blogging is reactive, prompted by something I've read. (I've written about choosing between ideas for posts.) I especially enjoy finding connections between pieces and seeing whether pairing articles reveals something more than either alone; Tom Critchlow described this, or something like it, as digital bricolage.
Because lots of my blogging is interspersed with online reading, it happens where I read... which is primarily on my phone. I blog most often in my phone's browser window, which is not ergonomic. For pieces over a certain length and complexity, I do try to move to my desktop, where I still write directly in the browser. (I've written at length about my process for crafting long blog posts -- tl;dr many (too many) rounds of revisions.)
I've been paying attention to what I admire on other blogs, and one of my goals this year is to write more self-prompted articles. Right now I'm experimenting with writing a longer piece in Scrivener, the writing software I use for fiction. Switching to Scrivener for fiction writing made a massive difference, helping me organize my thoughts better, so I'm curious how it will affect blogging. I've also read a couple books specifically for this article -- a fun return to purpose-driven research, which I've rarely had cause for since college. We'll see whether it comes together or I've gathered too much material and overwhelmed myself!
Ideas aren't a limiting factor for me; I can be creative anywhere, but the question for me is whether I can work in a space. Physical comfort is the most important aspect of a work space for me: decent ergonomics, enough light, not too loud, not too cold. I find not having enough space to spread out to be limiting -- I prefer to have enough room for both my computer and a notebook for brainstorming on paper.
Before the pandemic, I used to work in coffee shops regularly as a commitment device, but it was never that productive because I'd get distracted by friends or noise, be crammed into small tables with my laptop perched precariously, or feel anxious whether I'd bought enough food and drinks. Now I much prefer working at my wide desk with a large monitor and ergonomic keyboard.
My webhosting is through HostGator, and my domain registrar is NameCheap. I'm on shared hosting, which is sufficient to host all of my websites.
I self-host WordPress as my content management system with these plugins. I use the IndieWeb plugin to enable Webmentions, so I can send and receive comments from other websites.
I also have a notes blog on a subdomain, powered by micro.blog, which is federated.
While I've run most of my sites on WordPress since 2012, if I was starting today I might explore other options. There's a lot that's great about WordPress, but I find the block structure poorly suited to blogging; fortunately, I can use a plugin to restore the classic editor (for now).
I've chosen to blog under my real name for a number of reasons, but I also can see the value and freedom in anonymity. There are some subjects I'd like to write about that are too personally revealing. (When I first blogged, I wrote openly about some things I now keep private; were the times simpler or was I more naive?)
From a content perspective, I'd try to be more social with my website earlier. Discovering the IndieWeb and meeting other people who think keeping websites is rad has totally enlivened my blogging. I feel much more connected to the online community than I ever did during my first decade and a half of blogging.
Back in the day I followed mostly big name bloggers and topic-focused blogs, which fostered more parasocial relationships between writer and audience; now I follow a lot of other 'normal people' with personal websites who are sharing their ponderings and slices of life. It's easier for me to engage in a bloggy conversation with people who feel like peers, and fun to join in with what I see others writing about. (How much do our follows reveal our interests versus shape them?)
Webhosting costs me about $200 a year, and my domain about $15. (Of course, like many people with websites, I have way too many domains so they add up 😉) I begrudgingly subscribe to Google Drive, where I have automatic website backups stored, for $20 a year. Micro.blog is another $5 a month. As a hobby, I consider blogging reasonably affordable at about $25 a month.
I don't mind other people monetizing their blogs, especially with affiliate links, membership programs, and donations. It totally makes sense for people who need more expensive hosting than I can get away with -- but I also think it's fine for people to charge for their work even if they don't "need the money" -- creators shouldn't be ashamed for earning money from their work. The only aspect that troubles me is when content is paywalled, which then removes it from the open web, but I understand that people need to make money and people come first.
Blog recommendations:
It'd be interesting to hear from Reimena Yee, a comic artist who has a fun website and interesting blog. I'd also love to hear from Erin Kissane, and if we're going big, Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen!
I'd encourage anyone who wants to meet other bloggers and website makers to check out an IndieWeb online event like Homebrew Website Club, which is held regularly in European and North American timezones. It's not just for technical folks!
This was the 33rd edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Tracy. Make sure to follow her blog (RSS) and get in touch with her if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and all supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
Jamie Thingelstad (RSS) — Piet Terheyden — Raul Montala (RSS) — Eleonora — Carl Barenbrug (RSS) — Steve Ledlow (RSS) — Paolo Ruggeri — Nicolas Magand (RSS) — Rob Hope — Chris Hannah (RSS) — Pedro Corá (RSS) — Jeremy Sarber (RSS) — Colin Walker (RSS) — Sixian Lim (RSS) — Matt Stein (RSS) — Winnie Lim (RSS) — Flamed (RSS) — C Jackdaw (RSS) — Kevin Humdrum (RSS) — Fabricio Teixeira (RSS) — Rosalind Croad — Frank Meeuwsen (RSS) — Mike Walsh (RSS) — Markus Heurung — Jeremy Bassetti (RSS) — Juan Villela (RSS) — Michael Warren (RSS) — Chuck Grimmett (RSS) — Robin Harford (RSS) — Bryan Maniotakis (RSS) — Barry Hess (RSS) — Chris Jung (RSS) — Ivan Moreale — Khürt Williams (RSS) — Ben Werdmuller (RSS) — Cory Gibbons — Luke Harris (RSS) — Lars-Christian Simonsen (RSS) — Seth Werkheiser (RSS) — Cody Schultz — Brad Barrish (RSS) — Nikita Galaiko — Erik Blankvoort — Jaga Santagostino — Andrew Zuckerman — Mattia Compagnucci (RSS) — Thord D. Hedengren (RSS) — Sean Gallagher — Fabien Sauser — Maxwell Omdal — Numeric Citizen (RSS) — Jarrod Blundy (RSS) — Andrea Contino (RSS) — Sebastian De Deyne (RSS) — Nicola Losito (RSS) — Lou Plummer (RSS) — Leon Mika (RSS) — Veronique (RSS) — Neil Gorman (RSS) — Reaper (RSS) — Matt Rutherford (RSS)
If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can:
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my awesome supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
2024-04-10 14:30:00
Rob has a podcast. It started way back in 2019—damn time flies—and season 3 just started. If you’re into tech/design give it a listen. But Rob’s podcast is just the excuse I needed to complain about something I find quite annoying: video podcasts.
Season 3 of Yo! is “video first”. Podcasts switching to video to be on YouTube ranks quite high on the list of things that I find annoying. I get why they’re doing it. I’m not an idiot. Yet I still find it annoying. Especially because podcasts that were audio-only would start referencing and talking about things that are “on the screen right now” and now I’m missing out on parts of the conversation because I’m listening to a podcast while I’m driving.
Video podcasts are the worst of both worlds. They’re not as good as actual video content designed to be consumed exclusively as video and they’re inferior to audio-only podcasts. And if you disagree let me know why.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2024-04-05 19:00:00
This is the 32nd edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Matt Stein and his blog, mattstein.com
To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
If you're enjoying the People and Blogs series and you want to see it grow, consider supporting on Ko-Fi.
I’m Matt Stein. I live with my wife and cat-sized dog in Bend, Oregon. Grew up in Ohio, studied graphic design in upstate New York, and I’ve been bouncing around the U.S. ever since.
My design degree led me to a small interactive agency in Seattle where I worked with HTML, CSS, Flash, and a CMS called ExpressionEngine. I taught intro-level HTML and Flash workshops in the design school we shared a building with—a former hat factory downtown built in 1920 that was later swallowed by Amazon expansion. I learned an amazing amount in those few years, and in that environment.
I left with my youthful enthusiasm and surprise knack for coordinating agency work to run a solo gig for twelve years, and learned a lot more about people, technology, business, and unfortunately the minutia of taxes and accounting. Having complete responsibility for my workload and decisions—from triumphant to cringey—was extremely satisfying.
I left that to work as a technical writer with the team behind Craft CMS, a successor to ExpressionEngine I was proficient with and fond of. I moved to Bend, Oregon with that job, lived my first spectacular burnout adventure, and left that in 2022.
I just turned forty and I’m working on whatever act two looks like. I want it to involve using my generalist bag of skills to make the world better in some way that’s focused more on human beings than investors or shareholders.
I tinker with things for work and for fun. Lately it’s been a parade of Astro, Eleventy, Kirby, creative writing, reacquainting myself with the piano, and playing high-adrenaline video games as a thought break. I spend a lot of time reading despite being a fairly slow reader, and that’s ramped up as I’ve started following newsletters and RSS feeds in an attempt to distance myself from algorithms and hype.
I got to tech-nerding as soon as my uncle booted up our family’s first MS-DOS computer, so having my own site was more nature running its course than a careful decision. I lucked out and beat a surprising number of Matt Steins to mattstein.com, and the first site I remember having on it was college portfolio. It was an oppressively blue Flash site that heavily relied on a barcode as a design element as if that wasn’t a cliché. I don’t remember if it had a blog, but let’s hope not.
I’ve changed platforms a few times over the years, mostly writing brief notes about books or minor technical breakthroughs and migrating everything from Statamic to Craft CMS to Gatsby and now to Astro. I’ve used it as a place to experiment, always with a custom front end I intend to someday finish. I used Procreate to hand draw favicons for my current site until I finally got to one I liked, and I regularly build little features and ideas I don’t launch. Send help!
My old company’s blog got more attention for a long time, but it’s a retired Gatsby site and I’m back to mattstein.com again with stronger feelings that I need a personal site and I need to be writing more.
I’ve always felt like an internet outsider, I think because I was always an okay visual designer in the midst of either “real” developers and software engineers, or designers that could make you a really kickass band poster. I was quiet in forums, didn’t go to conferences, and offered all the fun and personality of a cardboard cutout. This started to change with the Peers conference and meeting people in the Craft CMS community, which is a wonderful place full of professionals and design agencies that do really cool work.
Writing’s always been a tool for me to sharpen my thinking, and I spent years shortchanging myself being sort of aloof—so I’m working on writing and publishing more and participating in the kind of internet I badly want to thrive. I’m inspired by what so many people choose to write and share, and I want to be part of that. I want to write something that matters to someone, and I need to be publishing for that to have a chance.
So that’s what my blog is to me right now. And I love that if I wake up tomorrow with some other idea, it can support that.
It’s generous to call it a “process,” because for me it’s the spontaneous choice to corral half-thoughts, impulses, and rambling into a Markdown file with a title and a publish date.
I rewrite and edit heavily to try and find what I want to say. I wrote obscenely long answers to these questions and had to start over, and I’m one of those serial Discord+Slack edit-after-sending people. I would go broke as a stone engraver.
If we visualized my thought process, it might be a tornado moving through a junkyard while I cling to a lamppost and catalog the various tires and scraps of siding. I use notes, journaling, and outlining to sort things out and pat my hair back down and build something with whatever I’ve collected.
I squirrel bookmarks and notes in Raindrop and Obsidian, and keep a long list of writing ideas in an Obsidian (Markdown) file. Some ideas are just bullets, some link to impossibly cryptic notes, and some link to long drafts too weird or uninteresting to publish. The ones that seem faintly coherent graduate to a Markdown file in my Astro repository where they’ll probably turn into posts. Rare ones hop into Scrivener books because it seems like they want more structure and may go on for a while.
If I get stuck or bored with something, I’ll rewrite it from scratch to approach it from a different angle. If I can’t manage to get words out, I’ll use a mind map to free-associate ideas as fast as I can and then look for opportunities to explore.
Trying to summarize my years as a technical writer was really important to me, for example, and I wrote about it a lot without ever feeling like I said what I wanted. I laughed out loud when I stumbled on Ian Henry’s writing, and I tried channeling that style in another rewrite that I finally liked. (I told Ian I ripped him off and he was fine with it.) I want you to like it too, but the little miracle for me is that I don’t need you to. I rarely get something to that point.
I’m trying to also be better at not reply-guying Mastodon posts, but turning strong feelings or tangents into blog posts. Better thinking for me, one less notification for somebody else rationing finite attention.
I’ll ask specific people to read drafts if I know they’ll be inclined to spot any sketchy or inaccurate details, but usually it’s me going it alone and re-reading with specific people in mind as a way to pretend at a fresh perspective.
If this answer isn’t long enough, I wrote a post about how I write.
I’m a sensitive creature and absolutely believe spaces influence my creativity, both physical and psychological.
I process and reflect best in stillness. That means visual and auditory quiet as much as putting away any extraneous thoughts. God forbid I need to write a coherent sentence but I forgot to flip the “clean” magnet on the dishwasher. I write best at my desk in my little cave of a bedroom office, or on the couch piled with blankets and a cup of coffee.
I find new ideas outside the cave, whether that’s reading or talking with people or physically exploring new places.
Taking an idea on a walk or into the shower is usually a good way to clarify it. I keep wondering what a walking shower desk would look like but it all falls apart with conference calls.
mattstein.com is an Astro site hosted on Cloudflare Pages. My domain registrations are split between Porkbun and Cloudflare Registrar, and this one’s with Cloudflare.
I use Cloudflare R2 (which is like Amazon S3) to store a handful of images, and a self-hosted imgproxy instance that resizes them on the fly. This probably sounds fancier than it is—mostly an experiment related to work projects.
I don’t use a CMS because in this case it might overcomplicate things, but as a chronic replatformer I’ve been looking at Payload CMS and Kirby because what if I overcomplicated it?
What I admire most about bloggers and newsletter writers I follow is that they manage to write.
Anything from interesting blurbs to deep, moving essays. I’ll be impressed or entertained by the format sometimes, but ultimately the magic is the writing. The number of people with crusty, dated-looking blogs still publishing incredible posts is a testament to that.
So I’d liberate myself from my greatest constraints: the fear of putting dumb words next to my name, and excessive platform puttering. I’d pick a low-key domain name that’s not literally the one I was born with, and I’d pick a platform like Blot that lets me tailor the look without rebuilding the whole machine every two years and finding new ways to break my RSS feed. That way I could focus on the writing, or at least have fewer distractions to blame when I’m not writing.
As hobbies go, I’d probably lose less money maintaining an old boat.
The operating costs are $9.15/year for the domain name, and $22/year for a cheap VPS to run that imgproxy thing I mentioned. Astro is free, as is Cloudflare Pages with my meager traffic. I spend heaps of time on the site that I can’t justify financially.
I have no problem with people monetizing their personal blogs and admire anyone taking it seriously enough to try and make it a sustainable endeavor.
But that’s not what it’s about for me.
I’m anxious about the effect big companies and commerce have had on the internet, and my blog is my little personal space—a tiny world as I’d like it to exist. No ads, no tracking, no referral links, no pressure to subscribe. I want to tell you about some things I’ve bought that I really like, but I don’t want it to even seem like that kind of blog.
I don’t even have a rough idea how many people subscribe to my RSS feed, and I like that. The feed isn’t for me.
The winds of income shifted for me recently, and as I re-evaluated expenses I suddenly noticed how many independent writers and developers and artists seem to put their work before their income. I think that’s a courageous thing to do, and my usually-free-tier patronage didn’t square with that. So now I keep a list of projects and resources and try to do a better job of supporting them when they offer a way to do it. (It’s never enough and I have a lot more to go!)
I know our priorities and circumstances are all different, but I wonder what the internet would look like if we collectively did more of that.
Career-wise I need to figure out what I’m selling and do that, but I’ll keep the selling to some other place because mattstein.com is my place to be a person more than a product.
I’d like to answer this three times.
Answer 1: Dave Rupert.
I’m still working up the confidence to not have a side blog for weirder posts I’m self-conscious about, and Dave’s been over there this whole time, regularly publishing interesting, entertaining, and useful things, but now he’s added self-described shitty science fiction complete with covers! From my point of view this is some wizardly next-level blog stuff.
Answer 2: Sara Joy, who’s playful and inventive and always mentioning parts of the internet where fun is still served. As far as I know, she also invented the term “short thorts” which is endlessly amusing to me. (Sara was the 29th P&B guest)
Answer 3: the folks at Good Enough. I’m only a new fan, but they make and share fun internet projects together that to me epitomize playful, stylish, inventiveness that’s cheerful and not overly commercial.
I’d like to find my inner versions of all these people. And there are many more, because I’m instantly enamored with anyone that chooses to write their own blog and build things for fun.
I’d say “watch this space” while I figure out what I’m doing, but there’s a nonzero chance I’ll end up pivoting away from tech to work maintenance at a horse therapy ranch or something. But surely I’d write about that.
Thanks for publishing this series and having me as a guest here! And thanks to anyone reading!
This was the 32nd edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Matt. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and all supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
Jamie Thingelstad (RSS) — Piet Terheyden — Raul Montala (RSS) — Eleonora — Carl Barenbrug (RSS) — Steve Ledlow (RSS) — Paolo Ruggeri — Nicolas Magand (RSS) — Rob Hope — Chris Hannah (RSS) — Pedro Corá (RSS) — Jeremy Sarber (RSS) — Colin Walker (RSS) — Sixian Lim (RSS) — Matt Stein (RSS) — Winnie Lim (RSS) — Flamed (RSS) — C Jackdaw (RSS) — Kevin Humdrum (RSS) — Fabricio Teixeira (RSS) — Rosalind Croad — Frank Meeuwsen (RSS) — Mike Walsh (RSS) — Markus Heurung — Jeremy Bassetti (RSS) — Juan Villela (RSS) — Michael Warren (RSS) — Chuck Grimmett (RSS) — Robin Harford (RSS) — Bryan Maniotakis (RSS) — Barry Hess (RSS) — Chris Jung (RSS) — Ivan Moreale — Khürt Williams (RSS) — Ben Werdmuller (RSS) — Cory Gibbons — Luke Harris (RSS) — Lars-Christian Simonsen (RSS) — Seth Werkheiser (RSS) — Cody Schultz — Brad Barrish (RSS) — Nikita Galaiko — Erik Blankvoort — Jaga Santagostino — Andrew Zuckerman — Mattia Compagnucci (RSS) — Thord D. Hedengren (RSS) — Sean Gallagher — Fabien Sauser — Maxwell Omdal — Numeric Citizen (RSS) — Jarrod Blundy (RSS) — Andrea Contino (RSS) — Sebastian De Deyne (RSS) — Nicola Losito (RSS) — Lou Plummer (RSS) — Leon Mika (RSS) — Veronique (RSS) — Neil Gorman (RSS) — Reaper (RSS)
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2024-04-03 03:35:00
There’s a specific type of beauty that can only be found in the most perfect of creations. Pure shapes, smooth surfaces. Some objects can only be the result of someone not settling for “good enough”.
There’s also another type of beauty, the one Japanese call wabi-sabi, the appreciation of things that are imperfect.
I don’t see these two things as being opposite to each other, but rather complementary. Like everything in life, the creation process is an act of balance.
At times I feel trapped between the two. Every day, whether I’m writing, coding or designing, a part of me strives for perfection while another is painfully aware that perfection is a mirage. What looks perfect now won’t look perfect tomorrow. I grow, I evolve, I change and my definition of perfection evolves with me.
This post won’t be perfect but it’s going to be "good enough". All my posts are. They have to be. Because a perfect post would never get posted. Perfection and the real world are like parallel lines in descriptive geometry whose crossing point can only be found at infinity.
It’s why deadlines are important. It’s why constraints are important. Learning to embrace “good enough” is not easy but it’s a necessary step if you want to achieve anything.
This post was part of April’s IndieWeb Carnival, hosted by Aaron “RisingThumb” Leonard. I look forward to reading your entry.
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2024-04-01 14:35:00
7.40 am. I’m sitting on a rock. Birds are chirping. Annoying rain coming down the gray sky. The rock I’m sitting on is wet. That’s also annoying. I’m sitting here, watching my dog walking up and down, destroying all the sticks that are lying on the ground. It’s a chilled morning.
Anyway, I’m sitting here, typing this on my phone. I have my phone with me. I shouldn’t. I should have a book with me. But it’s raining. And books don’t go along well with rain.
Books are interesting objects. The entire consumption process of a book is interesting, especially when compared to websites. There’s no equivalent of the web for books. There’s no place where an infinite supply of books is available to you at virtually no cost. Reading a book involves some decision-making and, more often than not, some financial investment.
Sure, some of you are probably saying that libraries are the equivalent of the web for books but that’s not the same thing. And don’t get me wrong, libraries are great!
Reflecting on books made me think about what the web would look like if it was some sort of pay-per-scroll platform. Not a place where virtually everything is free but a place where everything has to be purchased in order to be consumed. Which sites would I be willing to pay for? I’m going to ignore the obvious answers because I’m sure almost everyone would have sites like Wikipedia or YouTube. Those are boring answers. Aggregators such as Hacker News or Reddit would also not be something I’d be interested in paying for because the actual content lives somewhere else. So I’d be paying just for the commentary.
In my case, I’d probably pay for two types of websites: either personal sites of people that do things I enjoy or that have interesting takes on the world or sites that collect content coming from a diverse group of people (LessWrong is a good example).
Would I be happy if the web was some sort of à la carte menu rather than a free buffet? I’d say no. Still, thinking about this made me realize—once again—that my media diet is something that I have to always keep in mind. It also reminded me that I’m not reading enough books!
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2024-03-31 18:35:00
The other day I was asked why I have a blog, why I write. Hard questions to answer. I don’t really know why I’m doing all this. I know why I started back in 2017. But the reason why I started is long gone at this point. I started the blog as some sort of public accountability tool and it’s now everything but that. I don’t write to be accountable. I probably should.
The more I write on this site, the more I realize that what I’m trying to do is to connect. I’m trying to connect with others—with you—but I’m also trying to help others connect with each other. And, in a weird way, I’m also trying to connect with myself.
It’s why I find it so enjoyable to share other people’s projects on this site. It’s why I’m happy to remind you that March is almost over and if you haven’t already you should write something for this month’s IndieWeb Carnival. It’s also why I’m finding most of the current web so annoying and distasteful. The endless self-promotion, the attempt to grow a persona, the lack of authenticity. Everything becomes transactional and something is lost in the process.
I’m a nobody. I’m just a random person with a website like countless others out there. There’s nothing special about what I’m doing here and that’s how it should be. Sharing what we find interesting shouldn’t be some special activity. Being kind to one another should be the norm. We’re social creatures. Connecting with others is a great way to grow and improve as human beings. This is probably why I’m writing. To become a better me.
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2024-03-29 20:00:00
This is the 31st edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Adrianna Tan and her blog, popagandhi.com
Adrianna's blog was suggested by Winnie Lim in her interview, back in February. I love discovering new blogs thanks to recommendations. I especially love to see how the various blogs all connect and influence echother. The web, the best social media platform.
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Hi, I’m Adrianna. I’m an old school blogger. I’ve been blogging as a teenager, since before 2003 (various blogspots and self-hosted blogs). In 2003 my brother bought me my domain, Popagandhi.com as a birthday present, and I’ve had it ever since.
I grew up in Singapore, lived there and in Kuala Lumpur, Dubai, Mumbai, and many other places in the world until I moved to San Francisco in 2018.
I have always worked in tech. I’ve done the whole range of tech jobs from being an early stage tech company employee (various Silicon Valley companies) to startup founder, and now, public servant at San Francisco Digital Services, the digital team for the City and County of San Francisco, where I am the director of the product management team.
In my free time, I run, bike, cook, bake, and take film photos.
I was always a nerdy, introverted person so the early days of blogging felt like a godsend. I prefer to express myself in writing, rather than in speaking, or in audio or video (true, even today). I read a lot, and still do, and writing is my primary means of self-expression. So that’s probably what got me interested in tech: how to set up a blog, how to host it, how to change it, make it look good, all of those things.
I have been Popagandhi for two decades. The site, its name, and its past renown (it was quite popular in the early 00s) is forever attached to who I am as a person. The story behind the name it not that exciting: at the time, I was listening to a lot of punk music, I liked a band called Propagandhi. I was also just starting to be interested in art, and in travel (to India). So it felt like punk, pop art, India, all in one.
What I write about on Popagandhi has also gone through many iterations. I started when I was in high school, so there was a lot of first queer love anguish and sadness, then there was the travel and ‘seeing the world’ part of my life. Now the content is about photography, bicycles, and my quiet home life. So in a way, the blog has tracked my life through many important seasons. The content reflects that.
I’m a pretty spontaneous writer. Sometimes things just pop into my head, and I start and finish and post pretty much instantly. Partly it’s that I have ADHD. It’s hard for me to plan ahead. If I am planning to write something longer, with references, I try to do more planning.
These days, the things I post seem to follow a few patterns: stuff about cycling, interesting photos I’ve taken, longer thoughts about how I did something or more reflective thoughts about my creative processes. In the past I might worry more about ‘what’s the point of this post?’ but lately I’m taking the perspective, in everything that I do, that it’s just fun to blog.)
I don’t really need external stimulation to feel creative, most of my struggles to get creative are very much personal. It’s more of ‘can I drop everything and get into a flow state to hyper-focus on something for a bit?’ Sometimes, I can. Not always. When I do start creating things, I don’t need much around me to keep going. Good music does help, but honestly as long as I have a decently fast computer, a desk, I can start writing.
As I’m getting older, I am pickier about having the right tools: I need an ergonomic keyboard and mouse and good chair! That doesn’t help me get more creative as much as it helps me feel more comfortable.)
These days, I host most of my domains on porkbun.com. I tend to run static sites, and my static site generator of choice is 11ty, which I love; I used to use Hugo and Jekyll but 11ty is the one that just clicked for me. In fact, learning 11ty is also what got me to relaunch my blog. I use GitHub to check in my code and posts, and Netlify to deploy the site. With this stack, I don’t pay anything other than the annual domain registration renewal fee for Popagandhi.com.)
I’ve been thinking about how it feels harder to set up a blog than in the past, where there seemed to be more tools. I guess you can still use blogspot.com or wordpress.com, and that would be my recommendation for anyone who wants a traditional blog. I don’t really like posting content elsewhere, even on sites with more reach; so even though I previously posted on Medium, I’ve since moved a copy of all my posts there onto my own blog.
I would recommend that anyone somewhat technically inclined learn a tool like 11ty. With 11ty and basic CSS (I don’t like using libraries for CSS), you can get a site up and running really fast. The main gap in this would be in content management. If you plan to setup a blog this way for a less technical person, then it can be hard for them to update the site unless you also wire up something like Sanity, Strapi, Decap, or CloudCannon. Pros and cons for all of those. It’s personally too much for a one person blog like mine, so I would just stick to my current setup.
If owning your own content is important to you (and it is to me), then I would recommend learning some skills and rolling your own.)
I was there when adtech started becoming a thing, and I still have a difficult relationship with it. I have not monetized my blog in any meaningful way. Nor am I interested in it. I understand why some people feel they have to, but in the long run, and I think this is still true, advertising corporate interests don’t care about you as a person, an individual, a creator, and burnout is real. You see this now with YouTube content creators starting to feel like none of what they do matters, like they have to churn out content no matter what, or as if they have to structure their work in certain algorithm-gaming ways in order for the work to matter.
I pay around ten bucks a year or less, for my .com renewal. I don’t pay other fees. Even if I wanted to move off a service like Netlify, I guess I could set up something reasonably cheaply on a VPS.
I think newsletter style subscriptions have been a better model than advertising, but even then that’s not really an option for many people other than the most popular. I’m happy in my little corner of the web, just publishing stuff for myself. I don’t love corporations, so it’s hard for me to imagine being beholden to one (or several). Much better for me this way though I understand why others might want to monetize.)
I really love Rachel Smiths’s site. I think the colors and cursor trails brings back a bit of the joy that the old web brought me. And my friend Jason Li!)
Jason Li and collaborators have a super fun website called Asian Food Dictionary.
The podcasts I’ve been listening to have been all of Whetstone’s podcasts. Their stuff isn’t just about food but also about deep dives into culture, using food and ingredients as a lens.
I’ve also been cooking my way through SGP Noodles’ recipes (Singapore noodles are not actually from Singapore, so it’s pretty fun ‘in’ joke). Being an immigrant to the United States, what I miss most about home is the food. Pamela’s paid Substack has good recipes for the stuff I love.
This was the 31st edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Adrianna. Make sure to follow her blog (RSS) and get in touch with her if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and all supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
Jamie Thingelstad (RSS) — Piet Terheyden — Raul Montala (RSS) — Eleonora — Carl Barenbrug (RSS) — Steve Ledlow (RSS) — Paolo Ruggeri — Nicolas Magand (RSS) — Rob Hope — Chris Hannah (RSS) — Pedro Corá (RSS) — Jeremy Sarber (RSS) — Colin Walker (RSS) — Sixian Lim (RSS) — Matt Stein (RSS) — Winnie Lim (RSS) — Flamed (RSS) — C Jackdaw (RSS) — Kevin Humdrum (RSS) — Fabricio Teixeira (RSS) — Rosalind Croad — Frank Meeuwsen (RSS) — Mike Walsh (RSS) — Markus Heurung — Jeremy Bassetti (RSS) — Juan Villela (RSS) — Michael Warren (RSS) — Chuck Grimmett (RSS) — Robin Harford (RSS) — Bryan Maniotakis (RSS) — Barry Hess (RSS) — Chris Jung (RSS) — Khürt Williams (RSS) — Ben Werdmuller (RSS) — Ivan Moreale — Cory Gibbons — Luke Harris (RSS) — İsmail Şevik (RSS) — Lars-Christian Simonsen (RSS) — Seth Werkheiser (RSS) — Cody Schultz — Brad Barrish (RSS) — Nikita Galaiko — Erik Blankvoort — Jaga Santagostino — Andrew Zuckerman — Mattia Compagnucci (RSS) — Thord D. Hedengren (RSS) — Sean Gallagher — Fabien Sauser — Maxwell Omdal — Numeric Citizen (RSS) — Jarrod Blundy (RSS) — Andrea Contino (RSS) — Sebastian De Deyne (RSS) — Nicola Losito (RSS) — Lou Plummer (RSS) — Leon Mika (RSS) — Veronique (RSS) — Neil Gorman (RSS) — Reaper (RSS)
If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can:
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2024-03-25 23:50:00
Meta posting is fun. I love to blog about blogging. My brain enjoys a good recursion. One thing I don’t do is write about writing. That’s because I don’t think I’m a good writer. As I wrote before, I don’t even think I am a writer. Sure, I write, but that doesn’t make me a writer.
I do love when people write about writing. I’m enjoying reading Ratika’s series/book/in-progress-digital-project—support if you can—and I appreciate when people write and share more about their creative processes. It’s fun to see how other people’s brains work.
That said though, someone emailed me earlier today asking if I knew other people—or other online places—where writers write about writing. Unfortunately, I don’t but I’m sure some of you out there do so I’m gonna use this space to bounce the questions to you:
do you know any personal blogs about writing and by writers?
This is what I got back so far. These are not sites that are exclusively about the topic of writing but they do contain posts on the subject.
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2024-03-24 02:25:00
I'm following with somewhat vague interest the various legal battles Apple is currently involved in. Reading their response to the EU's DMA makes me sad. Not for the company itself. I honestly could not care less about the company. Nor for the people who run that company. I'm sad because the pursuit of endless growth is such a mind cancer. It consumes and distracts everyone. If you're an artisan, creating amazing objects is your end goal. Ideally, you want those objects to last forever. And if they don't, you want to do such an amazing job that once something is broken beyond repair, people will come to you again and ask you to make something new, rather than buying from someone else.
Apple makes amazing products. I bought the laptop I'm typing this 9 years ago. It still works fine. Sure, it's slow compared to my new machine but I can use it to do calls and write blog posts. And that's great. I love it. I was happy to give Apple my money back in 2015. But you know who's not happy? Apple. Apple is not happy that I bought a laptop in 2015 that was so good that it is still working fine 9 years later. And it's also not happy that I bought a phone more than 4 years ago that still does all the things I need it to do. Because they need to make money. More money. There's no end state here. "More" has no end state. At some point, a company like Apple will inevitably run out of people willing to buy their stuff. Because it's unreasonable to expect people to upgrade phones, laptops, screens, watches, tablets, virtual-ski-goggles every damn year. And so what do they do? They move into services. Music, movies, games, fitness, storage. You name it. But those also can't grow forever. Because guess what? There are other companies out there doing the same.
But they can't stop. They're a public company. If they're not growing enough it means they're failing. Forget that they make amazing products that can last decades with no issues. Forget that they're an almost 3-fucking-trillions dollar company. If they're not growing enough, stock goes down and that's no good. Because remember, there's no finish line here. They can't just be happy with their size. They can't be happy with the idea of employing thousands of smart people and creating amazing products. No, they have to keep growing. And sooner or later, this mind cancer becomes malignant.
Don't get me wrong, this is not just an Apple issue. It's an issue with any big company. It's an issue with everyone who can't accept that they reached their end state.
Cory Doctorow famously coined the enshittification term to describe the sad trend of online services going to shit over time. I don't think that's just an online services issue. It's a societal issue related to the pursuit of endless growth. And if you think about it, it's a deeply human issue. It's what happens when you can't say stop. No matter what you're doing, it can be something positive or negative, if you can't say stop, bad things will happen. Try to go for a run, and don't stop. Ever. Or try to drink water, and don't stop. Ever.
But it's our fault. Our as a society. We celebrate when Apple becomes the first trillion-dollar company but we don't celebrate when someone says "You know what? I think I have enough".
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2024-03-22 20:00:00
This is the 30th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Taylor Troesh and his blog, taylor.town
To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
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Hello! I’m Taylor (mayor of taylor.town).
I collect hobbies, build things, incite chaos, and engage in elaborate tomfoolery. I work as a developer, designer, DB architect, and other things.
I created my first personal website to quickly teach myself how to make websites, because I fudged my resume and accidentally landed a job as a web developer before I was ready.
My website became a blog when I posted my digital notebooks online circa 2015. I maintained hundreds of markdown files on various topics and ideas, but I was too embarrassed to publish most of the actual notes, so I replaced the body of each file with “Coming soon!”. My private ideas.txt file sits at 110,427 words right now. This does not include hundreds of unfinished essays, papers, books, stories, games, gadgets, etc.
As I grew more specific and organized, my notes became easier to digest. In 2019, I started writing about my opinions, my fears, my inspirations, and my paradoxes.
But I didn’t start writing seriously until I stopped drinking in 2022. Writing was welcome respite from alcohol withdrawals. Without booze to fill my emptiness, I suddenly found myself with plenty of “boring” hours. So I kept writing. And now I can’t stop writing.
I consume absurd amounts of books, small blogs, music, podcasts, and other internet media.
From there, my inspiration ferments in a 1Mb text file called ideas.txt. When I’m not doing chores, I start from the top of ideas.txt and work my way down, making small pseudoprose edits along the way. An idea usually sits at the top of the list for a few months before it’s ripe enough to publish.
Here’s an excerpt from the top of my list on Dec 7, 2023:
Krampus and negative punishment
Countless creations die in the pursuit of Ideal Creative Environments. After hearing how much quality work Tyler Cowen completes while traveling, I taught myself how to scrounge for in-between time. Through that process, I made more time for creative pursuits via extinguishing notifications and bespoke time-tracking software.
Today, most of my creative process occurs on couches – just me and my laptop. When I need more real-estate, I use my battlestation. When my thoughts become tangled, I clean my home or play with my daughter or walk outside. When I draw, I use our makeshift art studio in the basement. And so on.
Everything in a home or office eventually becomes invisible gorillas. In my experience, physical propinquity is the fastest way to modulate creativity. Unsurprisingly, surrounding myself with healthy and supportive people was a really good way to become healthy and supported.
It costs $0 to host my blog on GitHub and Cloudflare. I spend $30/mo on Buttondown. I once hoped that my blog would land me some sweet consulting gigs. As of 2023, total consulting revenue is $0.
I aim to be worth $1/hour. Advertising is spooky, so I’ve been working on books and games and services to sell instead. But it’s hard to juggle making worthwhile art while working for an employer while publishing free content.
I support TodePond and Hundred Rabbits via Patreon.
I would also love to support Experimental History and Escaping Flatland, but I’m avoiding Substack for now.
Other people/blogs I follow: Derek Sivers, sonnet.io, BenKuhn, And now it’s all this, Beyond the Frame, Scope of Work, and Steph Ango.
Things I’ve made recently:
Ways to keep up:
This was the 30th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Taylor. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and all supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
Jamie Thingelstad (RSS) — Piet Terheyden — Raul Montala (RSS) — Eleonora — Carl Barenbrug (RSS) — Steve Ledlow (RSS) — Paolo Ruggeri — Nicolas Magand (RSS) — Rob Hope — Chris Hannah (RSS) — Pedro Corá (RSS) — Jeremy Sarber (RSS) — Colin Walker (RSS) — Sixian Lim (RSS) — Matt Stein (RSS) — Winnie Lim (RSS) — Flamed (RSS) — C Jackdaw (RSS) — Kevin Humdrum (RSS) — Fabricio Teixeira (RSS) — Rosalind Croad — Frank Meeuwsen (RSS) — Mike Walsh (RSS) — Markus Heurung — Jeremy Bassetti (RSS) — Juan Villela (RSS) — Michael Warren (RSS) — Chuck Grimmett (RSS) — Robin Harford (RSS) — Bryan Maniotakis (RSS) — Barry Hess (RSS) — Chris Jung (RSS) — Khürt Williams (RSS) — Ben Werdmuller (RSS) — Ivan Moreale — Cory Gibbons — Luke Harris (RSS) — İsmail Şevik (RSS) — Lars-Christian Simonsen (RSS) — Seth Werkheiser (RSS) — Cody Schultz — Brad Barrish (RSS) — Nikita Galaiko — Erik Blankvoort — Jaga Santagostino — Andrew Zuckerman — Mattia Compagnucci (RSS) — Thord D. Hedengren (RSS) — Sean Gallagher — Fabien Sauser — Maxwell Omdal — Numeric Citizen (RSS) — Jarrod Blundy (RSS) — Andrea Contino (RSS) — Sebastian De Deyne (RSS) — Nicola Losito (RSS) — Lou Plummer (RSS) — Leon Mika (RSS) — Veronique (RSS)
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2024-03-21 23:55:00
There are some 400 or so blog posts on this site. I could be wrong but I think I wrote precisely 1 dev focused post. I wrote a few blog posts here and there that are tangentially work-related because they’re about projects I worked on but that’s about it.
There’s a reason why I don’t write about dev stuff. And it’s not because I find it boring or uninspiring. Quite the contrary. I love learning about web stuff. I love reading Robin’s The Cascade for example. There’s always something new happening on the web, especially in the frontend space. And as a—former?—designer I love learning about front-end stuff.
The reason why I don’t write about dev stuff it’s because, like many others, I suffer from impostor syndrome. I’ve been working on the web for more than 12 years. I’m still convinced I don’t know shit. I scroll through minimal.gallery or OPL, see the work of all those great designers and developers, and reinforce this idea that there are, in fact, countless people out there who are better than me.
Don’t get me wrong, the rational part of me knows that’s not entirely true. Of course there are people that are better than me. There will always be people better than me at literally everything. Still, this sensation of not knowing shit keeps following me around and it’s the reason why I don’t write about web stuff. This is also the reason why I said no when I was offered the possibility to teach. I know, it’s probably stupid but it is what it is. Dealing with my mind is a tough job.
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2024-03-20 23:35:00
You know, it’s never too late to change career. Maybe one day. Sheep are fun though.
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2024-03-20 02:05:00
I love books. I love reading books but I also love books as objects. And if you’re a designer—or passionate about design—chances are, you also love books. There’s something about the book, as an object, that managed to survive across all the various societal and technological changes.
In the 2010s, during the peak iPad era, people thought paper books were doomed. What’s the point of printing something when you can get hundreds, or even thousands of books inside a single device? And I’ll be honest with you, I went through that phase myself. For years I was only reading on an iPad. And it was great. Until it wasn’t.
There’s something about a printed book that technology can’t replace. I can’t tell you exactly why but I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. Reading a book, handling a book, smelling the ink and the paper, seeing it age over time, those are things that can’t be reproduced in the digital space.
I love books. I love when people pour their hearts and souls into creating great books. And I’m not just talking about the writing. Or the photographing. Or the illustrating. I’m talking about caring about the book itself, as an object.
That’s one of the reasons why I keep buying every book Craig Mod makes. The man knows how to make great books. And you can feel it. You can instantly tell he loved the process as soon as you pick up one of his books.
I never had to make a book myself. I designed a few, back when I was studying graphic design more than a decade ago. But I did experience firsthand what it means to care about creating a great book. That’s because I watched Carl and my brother working together to create the first volume of the Minimalissimo Selection series. The final product is an incredibly simple object but creating simple objects is painfully hard.
Before websites like Minimalissimo were a thing, you had to buy books to find visual inspiration. And now you have books created as a result of years of curation of those same websites. From ink, to pixel, and back to ink.
The iPad didn’t manage to kill books the same way smartphones didn’t manage to kill traditional photography. The more we digitize the world the more analogue, physical objects become important. And as creators, it’s important to care about creating quality objects. Because as they say if is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.
A final note about the lovely book Carl made. It was a limited run and there won’t be a second edition. But, there are still copies left so if you want one I suggest you act fast. Carl was also kind enough to set up a 25% discount for the readers of this site. Just use the SELECTION25 code at checkout.
Also, if you love books, and coffee, and great filmmaking, Antonio Carusone created an amazing promotional video for the book that I’ll embed down below.
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2024-03-15 20:00:00
This is the 29th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Sara Joy and her blog, sarajoy.dev
As I wrote in a recent post, she's almost entirely responsible for the existence of my guestbook. I also love her positive energy.
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I'm a 40 year old half Swede, half Brit living in Germany with my husband and two young children. I hold all three citizenships and am fully aware what a privileged position it is, especially since the mess that is Brexit.
(I wasn't personally affected because of my existing Swedish citizenship, but the whole thing left me livid. I remain especially angry on behalf of all the people too young to vote in 2016, who had the right to live, love and work anywhere in the EU ripped away from them.)
Being a creative and nerdy child that loved both art and physics, I went into engineering at university, despite not knowing which field I wanted to go into. I wanted to make stuff, and I wanted good job prospects. I chose to specialise in communications electronics presumably because I liked gadgets and the internet, but it was unfortunately not a great fit. I found it both difficult and boring - it was super difficult to work hard for something that wasn't interesting to me. I noped out once I'd made bachelor's level of the intended integrated masters course.
I duly went to work in comms electronics and later semiconductor testing before I left that industry. I hated being asked what I did for a living, because I wasn't happy. Next, I tried teaching physics to teenagers, and while that was never boring, it was instead incredibly stressful, so I left that too.
I then spent a decade in a cosy time-lapse niche, where the jobs ranged across everything from building hardware through PCB design to video editing, which was great. I worked for two different small companies that both specialised in long-term time-lapse films of construction projects.
My major hobby over a lot of this time has been swing dancing, and would still be if not for covid. Other hobbies have included crochet, tall ship sailing, cycling and photography. I really miss the dancing, but dislike the illness risk. I don't want to repeatedly bring covid home to the family (which I have already done twice, despite being very vaccinated and relatively careful).
After the career-hopping, I ended up with a poor self image - that I must be inherently lazy, or work-shy. Three-ish years ago, after two 1-year maternity leaves in fairly quick succession had left me feeling directionless, I decided to nope out pivot again, this time into web development. I'd loved tinkering with making websites as a teenager, and it turned out I still do!
I used my limited spare time to retrain, trying to catch up to modern web development* and attending therapy (having a new baby just as the covid lockdowns began was rough, fam). After lots of ignored applications and a few bombed interviews, I saw THE job I wanted. I threw everything I could at it, and got a friend to coach me before the interview.
She turned my self story of work shyness and noping-out into one of knowing myself, what engages me and what won't work for me, of having the courage to try or learn new things. I cried buckets. And I got the job.
I've been a front end web developer for coming up 18 months. I love it. I'm very into accessibility, because the web is for everyone.
* seriously, trying to catch up the last 10 years of change was and still is a wild ride!
As you can probably tell from the previous answer, I can just keep typing on about myself and my experiences, so I do. I have had several blogs in different places online for years - going back to 1999 when it was just a 'news' page on a hand coded website.
I did lock it all down and remove most searchable traces of myself when I went into teaching. I sort of regret that, but you really don't want the teenagers you teach finding out so much stuff about you!
For years, lots of my writing sank into long posts on Facebook. I have friends who still do that - I wonder if they should also try blogging. Many of my Facebook friends are so thoughtful, eloquent, and insightful, which makes me wonder how much interesting and profound thought is disappearing into these platforms.
My current blog sprang to life during my pivot to web development. I was building up a homepage and portfolio for my new career-to-be at the time, and naturally it needed a blog. I found a couple of ancient posts from old blogs and Facebook posts to seed it with, and I've been adding to it ever since.
It's a bit all over the place, to be honest. Sometimes a thought just hits me and the words keep coming, which definitely happens more with emotive content.
Other times it stutters - I started a long post about how my website's sliding tabs gimmick is made and never finished it, but I published it unfinished anyway. I figured there was nothing wrong with writing in public. If anyone takes an interest in it, I'll add more or maybe even complete it.
Since adopting both very short notes (I call them Short Thorts because I try a bit too hard to be original) and week notes (a.k.a. Weak Notes. Yeah..), the pressure to only write big, long, good blog posts has lifted a bit. Sometimes I just bash out one of those instead, when I want to output something brief that's not only posted to Mastodon.
So many times I've thought "ooh, I could blog about that," and then poof, it's gone. I should make a note of those ideas. Maybe even within their own blog post... hm.
I tend towards chatty verbosity so the drafts are often written big, and then chopped down. I've had to do that for these question responses too, not that you can tell!
I often start drafting blog posts on my phone, as I don't really want to be tethered to the laptop or desk. Sometimes the best stuff comes when I have a spare moment between other things.
I do really like my computer setup and the sunny attic room I use as a home office, but I already spend enough time in there while working the day job.
My domain is registered with PorkBun, and the website is hosted on Netlify. I have considered other hosts, but I'm using a fair few of Netlify's handy features, like deploying from GitHub, Forms (to take contact emails and handle the Guestbook posts), and rewrites.
I build the site with Astro, because it takes care of the blog's markdown files, and allows me to use vanilla HTML, CSS and JS to build a static site, while also being able to use layouts and components and JS variables in my markup.
I keep considering whether to build a CMS into it, but when I do a big post I draft it wherever (sometimes in a draft email to nobody) and like to finish it up in VS Code. For the short thorts I find prose.io to be really useful, which I mostly use via my phone.
Because this blog has been through a few iterations already, and was originally on a different domain - no, I don't think so. I take so much joy in building the site itself - the blogging is actually secondary to that.
If however I was only into the writing, I would definitely pick something simpler with a nice CMS that I could comfortably use on my phone.
The domain costs about ten dollars a year. Currently everything else is free - that might change if I change hosts - I don't mind paying a little for a good service. The site doesn't generate any revenue.
Indirectly I suppose it's a networking aid, and building your network can eventually bring more income, maybe?
As for people monetising, why not if you can earn a bit of cash? I'd prefer people managed to do that in non-invasive ways, i.e. without a paywall, obnoxious modals, or tracking - or at least let me opt out of the tracking.
The mommy bloggers of the 00's suffered such a big backlash after starting to monetise - I'd hope we're cooler with it now.
I have a brr, a Heydon and two Henries to recommend:
I don't know what brr's name is, probably because they chose not to share it. But brr.fyi is wonderful. It's recently fallen dormant, as they're no longer in Antarctica, but the blog remains extremely interesting.
Heydon Pickering writes and makes videos. His style is wry, pithy, and in the videos somewhat unhinged!
Henry Desroches has such style with his words and in his sites - here are three, all wonderful in different ways:
The second Henry is my husband. He's blogged on and off for years, the archive is now pretty impressive! I'm biased, of course. He thinks deeply about a lot of things, and sometimes shares those thoughts.
You interviewing any of those four would be very interesting for me!
For more recommendations of cool stuff, there's my blogroll:
I sometimes I find words worth sharing in the books I read to my children. I think this might have been from The Worrysaurus:
"If it's not a happy ending, then it hasn't ended yet."
From me: Don't be afraid to pivot. If you can afford it, plus the time and the effort, do it. Share your experiences, we're here to read about them and support you :)
Finally, and rather less suitable for children, I'd like to quote dasharez0ne:
JUST WALK OUT
you can leave!!!
IF IT SUCKS... HIT DA BRICKS!!
real winners quit
Oh and your readers should feel free to come find me on Mastodon: front-end.social/@sarajw :)
This was the 29th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Sara. Make sure to follow her blog (RSS) and get in touch with her if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and all supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
Jamie Thingelstad (RSS) - Piet Terheyden - Raul Montala (RSS) - Eleonora - Carl Barenbrug (RSS) - Steve Ledlow (RSS) - Paolo Ruggeri - Nicolas Magand (RSS) - Rob Hope - Chris Hannah (RSS) - Pedro Corá (RSS) - Jeremy Sarber (RSS) - Colin Walker (RSS) - Sixian Lim - Matt Stein (RSS) - Winnie Lim (RSS) - Flamed (RSS) - C Jackdaw - Kevin Humdrum (RSS) - Fabricio Teixeira (RSS) - Rosalind Croad - Frank Meeuwsen (RSS) - Mike Walsh (RSS) - Jose Munoz (RSS) - Markus Heurung - Jeremy Bassetti (RSS) - Juan Villela (RSS) - Michael Warren (RSS) - Chuck Grimmett (RSS) - Robin Harford (RSS) - Bryan Maniotakis (RSS) - Barry Hess (RSS) - Chris Jung (RSS) - Khürt Williams (RSS) - Ben Werdmuller (RSS) - Ivan Moreale - Cory Gibbons - Luke Harris (RSS) - İsmail Şevik (RSS) - Lars-Christian Simonsen (RSS) - Seth Werkheiser (RSS) - Cody Schultz - Brad Barrish (RSS) - Nikita Galaiko - Erik Blankvoort - Jaga Santagostino - Andrew Zuckerman - Mattia Compagnucci (RSS) - Thord D. Hedengren (RSS) - Sean Gallagher - Fabien Sauser - Maxwell Omdal - Numeric Citizen (RSS) - Jarrod Blundy (RSS) - Andrea Contino (RSS) - Sebastian De Deyne (RSS) - Nicola Losito (RSS)
If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can:
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2024-03-15 00:45:00
A peaceful out for a walk, a lovely a sunset. Sometimes life doesn't have to be complicated to be enjoyable.
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2024-03-12 15:25:00
Spring is almost here! Birds are chirping, days are getting longer. What a lovely time of the year. Housekeeping post to share a bunch of stuff with you all.
Jarrod managed to remove an item from my to-do list since he made a site for the One a Month Club. I was planning to set up a page here on the site but I guess I don’t need to do that anymore. If you decide to join send him an email.
Ratika started Kadambari, a book written online, chapter by chapter. Such a lovely idea, one worth supporting.
Chuck created a page for People and Blogs on FeedLand. In there you’ll find:
It is such a useful resource. I have a folder with all the P&B blogs in my RSS reader but having an online page is a lot more convenient.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2024-03-09 19:50:00
The concept of a walled garden is not a new one in the digital world. It’s just a fancier, less aggressive way to describe a closed ecosystem or a closed platform. This idea is that once you have carved out your space you have to put up fences and try to keep everything and everyone inside.
It’s something that’s been discussed a lot, especially recently thanks to the new Digital Markets Act here in Europe that is forcing the Apples and the Microsofts of this world to change a bunch of stuff. All these companies are clearly not happy about it and they’re doing everything they can to keep their gardens walled.
At the same time, there’s another type of garden on the web, not a walled one, but a digital one. Personal websites come in many shapes and sizes and the digital garden is one of them.
It’s interesting how we’re using the same metaphor—the garden—to describe two completely different things. One is the embodiment of the capitalist mindset applied to the digital ecosystem driven by greed. The other is the digital manifestation of personal expression. Digital gardens are—or at least should be—a welcoming place.
But they should not be a destination. The point of a garden is to walk through it, to enjoy what it has to offer, and to then keep moving while carrying its beauty with you. Ideally, you should come out of that walk enriched, and not enraged.
My goal, for this digital place I’m creating, is to make you go away. And that’s not because I want to be left alone but because I hope to help you discover new digital places to explore. If I see you again, it’s because you decided to come back, and not because you got lost and trapped inside the digital walls I erected.
Rather than clicking on another article in my archive, go explore ooh.directory, click the big button on theforest.link, scroll through Flamed blogroll.
And don’t forget to connect, to interact. Send Ratika an email, become Kev’s penpal, chat with Devastatia on her wild website, sign foreverliketh.is guestbook.
Also, create! Don’t just consume content, make content yourself. Write something for the IndieWeb carnival, participate in the #100DaysToOffload.
Walled gardens are boring. The corporate web is boring. But I’m sure you’re not. I’m sure you have something worth contributing, something worth sharing. So just do it.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2024-03-08 20:00:00
This is the 28th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Brad Barrish and his blog, bradbarrish.com
To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
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Before I get into this, I want to thank you for inviting me to be part of this special series you do. I look forward to reading them as soon as they are posted. I've missed a few, but I am working my way back through those. They are the source of many open browser tabs, just as I hope this one will be for others.
Ok, is this where I assert my nerd cred? I grew up in Overland Park, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City. My interests were music, comic books, skateboarding and computers, none of which were cool to many people then. Despite it all, I had a pretty good childhood with close friends and supportive parents who loved me. I went to computer camp and learned BASIC programming on an Apple IIe when I was young. Our first home computer was a Franklin Ace 1200. It had a dial-up modem, allowing me to begin exploring BBSes. At some point, my dad bought an IBM PS/1. It was our first computer with a GUI (Windows), but more importantly, Prodigy and, later, AOL.
I’m a Very Internet Person with an insatiable appetite and irrational excitement for cool, weird and fascinating web stuff. I've somehow maintained a certain level of excitement and optimism about the web. I can still recall the excitement I felt when a friend showed up to my apartment with NCSA Mosaic on a floppy. I get an unreasonable thrill from discovering web stuff, which I hoard, tag and share with others.
I took a minimal number of credits at the University of Kansas. They were just enough to make me eligible to work at KJHK, KU’s college radio station, one of the best in the country. When I wasn’t in class, at the station or seeing shows at The Bottleneck, I immersed myself in music and computers. I worked in a recording studio, worked as a College Marketing Rep for Sony Music, started a record label, built websites and created interactive things for the web. I most notably built an early interactive music player in Macromedia Director for the KU student newspaper's website.
Lawrence, Kansas was one of the first places in the U.S. to have broadband cable modems, which, of course, I had. I used all that crazy bandwidth to load web pages faster, listen to music on IUMA and communicate with strangers on CU-SeeMe. Some of those strangers would later become friends, co-conspirators and co-workers. Keep in mind this was in the mid-1990s!
One of the first interactive agencies in LA hired the leading developers of CU-SeeMe away from Cornell. Along with a handful of developers, they worked to commercialize the technology. I flew to LA and convinced the founder to hire me as a product manager and cover my moving expenses. That was during the first dot.com boom (and bust). I've lived in LA ever since, working in tech, save for a slight detour or two. Over the last decade, I’ve worked at the intersection of consumer hardware and software, most notably at Sonos and Oura. I’m especially interested in how humans interact with technology and integrate it into daily life.
I live with my wife, eleven-year-old daughter and nine-year-old son, in the Mar Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles. I’ve been enjoying my first real career break since May last year. I've been spending time with family, writing, reading, playing, and making new friends, both online and in real life. I’m currently coaching, running workshops for small teams and consulting.
I started blogging on bradbarrish.com in 2001 on MoveableType. I also started a separate music blog called Jeans And A T-Shirt in 2002. It had a decent following and I met tons of people because of it. I started publishing on whatevernevermind.com (a reference to a Nirvana lyric) in 2004. If memory serves, that’s when I started using WordPress. I enjoyed writing on Tumblr during its heyday, but when they sold it to Yahoo, I exported my posts and returned to my domain(s). I’ve continued to publish with varying frequency there ever since.
I’ve never thought about the story behind my blog until now, so what follows is a lightly edited stream-of-consciousness answer. For some reason, I still believe there is something magical about being able to create something on the web that connects with other people. It’s been exciting to see a renewed interest in personal publishing. All these cool and weird minimalist CMSes are amazing! Seeing people building thoughtful, sustainable products, services and platforms for the long haul is inspiring. I’m here for it!
I basically just write about and link to anything interesting to me. I’ve learned over and over that if something is interesting to me, there are probably at least a few other people that will be into it too. Publishing stuff online is, in many ways, a signal or beacon that lets other people know you’re into a thing and says, ‘Hey! Me too! Let’s hang out.’
RSS is at the heart of my exploration and inspiration. I have thousands of websites and newsletters that come into Feedbin. I love Feedbin and have been using it for many years. I’m constantly pruning feeds, adding new sites and unsubscribing. When I have more time, I’ll skim the main stream, which includes everything I subscribe to. When I have less time, I have a list of about 50 essential sites I skim. Feedbin also allows me to create saved searches that crawl all my feeds and surface posts with specific words or phrases. This is especially handy for tracking something specific, which I almost always do.
I use Golden Hill Software’s lovely Unread app with Feedbin on macOS and iOS. I save lots of links in Raindrop, where I keep all my bookmarks. I also queue up articles in Reader, for highlighting and annotating. Reading gets me thinking. Thinking leads to writing, so I can clarify my thinking. Sometimes, it turns into a blog post. But more often, I’ll write a few sentences with a link on my microblog.
I’ve solicited feedback from people on posts, but most of them sit in an unpublished state. Editing them to integrate the input becomes a thing that I procrastinate. My interest often shifts or I'll read it so many times that I don't like it anymore. I know this is a thing in talking to other people who write. I have enough self-awareness to know that, generally speaking, the more I noodle on a post, the less likely it is to see the light of day. I open Obsidian, create a new document and write until I get everything I have to say is on the screen. I’ll do my best not to edit myself in this phase. Once I get everything in the document, I’ll lightly edit it to tighten things up. Then it's a simple copy/paste into WordPress’ crappy editor, give it a once-over and smash the publish button.
I use a few tools to write posts. Loose ideas get captured in Drafts. I can go from idea to Drafts quickly on my phone and I like its simple interface. The loose ideas I capture in Drafts make their way into Obsidian (shoutout Steph), where I process and write almost everything (including these answers). I’ve used a bunch of other similar apps, but I like how Obsidian works. It's reasonably priced, has an active developer community, and, by all accounts, a sustainable business model. I pay for Grammarly Premium and mostly like it. I keep it disabled while writing and turn it on when editing. I do feel like there might be something better, and I am actually editing the answers with Hemingway.
While doing all this writing and editing, I listen to instrumental music or fire up Endel. Full disclosure: I made a modest investment when Endel was getting started.
My ideal creative environment is a small structure with floor-to-ceiling windows, surrounded by nature to which I can teleport. I have a big monitor (at least 4K) connected to an Apple laptop (notifications disabled), on a sturdy desk with an obligatory Aeron Chair. A blazing-fast wireless Internet connection is a must. I'll have all the delicious coffee and fresh food I need. And, of course, a Sonos system for listening to music. Oh, and there’s not another human for miles.
Physical space absolutely influences my creativity, but it can also distract me.
Most of my domains are registered with Namecheap, which I’ve happily used since 2011. I currently use Wordpress.com to host my main personal blog, which utilizes Automattic’s Sten theme. I plan to migrate to a self-hosted Ghost instance using the Zap theme I’ve already set up on an Ubuntu server hosted by Vultr. My microblog is hosted on Micro.blog and uses the Marfa theme. I plan to consolidate everything onto Ghost, which I have unsuccessfully attempted once. Now that Matt Haughey’s has shared some notes on the process, I'll give it another whirl soon.
I would approach things, more or less, the same way I approached it at the dawn of the web, and largely still do. That is to say, I would start writing about anything that was remotely interesting to me without much thought given to the audience. You are your audience, if that makes sense. I would link to and follow others who I admire. And for people I’m especially fond of, I would reach out to them in a non-creepy way (do I even need to say that?) to say hello and express my admiration directly, especially if they are lesser known. Who knows? Your note might be the thing that keeps them going for another day, week or month. Most people don’t do this, by the way. Generosity stands out, especially when it’s not done publicly as some performative act. You might even make some new friends.
Like any Very Internet Person, I have too many domains. And while I’ve often considered having my main site be something other than my name, I’ve used my real name and identity almost everywhere online. I have to admit to being a little envious of people with recognizable pseudonyms or alts, but it all seems like too much work to maintain. I have enough trouble maintaining things. Besides, there’s something freeing (for me) and disarming (for others) about moving fluidly between URL and IRL. Starting a conversation with, “Hey, I’m Brad” is easier.
In short, not a lot. My domain registration, bradbarrish.com, costs me about $16/year on Namecheap. It’s hosted on Wordpress.com’s least expensive Starter plan, which costs me $3.25/month (billed every two years at $78). It’s an incredible bargain if you don’t have the time or desire to host your domain and are not bothered by its unpleasant backend. Micro.blog hosts my microblog. I pay for their basic tier, which costs me $5/month and is billed monthly.
As I mentioned above, I intend to switch to the Ghost instance I set up with Vultr. It's basically a dev server at the moment and costs me around $3/month. I'm looking forward to having everything on a single, minimalist CMS that I don’t have to futz with often.
I’ve never had any intention or desire to generate money from my blog. That said, I use affiliate links whenever possible, which generate maybe a few hundred dollars in a good year.
It’s lovely that people make a living online from their blog or other creations. I’m proud to financially support bloggers, artists, musicians, journalists, podcasters, indie developers, etc. I’ve probably been paying Kottke the longest of any single blogger. I want to live in a world where people can make a living doing things they love. The more niche and nerdy, the better. Financially supporting people with a few bucks is the simplest way to bring that world about.
There are SO many worth checking out. Before I get to a list, I highly recommend checking out blogroll.org and Gossip’s Web for some remarkable discoveries. Here’s a mix of a few steady essentials and some new discoveries — my vote for who you should interview has Asterisks next to them.
Final question indeed! Where do I even begin?! Ok, I’m literally setting a timer to answer this one. Let’s see… (scrolls through hundreds of open tabs) I love Elliot Cost’s work a lot, especially Special Fish. I think I learned of Elliot through his work on The Creative Independent, which was co-founded (I think?) by Yancey Strickler, who turned me on to Time Wharp’s Spiro World, which I listen to many times per week. I’m excited about The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet being released on Metalabel (Yancey’s latest thing). John Bengtsson designs pretty things. I recently learned about Lauren Lee McCarthy and have been diving into her work thanks to an interview she did with Peter Bauman. I could watch Etienne Jacob’s animations all day. Kevin Kelly and Craig Mod put together a booklet that documents the Walk and Talk, which is lovely. Touch grass. My friend Brian encourages people to touch grass while listening to beautiful music. I may have sent more people to Milan’s amazing Things you’re allowed to do post more than anything else online. I read everything Derek Sivers writes at least once, but often more than once. I love his Tech Independence post for obvious reasons. Jake Rush made me laugh recently. I like what’s happening at the html review. I just finished listening to John MacFarlane’s appearance on the How I Built This podcast, which I really loved. I was fortunate enough to work at Sonos when John was CEO. He was a unique and, in many ways, gifted leader. Sari Azout is doing something quite special with Sublime, but it’s still early. Paul Graham has written so many great essays, but I recently re-read Putting Ideas Into Words and it feels like an especially appropriate thing to share here. I helped put together a little thing with riotgoools to get people introduced to RSS in the VIP channel on Farcaster. Even though The Red Hand Files doesn’t have an RSS feed, I’m happy to visit. I’m quite excited about Neverpost. The timer went off, so that’s where I will stop.
If you’re interested in exploring the possibility of working together, check out bradbarrish.me and set up some time with me.
This was the 28th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Brad. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and all supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
Jamie Thingelstad (RSS), Piet Terheyden, Raul Montala (RSS), Eleonora, Carl Barenbrug (RSS), Steve Ledlow (RSS), Paolo Ruggeri, Nicolas Magand (RSS), Rob Hope, Chris Hannah (RSS), Pedro Corá (RSS), Jeremy Sarber (RSS), Colin Walker (RSS), Sixian Lim, Matt Stein (RSS), Winnie Lim (RSS), Flamed (RSS), C Jackdaw, Kevin Humdrum (RSS), Fabricio Teixeira (RSS), Rosalind Croad, Frank Meeuwsen (RSS), Mike Walsh (RSS), Jose Munoz (RSS), Markus Heurung, Jeremy Bassetti (RSS), Juan Villela (RSS), Michael Warren (RSS), Chuck Grimmett (RSS), Robin Harford (RSS), Bryan Maniotakis (RSS), Barry Hess (RSS), Chris Jung (RSS), Khürt Williams (RSS), Ben Werdmuller (RSS), Ivan Moreale, Cory Gibbons, Luke Harris (RSS), İsmail Şevik (RSS), Lars-Christian Simonsen (RSS), Seth Werkheiser (RSS), Cody Schultz, Brad Barrish (RSS), Nikita Galaiko, Erik Blankvoort, Jaga Santagostino, Andrew Zuckerman, Mattia Compagnucci (RSS), Thord D. Hedengren (RSS), Sean Gallagher, Fabien Sauser, Maxwell Omdal, Numeric Citizen (RSS)
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2024-03-07 21:25:00
As I mentioned in a previous post, this site now has a guestbook. But, as someone pointed out, I didn’t explain what the heck a guestbook is. I thought it was pretty self-explanatory but I think it’s worth writing a post about it anyway. On the IndieWeb website, guestbooks are defined as:
a way to allow visitors to your site to leave a comment about the website as a whole, instead of a comment about a specific post.
I think it’s a good definition. Guestbooks are a relic of a different time, back when the web wasn’t dominated by social media and interactions among people moved at a different pace. A guestbook is like a summit book, in a way. It’s something you can use to leave a trace of your presence.
But what do you write on the guestbook? Whatever you want. You can let me know how you landed here, you can use it to suggest a topic, or you can use it to just say hi. Just be kind and respectful.
I first toyed with the idea of adding a guestbook almost a year ago, after stumbling on Sara Joy’s website. I don’t remember how or why I was there but I loved the guestbook and it took me almost a year to finally code mine.
And I’m happy to see that Kev now has one on his site as well! If you decide to add a guestbook to your site send me an email, and I’ll be happy to come sign it.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2024-03-05 22:35:00
I was sitting there, minding my own damn business, surfing the web, clicking around, enjoying my time, when I stumbled on this article, by Ian Bogost on The Atlantic, that is so painfully stupid that I had to take the time and comment on it. Because, as you know, I love emails.
Finally, in step five, you must evangelize your mission. Email is a public-health concern. Gently correct your mother when she tries to correspond. Reprimand your email-happy colleagues. Punish email abuse by withholding your replies. Or, more gently, darken someone’s doorway. In short, you must show the sort of leadership that will encourage others to forsake their email too. We’ll never stop the rain of email, no matter what we do. But if we work together, maybe we can build a kind of shelter.
The entire premise of this article is that email is an unmanageable mess filled with all sorts of garbage and dealing with it is a lost cause. There’s an analogy in there that is so idiotic that is worth quoting:
Alas, there is no opting out from email. As a practical matter, your inbox cannot be abandoned altogether. The same is true for postal mail: To function within the normal bounds of contemporary society, you must be addressable in physical space. You must be able to receive Amex bills and Amazon baubles, and also, you must subject yourself to lots of junk. This analogy between your home’s mailbox and your computer’s inbox is so easily made that it’s often overlooked. Both are stuffed with garbage by default, but also just a few essential messages.
Ian, let me give you some shocking advice: unlike your physical address, it’s not hard to get an extra email address. Hell, you can get even more than one. You can go one step further and get a disposable one! Shocking, I know!
In all seriousness, if in 2024 you’re using one single email address for everything that’s a you problem, not an email problem. Also, Ian, let me ask you a question: what’s the alternative here? Do we all move to Slack/Discord/Teams? Do we all move everything to DMs? Do you think that’s a better solution?
There’s a reason why emails are still here. They’re still here because they work. Is email perfect? No. Is there a better alternative? Also no.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2024-03-05 00:45:00
This is my entry for this month’s IndieWeb Carnival hosted by Orchids on the topic of Accessibility in the Small Web
I started making websites back in 2010. That’s 14 years. I entered the web dev world back when the frontend scene was starting to become exciting thanks to CSS3 and HTML5. Shadows, rounded corners, custom typefaces! Everything was exciting. Also, new tags! I remember spending time reading about <section>, <article>, <header>, and all the new things at my disposal. But I never thought about spending time learning about what all this meant in terms of accessibility.
I worked solo my entire career. I still do. I have to wear a thousand different hats on a daily basis and keeping up with the web as a whole is a full-time job. And it’s only recently that I started to realize how much I neglected accessibility when it comes to my sites.
Don’t get me wrong, I still try to follow at least some best practices: I try to pick combinations of colors that have enough contrast, and I try to structure my documents in a way that makes sense for screen readers but I’m painfully aware how much my knowledge on the topic is lacking.
These days I find myself hating on the “modern web”. I can’t stand sites that don’t load if I block some JS. I can’t stand sites that hijack my scroll. I hate that everything is getting more and more performative and less functional.
And in my retreat towards a simpler and more streamlined web, I’m rediscovering the pleasure of making sites that are simple and more accessible.
Accessibility becomes easier when sites are simpler. Still, I think I can and should do better which is why I have my eyes set on Sara Soueidan’s Practical Accessibility course (only waiting to have 400$ to invest).
It’s a shame that so much of the web has become an unusable mess. At the same time though, it’s refreshing to see that a good chunk of the small web seems to be heading in the right direction: simpler websites, less complicated and more focused layouts.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2024-03-03 17:45:00
February has come to an end and with it also ended my experience hosting the 9th edition of the IndieWeb Carnival. To be honest with you, I didn’t know what to expect going into this. Foreverliketh.is—who was the host for the month of January—emailed me one day asking me if I wanted to host one of the upcoming months because the carnival was running short on hosts and I obviously accepted.
His month on the topic of Positive Internalization saw 13 people contributing and so I said to myself “If 10 to 15 people decide to participate in February I’ll consider that a win”.
Well, looks like we got there. I have 44 links in front of me so this is going to be quite the roundup but before we jump into that let me first say thank you to all the people who decided to take the time to participate. You’re all a bunch of awesome people. Also, the Carnival continues and this month’s topic is going to be Accessibility in the Small Web. Look forward to reading your posts there. Now it’s time to dive into the submissions.
As I said before, I have 44 links in front of me. One person contributed 2 posts, 43 of those posts were written specifically for this month’s carnival and 1 was submitted not by its author but by someone else. They thought it was a quality entry and they were right so I decided to include it.
It’s 7.42 am, I have my cup of tea in front of me, and it’s time to review all these entries.
There’s no way for me to write up my time as a Voxer both online and off in any way that’s comprehensive or even likely especially coherent. Between the memory deficiencies and the flood of alcohol with occasional marijuana digressions, there’s just not enough to form a full picture. While I appear on the incest map, there are versions that link me to people with whom I did not have a saliva or semen connection. The community was a jumbled mess but there’s also a lot of myth wrapped up in it all. I won’t deny I at least had more than my fair share of crushes, including a photographer who I didn’t actually know very well, although we got along fine, and whose later and far too soon funeral to this day I regret missing. (People still remember you, K.)
I love that this was the first post I received. I am a sucker for stories. I just love them. I love learning about people’s previous lives, about their adventures, about the way they got where they are now. I also love when the physical and the digital intersect and learning about the origin of the name Bix was such a treat.
Understanding that the generalisability of any study can be questioned, it is worth reflecting that the IndieWeb—made up in large part of text-heavy websites—can help foster meaningful digital relationships, strengthen social support and feelings of satisfaction associated with these relationships. And because a key, if indirect, result of the IndieWeb movement is to promote a balance of creation and consumption, it is all the more powerful a tool to employ in strengthening digital relationships of humans through the web.
VH post was the starting point for so many interesting deep dives and I’m going to write at least a few posts thanks to this. I loved the parallelism between the IndieWeb and the physical interactions.
By James
Looking back, all this happened in a flash. At the time, it felt like aeons.
I loved this entry focused on gaming because I personally have so many great memories that are related to that. The hours spent with three weirdos—you know who you are—playing co-op games on the PS4 during the pandemic days will stay with me forever. So many laughs, and so many great moments.
We’re still dating. I mean… I married her, but we still date too.
Jamie’s post made me smile because it’s such a lovely story. One I can relate to all too well. I might tell my story at some point. Maybe.
In the first era, technology was here to catalogue us.
In the second, it was here to empower us.
In the third, it was here to observe us.
In the fourth, it is here to replace us.
I’m wondering what the fifth phase is going to look like. This is the type of post I love to read. Full of interesting information and thought-provoking.
It's a struggle to slow the cadence of the web and our daily social interactions; to avoid becoming over-stimulated the second we wake up in the morning. And it's for this reason I find myself gravitating towards natural activities of the past—without a screen. Albeit with a slightly different landscape and a more focused mindset.
This is something I’m also experiencing. And it’s paradoxical in a way. I retreated from social media years ago to hide in my digital corner and do my own things. I spend more time outside, walking, enjoying nature, and listening to birds. And yet what’s left of my online life is a lot more meaningful.
By Steve Ledlow
How a family sits around a table in public all staring at their phones carrying on relationships digitally with everyone other than those sitting in close physical proximity is a tip of the societal scale that disturbs me. How others begin, navigate and end romantic relationships exclusively with digital mechanics confuses me. The fact that our world seems to be trending toward more technology that replaces the relationship with more digital depresses me.
The large-scale implications of technology are something that worries me a lot. It’s one of those topics I find myself returning over and over again. Another topic I need to explore more on this site.
By Sara Jakša
And people are trying to solve this for themselves. Which is why there are so many different online spaces and different ways of communication online. But that also means, that there is no way to have one way to communicate with everybody.
I couldn’t help to ask myself if that’s necessarily a bad thing. Do we actually need a way to communicate with everybody? Maybe we want some friction in the system. Maybe the fact that not everyone is willing to use emails is why emails are still the best way to have one-to-one interactions online.
It’s not bad to know many people. The value of a substantial social network is quite high. But having just one close person to go to when you’re feeling down… how many average relationships is that worth? Who feels deep happiness for you when something good happens in your life? Who can you make beautiful memories with?
I couldn’t agree more. Like everything in life, what matters is to find a good balance. You want plenty of interactions to keep your mind stimulated and your points of view challenged and the digital world is perfect for that. But you also want at least a couple of close IRL relationships.
By Matt Stein
My favorite of these networked-but-not-online spectacles were the LAN parties we’d have in high school.
LAN PARTIES! Those were dope. I still remember playing UT99 with a bunch of people at an improvised LAN party in a garden. And there was pizza. UT99 and pizza. What more can you ask from life? I should probably look into setting up a server to play UT99 with people. Could be fun.
By Barry Hess
I try to imagine what my life would look like if I was stuck with only the relationships geographically close to me. I have those relationships as well, and I treasure them, but they simply cannot offer the diversity of thought, background, and experience that digital relationships allow. I’m so incredibly thankful to live in an era where I can have the best of both worlds.
The global nature of the web is an underappreciated quality. Like, can we just stop for a second and appreciate the fact that I’m typing this while sitting in Italy and you’re reading this somewhere else on the globe? It’s fucking amazing.
9.12 am: time for a break. Can’t believe I’m only a quarter of the way through this roundup post.
9.37 am: I’m back!
So yeah The early Internet gave us opportunities for interpersonal relationships. The modern Internet gives us parasocial relationships.
I love Devastatia’s website. It’s absolutely everything mine isn’t and I love that. I also loved her post because it touches on another topic I plan to write about at some point. Parasocial relationships are fascinating and disturbing.
Leaving the corporate web is not enough. Refusing to follow influencers with their incessant broadcasting of self-promotion is not enough. Repopulate an RSS reader with brilliant blogs from newfound like-minded people is not enough. Homepages dressed as business cards are everywhere, convinced as we are that presenting ourselves as a product is the only way to go.
I wrote about personal branding back in 2017 and my opinion on the topic hasn’t changed. Reading Simone’s post made me want to rewrite my About page though.
By Karen
Some of my good friends I still haven’t met! We only communicate online in assorted ways. We text, we send each other memes and voice messages and emails. I count them as some of my very best friends and they have been there for me in some of my darkest moments.
This is one of those things that people can’t fully understand until they try for themselves. It’s incredible how much you can connect with others via the digital space.
Others, I’ve gotten to know in real life. And it’s a wonderful sensation when you meet someone for the first time in a pub and the usual “getting to know a stranger” feeling isn’t there at all. We would continue the discussions we’ve had for years without a hitch.
It really is incredible how normal it feels when you finally meet someone in person. Probably 2 hours after having met Rob in person we were wandering the woods chasing howls as if that’s the most normal thing to do with someone you only just met. But it was perfectly normal because we were friends. And we still are.
But it all starts on the internet, on the old independent web, where there’s no algorithm and no digital gods telling us what we can and can’t see. It all starts there but it all continues somewhere else. It continues in our hearts. Because it doesn’t matter what channel or app we use to communicate, as long as we have the will. Because whatever app we use, a friend will be on the other side. We can enjoy whatever platform we have while it exists, and we can move on when it ceases to exist. It doesn’t matter if the platform stays or not, what matters is that friends will be there, friends will stay.
I love this. And I love mail! I keep thinking that maybe I should set up a PO Box and start connecting at an even slower pace. Maybe after I moved and I finally have a home I’m gonna do just that.
By Andrei
Even if these persons are remote, they still mean the world to us, we still care about them, we love them and they are our friends.
This is another aspect I love about true relationships. They flow. They change, they evolve, they move from digital to physical but they still mean something, no matter the circumstances.
By Andrei
In the end, looking back at all the time we spent, I realized I just enjoyed your company, but I actually never knew you at all.
Thank you for writing this Andrei. It felt oddly therapeutic reading this story.
Belonging and connecting are battles between in-person and screen time. I struggle to balance digital and in-person interaction; as I push myself to live in the present, connecting with someone digitally lets me sometimes feel I’m not since I’m somewhere else with my mind.
I think this is something we as a society have to confront at some point. Especially with younger generations growing up so connected. The struggle is real and it is a struggle. And we have to do something about it.
By Yaidel
In a neighborhood everyone knows who is the fool, who is the one who talks a lot, who is the one who always tells lies, the honest one, the teacher, the doctor, the veterinarian, the one who steals, etc. But not on the Internet.
This is why I try to be as honest with myself as possible on my site. I don’t try to perform, don’t try to create a persona. I try to be who I am, following my interests, and not trying to be distracted by anything else.
By Aleem Shaun
In a world bombarded by advertising, algorithms and apps that encourage us to scroll forever, plain text reminds me there’s more to life than the trappings of digital excess.
I’m with you. I fucking love plain text. I’m writing this post in markdown, my to-do lists are just markdown. Text is powerful.
By C Jackdaw
I believe that co-writing is an excellent practice for long-term relationship partners. It can keep things fresh and exciting, allowing you to literally fall in love all over again with someone you've been married to for ten years. More than once I've seen something we're writing reflect back to me something I've been thinking about but not been able to solve on my own; solving the problem on the page is a relief.
This was such a fascinating read into something I never even thought it was a thing that people do. And this is why I love the web. It allows me to discover all sorts of interesting things.
10.42 am: Halfway through the list. Can I just say that I loved going through the posts a second time? You’re all so nice and cool and interesting. What an enjoyable experience this is.
While lots of people seem to be able to build connections through large chats, for me forums just allowed me think a bit more about what the person I was talking to actually meant.
I still think forums are underappreciated and I also still think I should set up one at some point. Also, thank you for sharing that bash.org exchange because it was hilarious.
I’m not going to apologize, though, because this is my indie blog and my indie post and my indie state of mind. I’m a boomer, but I intend to take full advantage of the modern whining trend.
You do you sir! Jokes aside, tech is a blessing and a curse. Especially when it becomes unmanageable. And sometimes I think the only solution to tech problems is more tech. Which is silly but it’s a silly world the one we live in.
As I’m writing this, I can’t help but think maybe this relationship is strange. Maybe I have too much dependence on my devices and that I shouldn’t rely on technology so much. I shouldn’t be so materialistic or be so attached. But when you spend that much time during some of your most profound years with any one thing, living or otherwise, it is bound to become sentimental.
It’s odd how we can feel an attachment to objects but it’s something I can absolutely relate to. I don’t own many things but there are a bunch I care about and I’d feel really sad if I were to lose them. Also, this post made me want to go back to working on a laptop, something I’m missing these days.
By Anton Sten
I think people are keen on comparing digital relations to physical relations, but I don’t think they are easily comparable. They are the same, but different.
I think sometimes we lack words to describe these things. I keep saying things like “Digital” or “IRL” but those don’t fully capture the spirit of the things I’m trying to communicate. We need a better vocabulary for the digital world.
11.12 am: life is calling, have to stop now. But don’t worry, I’ll be back.
8.51 am: it’s a new day, time to finish writing this roundup.
I am careful to remember that you too are just a voice in the dark. We have never spoken. We have never shared a meal together. We have never shaken hands or embraced. We have never stood side by side against a common enemy with our actual and only lives at stake. As tempting as it is to forget the body when online, we are not daemons or spirits without bodies. We are human beings, embodied and earthbound, and any bonds we forge should take that into account.
I love Matthew’s post. As I said to him, his story reminds me of mine in a way. Again, maybe I’ll write about it one day.
The unguided nature of the app allows people to reflect on these experiences, instead of providing them with a ready-made interpretation or a written text to read or skip. Left alone, immersed in these soundscapes, we are forced to reflect on our emotions triggered by sound and visual elements, thus building a unique relationship with the past and with the archaeological site.
I very much enjoyed this entry because it tackles a completely different type of digital relationship, one I never spent time thinking about. I’m now so intrigued by the concept of digital archeology.
By Bacardi55
Some people think it is impossible to have meaningful exchanges / relationships with other without seeing each other, but I disagree. It is even sometime better to talk to people you don’t see, some topics are easier that way. Yes written communication are more complex because some information can not be shared (body language, tone - in particular irony and sarcasm, …), but that doesn’t prevent people to find a way to interact that works for them and create true companionship, friendship or more.
I think that sometimes not having access to non-verbal communication can be a good thing. You’re forced to focus on the actual message because that’s all you have.
By Mick
And none of this would’ve ever happened, if I hadn’t trusted that the “virtual” people beyond the screen can be even realer than the “real” ones.
Trusting the people on the other side of the screen can be challenging. Because, sadly, the web—and the world in general—is full of dickheads. But I can tell you from experience that it’s also full of kind people.
By Basil
All good things come to an end. People moved on as the platform struggled with some technology changes and my online life once again reverted to the mainstream social networks, meaning news consumption on Twitter and sharing posts with real world contacts via Facebook and WhatsApp.
This is one of the sad truths about the web in general and why I also think personal sites are the best way to stay online: platforms come and go. The only place you can count on still being there in 10 or 15 years is the one you control.
The rules of engagement changed. Where our digital playgrounds once were about hanging out and shooting the shit with friends, they now became something else. People started optimising. Optimising what? Everything. What they said, how they said it and when they said it. All in an effort to gain more friends. We still called them friends at that point. But the veil quickly fell away and the term followers eventually took the place of friends. And rightly so, because you can’t optimise for friendship.
The fact that people managed to build careers out of being active on social platforms is one of the big tragedies of the modern web.
On the dominating platforms of today, nobody will ever be a citizen, not even a customer. We're only good enough to be a user. But outside of the walled gardens, there are still ample opportunities. We can form relationships, participate in debate, cultivate a corner of and shape the digital medium. All these verbs - nota bene - have in common that they are active.
That’s why I always encourage people to write publicly but to also email others and create connections. The open web requires effort but it will also reward you for doing so.
The internet may connect us to the whole world, but I think that the convenience is making us disconnect from each other in the offline world.
Digital relationships can be a trap and it’s absolutely vital to have a good balance. Like almost everything in life, we need balance. And it’s important to always keep that in mind.
In the end, that's the beauty of digital relationships. You can borrow someone's partner without harming their relationship.
This was such a hilarious way to close a post.
What I am slowly coming to realize is that there is a mismatch in pace between my conceptions of real life vs. internet. Everything online seems to be moving at incredible speeds
That’s one of the reasons why spending more and more time cultivating my online corner. The web is just too vast and moves at such a stupid speed that you end up always feeling left behind.
In the early days of the internet, these protocols were established. Email or the web itself were created upon open protocols for everyone to make use of. A shared language on the internet was born.
It’s amazing that the fundamentals of the web are still there, still allowing us to run our websites and still allowing us to interact via email.
What is wild to me, is how many of these projects are managed on a volunteer basis. While some people are fortunate to be paid to work on open source software, most projects are primarily one person spending their free evenings trying to understand the questions people submit and make the project better for everyone.
It’s incredible how much of the web is the result of a relatively small number of people spending their free time working on projects for the simple fact that they care about this platform.
Many of us desire a form of intimacy and emotional bond from those important to us. Oftentimes the only way to get these is through a virtual medium. We want to foster deep emotional connections with the absence of physical proximity.
The ability to connect through distance is one of technology's best qualities. And it was painfully obvious during the COVID days.
By Al Abut
Now, it’s like a good chunk of the world took an intensive course on online communication in the last 4+ years and decided that well what do you know? Those geeks were on to something.
Funny how things change. It’s also interesting how remote work can open the doors to a lot more possibilities in life. You no longer have to live in the same place—or close—where your workplace is.
By Microbyte
on large social media, everything is drowned out, compacted, an endless stream, which, even without technical limits causes more compactness, which causes more abstractions. Meanwhile, forums tend to lend themselves to more long-form communications. And to compound on that previous point, on social media a true conversation is nearly impossible, always getting drowned out.
That’s why I left social media long ago. I found it more performative than social.
We converse as phantoms, the diluted remnants of intimacy’s essence, and yet still, somehow, retain the gall to call that a “relationship”.
This was such a wild read but it reminded me the time I decided to watch Serial Experiments Lain back in the early 2000s. I Should probably rewatch that anime.
I wish you were closer. But I’m glad that we’re here.
This is how I feel about the majority of my online interactions. Sometimes I wish I was closer to those people but at the same time I’m glad I have the opportunity to interact with them,
By Lawrence
The fence of email offers the perfect hedge between peace and a nearly frictionless, noisy, text messaging environment.
This was submitted by Nutchanon Wetchasit and the post was not written for the Carnival but I loved the fence metaphor and that’s why I decided to include it. And you also might not be surprised to know that I agree with the content of the post. Because you all know that I love emails.
10.34 am: we got to the end! Thank you all again for taking the time to write and submit content for the Carnival. Running it was a blast and I loved reading all your entries. I look forward to reading your entries for this month’s carnival!
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2024-03-01 20:00:00
This is the 27th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Cassidy Williams and her blog, cassidoo.co
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I'm Cassidy, I live in Chicago and love building things! I started coding after I had a chance encounter with a neighbor when I walked home from school in 8th grade. I heard them say, "check out my website," and I didn't realize you could have your own website. From there I just scoured the internet teaching myself everything I could about making them! I went on to study computer science at Iowa State University, got deep into the hackathon scene, lived in Spain, in the Bay Area, in NYC, and in Seattle, and tried out a bunch of jobs at mostly startups, with some larger companies in between. I love teaching and making things for fun and utility!
I've been blogging on and off for almost 20 years. My current blog doesn't actually have all of my writing in it (yet?) because sometimes it's on my own domains, sometimes for companies, sometimes just out in the open. I get a lot of value from writing things I learn (because I often run into problems again, I've run into my own blog posts while debugging something multiple times), and so I try to do it regularly in case it might be able to help someone else, as well.
On my newsletter side, I started it in 2017 as a way to more consistently write and share. It's turned into probably my most important project I've taken on in my career, with several thousand subscribers and an issue that comes out every week!
I usually write pretty off-the-cuff, and usually in Obsidian, my note taking tool. I've actually written about my trying out TinaCMS and how I publish from Obsidian, as well! I also have a note of blog ideas if I want to write something but I'm not sure how to get started.
I do think that physical space can influence you, and I love writing under a blanket on the couch, ha! That being said, I think people can be creative anywhere.
My day-to-day involves a lot of coding, meetings, and general writing. I use:
I host my blog on Netlify, and it's an Astro website, and it's open source
Hmm, sometimes I wish I used something like Wordpress where I just write and don't think about how my blog is built. But at the same time, I like being able to control easily all parts of my website and really own it!
My blog costs about $180 a year for the domain, analytics, and hosting. My newsletter on top of that brings it up more, because that costs about $140 a month. Luckily my newsletter brings in some sponsorship money to offset the costs though. I say that if someone can make money with the content they make, more power to them!
Eleanor Konik writes truly fascinating things.
I'd love to share:
This was the 27th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Cassidy. Make sure to follow her blog (RSS) and get in touch with her if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and all supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
Jamie Thingelstad (RSS) — Piet Terheyden — Raul Montala (RSS) — Eleonora — Carl Barenbrug (RSS) — Steve Ledlow (RSS) — Paolo Ruggeri — Nicolas Magand (RSS) — Rob Hope — Chris Hannah (RSS) — Pedro Corá (RSS) — Jeremy Sarber (RSS) — Colin Walker (RSS) — Sixian Lim — Matt Stein (RSS) — Winnie Lim (RSS) — Flamed (RSS) — C Jackdaw — Kevin Humdrum (RSS) — Fabricio Teixeira (RSS) — Rosalind Croad — Frank Meeuwsen (RSS) — Mike Walsh (RSS) — Jose Munoz (RSS) — Markus Heurung — Jeremy Bassetti (RSS) — Juan Villela (RSS) — Michael Warren (RSS) — Chuck Grimmett (RSS) — Robin Harford (RSS) — Bryan Maniotakis (RSS) — Barry Hess (RSS) — Chris Jung (RSS) — Khürt Williams (RSS) — Ben Werdmuller (RSS) — Ivan Moreale — Cory Gibbons — Luke Harris (RSS) — İsmail Şevik (RSS) — Lars-Christian Simonsen (RSS) — Seth Werkheiser (RSS) — Cody Schultz — Brad Barrish (RSS) — Nikita Galaiko — Erik Blankvoort — Jaga Santagostino — Andrew Zuckerman — Mattia Compagnucci (RSS) — Thord D. Hedengren (RSS) — Sean Gallagher — Fabien Sauser
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2024-03-01 00:50:00
You might be so confused by this title. If you’re reading this Chris, I’m just kidding, I’m sure you smell wonderfully. I just couldn’t resist the temptation of posting something with this title after reading your post, “Where I’m at on the whole CSS-Tricks thing”.
Reading your post made me think about what we should do with all these sites we’re creating, especially big and old ones. Content is obviously worth preserving but sites can be expensive to keep online. You wrote:
I’ve heard from plenty of people who are pissed. Some are pissed at me. Sellout, yadda yadda. But I’m actually fairly pleased that the site is still online, relatively untouched, and with everybody’s bylines, including my own, intact. That’s a better outcome than scotch.io, purchased from Chris Sev, which was neutered and ultimately turned off. That’s a much more inglorious ending that I hope never happens to CSS-Tricks.
And you’re right, having the site still online—albeit in a weird state—is better than having it gone altogether. But there has to be a better solution for these situations. And that solution can’t be to simply hope that the Internet Achieve keeps doing its wonderful job. Still, I don’t have a solution to offer. I can only encourage people to donate to the Internet Archive.
Thank you for writing that post Chris, and thank you for spending all that time working on CSS Tricks. Now if you excuse me I’ll go learn what the heck is a Passkey...
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2024-02-28 01:50:00
Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere. It's one of the principles of the IndieWeb. It’s the idea that your content should live on your site, on a domain name you own and you should then distribute that content in as many places as possible. Overall it’s a nice idea but one I never felt compelled to make mine.
My content lives here, on my site. Everything in here is under my control and it’s then distributed through three distribution channels.
The first—and most obvious—is the web itself. My content is distributed to you via the Internet. You can ask your browser to get this page you’re reading right now and get access to my content.
The second is RSS. You can tell your RSS reader to fetch the content available on my website and you can then consume my content inside your app of choice.
The final one is email. I send my posts via email because some people prefer to stay up to date that way and who am I to prevent that from happening?
But these three methods only take care of distribution and distribution of content is only part of the equation. You then have interaction. The point of putting content out there is to connect, to interact with others, to exchange ideas, and to grow. And interactions, in my world, happen via email. 95% of the interactions I have happen via email with the occasional message on iMessage. Both of those communication methods are always monitored because they live on my Mac and my phone.
Now, what if I were to follow the POSSE mantra? I’d probably sign up for a bunch of different services and scatter my content everywhere there are people. But those people might then comment and try to get in touch with me on those platforms. Platforms I’d then have to monitor. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time for that. And if I don’t check them, those are lost connections, missed opportunities to interact with other human beings.
That to me is a terrible outcome and it’s why don’t want to distribute my content outside of those three channels. But maybe I’m wrong so if you have a different opinion please reach out.
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2024-02-27 02:10:00
It’s Monday, February 26th and that means there are just a few days left to submit your entry for this month’s IndieWeb Carnival that I’m hosting on the topic of Digital Relationships. I’m going to accept all entries that land in my inbox before March 1st because that’s also when I plan to post my roundup post. So, if you want to participate hurry up!
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2024-02-26 02:10:00
Well, kinda. It’s not really new as you can see. The typeface is—probably—still the same, the layout is mostly the same but lots of things have changed. Let me go through them
This site is now—potentially—using web fonts. I’m saying potentially because if you’re reading this on a Mac or on something running iOS you’re probably seeing a system font. My old site was designed around the Iowan typeface but that’s only available on iOS and Mac so most people were seeing a different version using one of the other available serif typefaces. That choice was because I went through a phase where I was trying to push my site toward extreme minimalism. And if you ask me, I had quite the success in that regard. My site was just 1 single HTTP request, the CSS was stupidly optimized and everything was stupid fast and stupid lightweight. But the designer in me was bothered by this and I decided to bring back a web font. If you’re on Windows or Android you’re now getting served Iowan as a web font. I’m also now using a sans-serif font for a couple of small details. I have no idea what you’re seeing because I’m defaulting on a system font.
I also messed with the typography a little bit and changed a few things here and there but the site should still feel mostly the same. I’m not done fine-tuning all this and I’m sure I’ll keep changing little things here and there for months but I had enough and I decided to push it live.
Back when I designed my site, that section between the content of the post and the archive was meant to be a place to store my contact info and not much else. But it ended up being a place to dump all sorts of stuff and there were just too many links and I didn’t want to add more to make things worse.
That’s why I decided to rethink that section entirely and it’s now a lot more organised but still quite minimal. All the old links are still there but now there’s direct access to two new things.
The first of those two new things is a guestbook. I thought about making one months ago but back then I didn’t want to mess with my site. But now it’s here and I can’t wait to see what you people out there are going to write on it.
The second is the supporters page. I don’t want kindness to go unnoticed and I plan to make that page a lot more useful and structured. I want to provide as much value as possible to those who are kind enough to support what I do and that’s going to be just one of the places where I plan to do it.
I’m quite happy with this subtle refresh. My site’s been the same for almost 7 years at this point but I still think it works quite well so I don’t want to completely redesign it. At least not yet. Maybe in another 7 years.
As always, my inbox is always open so if you want to share your thoughts you know what to do. And don’t forget to sign my guestbook!
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2024-02-24 17:15:00
This past week we, yet again, had an example of how technology and society will always struggle to coexist. You might have read or heard about this but the Google AI image generation thingy—Bard? Gemini? Gemma? I have no idea what it’s called because Google is the absolute worst when it comes to naming products—managed to stir quite the controversy for the choice of people it decided to generate or not generate.
I’m not going to comment on the controversy itself—I don’t find it interesting—but I am going to comment on something that’s tangentially related and that is the inevitable clash between society and technology.
Technology doesn’t appear out of thin air. Technology is created by people. And those people have a series of beliefs that will inevitably influence those technologies. But what’s true and sensible for one person might not be true and sensible for another. And that’s an unsolvable contrast. There are situations in which there are no right answers. None.
I was listening to a podcast not long ago and they were discussing the proposed law in, I think Florida, to ban social media for people under 16 years of age. I find it fascinating that both hosts agreed that the idea made sense because of the impact social media has on young people.
Yet both were quick to point out the flaw in the system because a 3rd party had to take care of doing the age verification. They didn’t like that it was a 3rd party but they didn’t like the idea of the government having to do that either. And so I’m sitting here thinking “Who should do this then?”.
And that’s just one of the many examples where society and technology clash in ways that are probably unsolvable in a clean way. Some things will be messy, no matter how hard you try. And that’s why I find controversies around AI generation so boring and pointless. Those tools will generate some wild shit and some people will get mad because of that. Or they won’t and some people will get mad because of that.
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2024-02-23 20:00:00
This is the 26th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Herman Martinus and his blog, herman.bearblog.dev
Herman is the creator of the super minimal blog platform bearblog.dev—it was included in my recent list of blog platforms—and he's based in Cape Town like my long time friend Rob and they actually know each-other, something I didn't know when I first contacted Herman to be part of the series. I love how small the web world can feel at times.
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I'm Herman, a maker and game developer living in Cape Town, South Africa. I grew up and went to school in a small town outside of Johannesburg, then went to university at the University of Pretoria where I studied Computer Science with a focus on Multimedia. This led me down the path to become a game developer, and later a maker of neat things for the Internet.
My primary hobbies currently are writing on my blog (and maintaining the platform Bear Blog), building games for the Play.date, and riding motorcycles (I live in a very beautiful part of the world and this is, in my opinion, the best way to see the landscape).
I've always been a writer. In high school I started writing short stories, all of which have been lost to the ether, thankfully. As a young adult I started writing the kinds of things that young people full of new knowledge and self discovery generally do. I started keeping a journal around this time, about which I've written a few times before.
Later on, as my experience in my field grew and I felt like I had more to share with the world, I started blogging on a semi-regular basis. During this time my blog went through many different iterations. I was on Wordpress, Proseful, wrote in plain HTML for a bit, then finally built my own platform as a way of procrastinating.
I generally write about what has been on my mind lately. My partner, Emma, listens to me blab on at length about things like traffic circles, building frustration into products, and the like. This is only for a few days, generally, but sometimes spans months. Then, after I've thoroughly interrogated the concept it finds its way to a rough outline in my notes app where I start sifting through the thoughts in a more structured way. This is usually turned into the first draft the next day (I like to let the outline marinate overnight), edited, and published.
I also keep a Trello board of writing ideas for when I'm feeling particularly uncreative.
I am highly affected by physical spaces and sound. For a decent period of my life while I was travelling I worked out of noisy coffee shops. I'm surprised I got any work done. Now when I'm travelling I shell out the extra cash for a quiet co-working space where I can think without being interrupted by the loud Australian tourists three tables over loudly talking about how wasted they got last night.
At home we have a "day room" which has big windows overlooking Table Mountain. This provides a lot of natural light and is my favourite place to work. There is, however, a primary school across the road, and when the kids come out for recess, chaos breaks loose as they fight for school-yard dominance. For those two half hour periods, I have a set of noise cancelling headphones.
I use Bear Blog as my blogging platform of choice. Not only do I use it, but I am also the creator of it. I was very unimpressed with the options available with their infinite customizability and bloat. All I needed was a quick and easy way to get my words up on the internet. I also wanted people to be able to read them without all the cruft that surrounds modern content. So I built Bear, and it's now loved by tens of thousands of writers worldwide.
This is an interesting question, since I've been considering starting another blog that is more specific to no-nonsense information about climate and environment-related technology (think geoengineering, green energy generation, and the like). And the conclusion I came to is that I'd build it in the exact same way I have with my own blog: Running on Bear, writing in a semi-casual and personal tone on technical topics, injecting my own personality where possible.
Because I run the platform, my blog is, naturally, cost free. My blog is not meant to generate revenue and I do not intend for it to do so. However, because I regularly write about the development of the Bear Blog platform, and the trials and tribulations of building out the small web, sometimes people look at it and, maybe, start a blog. If I'm particularly lucky, they even upgrade. So while my blog is not monetised in the traditional sense, there is a small financial reward for posts that do exceedingly well.
I follow a handful of small- to medium-sized blogs, but the one I'm always the most excited to see in my RSS reader is coryzue.com
This is a blog by a maker in my city who writes about similar themes to me, but also muses existentially at times. His blog is a great read, and he would also make a good candidate for an interview.
Right now I'm just fascinated with the play.date and will be building games for the next few months. You can see a list of running projects on my blog's project page.
This was the 26th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Herman. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and all supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can:
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my awesome supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
2024-02-19 04:15:00
I don’t know about you but I spent most of my life not knowing what I wanted to do. I never had dreams or big goals. Never had a dream job, never aimed for something specific. I spent most of my life drifting through it, without trying to stir the ship all that much. I don’t know why I did it, it’s probably because of the kind of person I am. I never knew what I wanted to do, but I think I do now. It only took me 34 years, 7 months, and 12 days.
Over the past couple of years, my mind has slowly pieced things together. I stumbled on this profession of website maker almost at random and in the same random way I found myself starting a blog. I had no idea what I was doing back then, and I still don’t, to be totally honest with you. This blog is a bizarre mix of rants and half-baked thoughts on whatever topic is floating in my mind at any given moment.
But through this mix of random events, I stumbled on something great. I stumbled on you. Yes, you, the person reading this. You represent everything that’s great about the web and personal websites. You are a gateway through which I can access new places, and new realities. You are an opportunity to learn new things, and to expand my horizons.
Being able to interact with people is by far the best outcome of this website. And I think more people should be able to experience that. Because it’s important. And that’s my goal. That’s what I decided I want to try to do more of. I want to try, as much as I can, to help people go online with a personal website they own. That’s why I made that list of blog platforms the other day, that’s also why I’m going to make available a few blog designs I coded a while back. But it’s also why I’m going to keep encouraging people to ditch social media, and why I’m going to spend time replying to every single person that gets in touch with me. And it’s also why I’m going to start designing and coding bespoke websites, for free. I’m not going to be able to make a ton of those unfortunately because, as you can imagine, I have to earn money somehow, and that somehow is doing client work that will consume most of my days.
The title of this post mentions dreams though, not just goals. The goal is to spend as much time as possible helping people ditching social media and going online with personal websites. The dream is for that to be my actual full-time job. A job that’s entirely supported by the kindness and the generosity of the people who decide to join my One a Month membership thingy.
Can that dream become a reality? Hard for me to say. As of right now, some very generous people are providing around 5% of what I need to earn every month to live my normal life and I’m incredibly grateful for that.
That’s my goal, that’s my dream. I’m genuinely happy to have finally figured it out and I’m grateful to the people who have helped me come to this realization. You can expect more weird experiments in the upcoming months and if you need help going online with your website, please, get in touch. I’m happy to help. And if you can and want to support this bizarre life mission, consider joining the One a Month club.
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2024-02-16 20:00:00
This is the 25th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Peter Rukavina and his blog, ruk.ca
I don't remember how I stumbled on Peter's blog to be honest with you. It might have been on Hacker News or maybe someone sent it to me. I remember loving its very personal nature. His blog is the type of personal blog I enjoy the most: just an endless stream of content spanning across an array of topics. Also, he has quite the history on that site considering the oldest post is from 1999 but the archive contains also content from the early to mid 90s as well as some pieces of digital media from the 60s! That's an eternity in the digital world.
To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
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I am an inveterately curious person, with a lifelong passion for words (writing them, reading them, typesetting them, binding them together). In the mid-1980s, after an aborted attempt at college, where I never found my mojo, I set off on a career as a coder and a graphic designer. I apprenticed in the composing room of a daily newsletter. I designed posters for a modern dance company. I learned to design books. I created database systems for apartment buildings, for a palæontologist, and for a tire store.
When the web came along in the 1990s, I embraced it, and was part of the very early efforts in organizing and displaying government information to the public, along the way becoming interested in open source software and open data, and becoming an advocate for both. Professionally, I settled into a position maintaining the infrastructure of Almanac.com, the website of The Old Farmer’s Almanac, a platform that gave me great latitude to explore whatever the web frontier of the moment was, working with a venerable publication to help it chart its course beyond print.
About a decade ago, while continuing digital work, I started to become interested in letterpress printing—an embrace of print in its purest form. I run a small letterpress shop, Queen Square Press, based in a church basement, and let my creativity take me where it leads me, producing posters, broadsides, cards, and ephemera, mostly to scratch my own itches.
This year, after thinking about it for a long time, I decided to step away from digital work altogether. It was a hard decision: I’d been working with a great team, on interesting projects, for more than 25 years. I was well-paid, in control of my own schedule. I had no complaints. But I knew in my heart of hearts that I wanted to try something else. What? I don’t know.
This decision to transition can, in part, be explained by my being four years a widower, being the father of a 23 year old autistic trans woman, and, recently, burgeoning stepfather to a delightful 12 year old, and partner to her mother, a fascinating, creative, woman who challenges and delights me every day. All of this change swirling around me has opened me up and allowed me to relax into new possibilities.
In 1999 I found myself writing an “about” page for my tiny web business, then called Digital Island. I watched myself falling into familiar “about page” tropes — “Digital Island is a leading provider of innovative solutions for… blah blah blah…” — and thought, inspired by early bloggers who were emerging around the time, perhaps I’d, instead, create a place to write about myself, my interests, my work, my life. I wrote a tiny CMS in PHP, and made my first post in May 1999, a simple announcement that I was changing my company name.
I started off slowly, making only 13 posts the first year, but gradually developed an approach, and a style, and a notion of “the kinds of things I blog about” (travel, personal projects, my family, local businesses, my eccentricities), to the point, almost 25 years later, where it’s become interwoven into my emotional life, a way of organizing my thoughts about things, of explaining things to myself by way of explaining them to my readership.
I generally write in real time: an idea occurs to me, and the idea takes on a life of its own, gets “called to be written about,” and I try to carve out the time to do so right away. I don’t find the process of writing onerous; generally words flow out of me, and while I will go back and edit the words, finessing the meaning, correcting errors, what emerges is generally fairly close to what I wrote down in the first place.
I write a lot of posts via email, a capability that has allowed me to take my writing out of “sitting in front of a laptop” and, really, anywhere I’m struck. Writing on a tiny iPhone SE isn’t the best and most natural environment (though voice-to-text helps), but the benefit of being able to "strike while the iron is hot" outweighs the fussiness of the tool. These days perhaps half of what I write is on the phone.
My blogging flourishes, as does my life, when I’m on the road. I love writing about my travels, of seeing new things, meeting new people. And so “away” is the ideal creative environment. That said, as I’ve been remaking my days, stepping away from an office with a desk and a chair, what “away” means can be as close as the public library or coffee shop up the street.
After running my home-brew PHP blogging engine for many years, I eventually migrated to using Drupal, and have been using Drupal ever since. This was partly for professional reasons — Almanac.com is a Drupal site, so I've wanted to “eat my own dogfood” on my personal site — and partly because I found Drupal a nice balance of canned and extendable.
My ability to blog-by-email is enabled by Postmark, which fires a web hook upon receiving email to a dedicated email address; the web hook fires some custom code on my server that uses the Drupal API to create a new post.
The site is hosted on an AWS EC2 instance, running MySQL and Apache.
As I’m stepping away from coding professionally, I find myself at a crossroads: I’ve always believed deeply in owning and managing as much of my own technology stack as possible (I only migrated away from running my own mail server in recent memory), and I like the flexibility of “I’ll just code up a Drupal module to do that.”
But I’m trying to spend less time at the keyboard, and things that fascinated me at one point I now find technical drudgery, to the point where I might go looking for a home for my writing that I don’t need to care and feed so frequently, a place where I can just focus on writing.
But rewinding back to the beginning, no, I don’t think I’d do anything differently. I’ve loved my blog, and writing, for a long time; it’s part of me.
In the early days of Google Adsense I ran ads on the blog, and because the web was smaller, and I had a deep archive with good organic SEO, I made good money doing so.
But I gradually became uncomfortable with my own words, often deeply personal words, being surrounded by ads for who-knows-what, and so eventually turned off the ads entirely, and I’ve been ad-free (and analytics, and tracking free) ever since. I feel confident in this decision.
I generally read other blogs with an RSS reader (currently Readwise Reader, which I love; formerly FreshRSS and, like everyone else, Google Reader before that), I almost never see advertising on blogs, so it’s opaque to me.
It costs me about $50/month to host my blog on AWS; I’ve got a long-festering to-do list item to optimize and lower this, but it has yet to rise to the top of the list.
Some friends with blogs:
Longtime favourites:
Some recent lovely discoveries:
Podcasts:
YouTube videos:
Side projects of mine:
This was the 25th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Peter. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and all supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
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2024-02-14 23:10:00
David Pierce at The Verge just published a great long-form piece about robots.txt, the relationship between the people running websites and the people running spiders and crawlers, and what’s happening now that AI has entered the scene.
It’s a great piece and the timing is convenient for me personally because just the other day I emailed the lovely people at The Browser Company asking how can I opt out of their stupid ARC Search. They care about users and user experience and so do I so I’m sure they must have a way for me to block their new AI. I’m still waiting to get a reply…
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2024-02-13 16:55:00
I don’t climb, I am not a climber, I don’t have interest in becoming one. I do happen to have a brother though. And he’s a climber. And if you know anything about climbers is that they’re a bit obsessed with the sport. And as a result of that I’m becoming a climber by proximity. I have absolutely no intention of practicing the sport but I do enjoy watching it as a sport and I also enjoy consuming content related to it. Mainly because climbers climb in gorgeous places and I love nature. Anyway my brother also happens to be a graphic designer and it was only a matter of time before the two things collided. Well, it finally happened: 621.design
The first series of climbing inspired t-shirts are available to be purchased after WAY TOO LONG! I’m already tired of hearing about this project but I’m happy that they’re finally out in the wild. Just to be clear, I am not involved with this. I’m just doing my part and let you know that these exist because who knows, maybe some of you out there are into climbing.
Now, I do have one of those T-shirts sitting on my desk this very moment. It’s the Climb, size L. If you want it, you can sign up to my One a Month and then send me a message. I’m gonna send it to the first one who claims it and will throw in something else at random in the package. No drugs I promise you. I might add a book in there or maybe a stick from the woods. Still don’t know but there’s going to be something.
Anyway, 621.design, also on Instagram . Go tell my brother that these took WAY TOO LONG to come out.
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2024-02-12 16:20:00
First housekeeping post of 2024. Hope you all had a great beginning of the year. As usual, a couple of things in no particular order:
And that’s all I have for this February housekeeping. As always my inbox is open if you want to get in touch. Have a great day.
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2024-02-09 20:00:00
This is the 24th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Phil Gyford and his blog, gyford.com
Both Piper and Ana suggested Phil as a potential guest but he was already on my radar thanks to his incredible work on ooh.directory which is such a great site and an amazing tool for a project like P&B.
To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
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I originally studied graphic design and illustration in the days before internet access. In the mid-90s I got online and immediately liked making websites, and the feeling that the whole world was suddenly much closer. I’ve been making websites professionally and/or for myself ever since. For most of the past 20 years I’ve been a freelance developer/designer. My personal website and blog is at gyford.com.
I live in rural Herefordshire, in the UK, having moved from London about four years ago.
My personal projects include The Diary of Samuel Pepys – the 17th century London diary in blog form – and ooh.directory – a collection of more than 2000 blogs organised by category. I also have a couple of sporadically-updated Tumblrs, Crazy Walls and Our Incredible Journey.
I’ve had a personal website since 1995 but it was only after going to SXSW in 2000 and meeting a lot of friendly bloggers, that I started my own blog
Originally the site was generated by some code I wrote myself in Perl (it was that long ago), before I switched to Movable Type. I gradually added more customisation using PHP to glue together the various parts of the site. It became unwieldy and Movable Type was becoming less popular and less supported.
In 2018 I rewrote the site from scratch using the Python framework Django. As well as my blog the site now includes: an archive of all the links I’ve posted to Pinboard; all my Tweets (RIP); all my Flickr photos; a record of every book I’ve read over 25 years; every gig, movie, play, etc. I’ve been to over 30+ years; and my music listening via Last.fm.
These days I mostly write weeknotes, weekly posts about some things I’ve been doing. For me this has some benefits over conventional blogging: there’s a rough deadline, which ensures I post regularly; I write about things that I might not have devoted an individual post to; and it means I get stuff out of my head that might otherwise have lingered for weeks, months, or years while I failed to turn it into a separate post. Often, not much has happened, but I tell myself that I love reading weeknotes by friends, no matter what they have or haven’t done. So it’s fine. If anyone finds it too boring they don’t have to read it!
So, to answer your questions… my weeknotes require no inspiration, just remembering some things that have happened. It probably takes me an hour or so to write and edit a post.
Occasionally I write posts that aren’t weeknotes but they've become rarer over the years. Sometimes I think I should abandon weeknotes and post more frequently. Blog posts don’t need to be well researched essays – I could write two sentences about a TV show I’ve just watched. That’s OK! That’s what a lot of blog posts were before social media grabbed all the “dash off a quick post” energy. But last time I tried doing that I ended up not posting much at all, so I returned to weeknotes, which are better for me, for now.
I don’t see writing blog posts – at least the kinds I write – as being a special “creative” endeavour that, beyond a certain minimal requirement of some time and an internet connection, requires a special environment. If you’ve ever tweeted or posted on Facebook or Instagram or whatever, you can blog. But not everyone can find the time, energy or peace to write a blog post every week or whatever, so I’m fortunate in those respects.
As I mentioned, the site is written using the Python framework Django, with a tiny amount of Javascript for things like charts. There’s a little more detail on the About this site page.
It, along with my other sites, is hosted at Mythic Beasts who are great, with brilliant support.
I’d either do much the same or I’d make it much less complicated, and maybe use WordPress, or something even simpler. My site is a sprawling morass of custom code, containing a lot of data aside from the main blog, which is great when I’m in the mood for tinkering with code but often feels ridiculous and over-complicated. A lot of it feels like an exercise to show what a personal site could be, and how much information it could contain, rather than what a personal site should be.
For anyone starting out I think the tricky balance is finding something that’s (a) simple and maintainable, but (b) lets you own your own data. A hosted service is the most simple and least technical but you’re then more beholden to the company running it.
I used to host the site on Heroku which cost US$15-20/month. I now have a VPS at Mythic Beasts containing three websites which works out at about the same as if I ran each of them on Heroku separately. I could run them more cheaply, but I pay for extra support because I have no interest in, or knowledge about, running a server.
I don’t have a problem with anyone monetising personal blogs, depending on how it’s done. Memberships, Patreons, etc, all seem fine if it helps. I don’t need to generate money from my personal site and I’d start to feel beholden to readers if I did (assuming anyone was willing to pay).
After 20 years of running The Diary of Samuel Pepys, this year I set up a Ko-fi page to cover the costs of hosting and the daily emails which has worked smoothly and been helpful.
I have a blogroll of blogs and newsletters I follow. But a handful of favourites, some of which only update occasionally:
I think those are all men, sorry.
Some things I currently like:
This was the 24th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Phil. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and all supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can:
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2024-02-09 04:35:00
Pretentious title, I know. It’s obviously tongue-in-cheek but it’s at least partly what I’m gonna try to do with this post. Blogs are back. They never went anywhere but still, they’re back. Many people will—hopefully—ditch social media and start a blog in the near future. Almost as many people will ask themselves which tool/platform/incantation they should use to start said blog. I’m gonna do my part and try to collect here all the possible alternatives. I am 100% certain that this list won’t be exhaustive but it’s a start. If you have suggestions to improve it, email me.
As always, if you find what I do here useful or entertaining in any way you can hop on the 1$/mo bandwagon.
The following is a list of tools and platforms that are primarily designed to run blogs. Now, it goes without saying that you can build a blog using pretty much every CMS out there. Hell, you can make a blog without a CMS and just upload html files on a server. This is not going to be a list of all the possible ways you can make a blog, it’s a list of tools and services designed with blogs in mind. The list is in no particular order.
A note on the prices: most services usually offer a limited free plan. I decided to ignore those and list the price for the lowest tier available, paid monthly.
Micro.blog
Ghost
I’m linking to the GitHub repo because even though Ghost does have a self-hosted version the official site is heavily focused on the Pro, hosted version so things are a bit confusing.
Ghost(Pro)
Wordpress
Wordpress.com
Substack
Write.as
WriteFreely
Bear Blog
Pika
Mataroa
Smol Pub
Blogger
Medium
Tumblr
Prose.sh
Svbtle
Blogkit
Blot
Hey
Hey is a bit of an odd product because it’s primarily an email service but it also comes with a blog so it’s worth mentioning here.
Scribbles
Movable Type
Montaigne
Haven
Haven (Hosted)
weblog.lol
Known
Hashnode
Hashnode Pro
Textpattern
Obsidian Publish
Obsidian is not a blog platform. It's not even a web oriented platform but they do have an option to convert your notes into a website.
Quotion
Nicheless
PupperPost
Postcard
This is all I have for now. Again, if you have suggestions send me an email and I'll happily update this list.
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2024-02-08 01:50:00
I was listening to the most recent Vergecast episode last night and an interview with Josh Miller, CEO of The Browser Company, makers of the ARC Browser and the new ARC Search app. I found the whole interview baffling.
Josh is rightfully complaining about the state of the web, specifically the mobile web, but the solution he’s proposing is so stupidly naive that I’m not entirely sure whether he’s just fucking with us.
His whole point is that search engines are not the best way to surface information. You search for something, you’re presented with a list of links, and you have to click through them and actively look for the thing you were searching for. The proposed solution is AI—who would have thought—that essentially googles for you, “reads” a bunch of the links, and then creates a summary page.
All this is obviously done by stripping away all the tracking and ads that are part of today’s web.
You’re smart and so you probably spotted the issue with this approach already. Firstly, without a search engine in the mix, the AI has no way to search for anything. So if the goal is to replace the traditional search engine then we’re already failing. Because we’re not replacing anything, we’re just hiding it behind some AI tool.
Maybe this is a problem that can be solved by maintaining a new dedicated index but then you just have a search engine with a different UI in front of it.
The second issue is one of trust. Should I just trust ARC Search? Who can guarantee that the sources used by ARC are not just companies that have paid ARC to be used as such? “But Manu, ARC Search doesn’t just provide the answer to your query, it also provides links to the sources.“ Well then congratulations, you just recreated an AI-nerfed SERP with fewer links and more extra layers.
Now, let’s ignore all this and imagine this approach does work. Let’s imagine we all get on board with this stupid idea of having an AI searching for you. What happens to the web as a whole? Why should I keep creating content for the web if I’m a content creator who relies on traffic to run my creative business? No one will visit my site because the relevant content will be consumed by some boring ass generated pages. And without content on the web, products like ARC Search are pointless.
What would happen, if something like this were to go mainstream, is that more and more content would go behind a paywall, kept away from AI. And for good reason.
I’m very unimpressed by this interview. I’m also very unimpressed by most AI products these days.
The problem with search is not the UI. Having an AI search for me won’t solve the issue of the sea of garbage content out there.
But hey, the product is here so let’s take it for a spin and see if it’s any good. I just downloaded ARC Search on my phone and searched for “books on Japanese aesthetics”.
This is what a “regular” search looks like inside ARC search and yes, that’s a Google search, because it obviously is.
The first thing I see is a books section with 4 suggested books and 42 more 1 click away. If I’m looking for a book, that’s probably a good enough starting point. Below that section, there are a bunch of sites, related queries, the usual stuff.
Let’s do the same thing, using this revolutionary way to browse the web powered by AI. Conveniently, ARC tells me the AI is reading 6 web pages.
There are probably 700-billion-trillion pages out there but ARC has picked 6. Why those 6? No idea. Have those 6 paid to be there? No idea. Should I just trust that those 6 are reputable sources? Yup. A couple of seconds later this is what I get:
5 books recommended to me in a somewhat compact list. Then I have 3 Top Search Results that are just the top 3 links in Google search. After that I get a completely pointless repetition of the initial list but this time with some more information and worse information density. At the end, I get a bunch of more links.
Can you tell me in what way this is better than a normal search results page? The problem with search is that it’s full of fucking spam and ads. That’s the problem with search. The solution to search is not to “reinvent the browser” or to use AI to power searches for you. The solution to search is a search engine that is aligned with the users.
I’d much rather support Kagi and Marginalia than The Browser Company.
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2024-02-05 14:45:00
They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I found the inverse of that to also be true for my life. Doing things differently day after day and expecting the same–positive–outcome.
I’m the product of two terrible traits: I’m a morning person but I also lack self-discipline. And that means keeping a morning routine is incredibly hard for me. And yet, every time I manage to do that I feel really well. My mind is in a much better place when I wake up at 6 am or even 5 am. I feel a lot better when I’m out in nature with the sun rising. I know it. I’m aware of all this. And yet keeping a morning routine is incredibly hard. I’m getting better at it though so I’m pleased with that.
Learning how my mind works is a fun process. You’re tempted to think you just know yourself and yet there’s always a new discovery waiting behind the corner. Thankfully I have my whole life to figure this stuff out.
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2024-02-03 18:55:00
February is here and it’s time to recap what’s happened on the Minimalissimo front. I’m just a bit more than one month into my adventure and, I have to say that, I’m having a blast. Running a “new” side project is fun. The main issue is finding the time to implement all these ideas but I’m doing my best. I did manage to ship two things and I’m stoked with both.
The first new thing is the new /stream section. I wrote about it in a blog post you can read here. The stream is essentially a semi-randomised infinite scroll through all the visual content posted on the site. It’s a fun new way to browse the archive and I think it’s quite neat. Mimo has been around since 2009 and so there’s A LOT of content in the archives.
The second is a brand-new main navigation. The old way of browsing the site made sense back when we designed this version of the site but I’m now planning to add a couple of new sections and I need a way for people to discover them and that’s why a menu is back on the site.
I also reintroduced a more traditional infinite scroll both to the homepage and the categories. It’s still activated on click but once active you can just keep scrolling away.
So many things! I want to tweak the search results, add a new digital/software category to highlight minimalism in the digital space, I’m working on a /books section to promote books worth reading, I’m working on a text-only directory of designers, architects, artists, and photographers to help you discover even more content, I’m working on a /brands directory to help you find quality brands with a minimal aesthetic. It’s gonna be a great 2024 for Minimalissimo.
As always, if you like what I’m doing you can hop on the 1$/mo bandwagon and support all these creative endeavors. Thank you for reading and have a great weekend!
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2024-02-02 20:00:00
This is the 23rd edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Winnie Lim and her blog, winnielim.org
I first discovered Winnie's website thanks to the recomendation of Jamie Crisman who's been featured on the series a couple of months ago. I had her site listed on my spreadheet and was planning to contact her so imagine my surprise when she appeared as a supporter on my Ko-Fi page! It was such a delightful moment. I love to be able to feature people who are supporters of the series because it gives this fun project a sense of community.
To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
If you're enjoying the People and Blogs series and you want to see it grow, consider supporting on Ko-Fi.
This is Winnie, and I’m from Singapore where I’ve spent most of my life except a few years when I worked in San Francisco. I was a self-taught designer in both print and digital from 2000-2016 before I had to quit due to chronic migraines and photosensitivity.
I don’t have any hobbies per se in the sense of things I enjoy doing because I seem to lack the ability to feel pleasure, but I do a variety of things that enrich me: reading, exercise, photography, learning, and I am trying to pick up drawing. Perhaps one day I would like to learn how to play the keyboard.
I try to publish at least once a week, mostly documenting my life and struggles with both my health and existence.
I got really into learning how to make websites when I had my first computer at 15 all the way back in 1996. So my first website was on Geocities. It felt like a natural progression to start blogging when I saw other people start doing it in the late 90s. My first blog was on Greymatter on a now defunct domain. I would just post links to websites I liked and perhaps some emo poetry. A while later my friend introduced me to Livejournal, which is interesting to me till this day because the inherent culture and dynamics of it encouraged people to pour out their feelings on it. I don’t know if I am rewriting my own history but I feel like Livejournal was instrumental in the process in setting the tone of my writing till today. It gave me the idea that writing my feelings out to some invisible audience could be somewhat therapeutic. One thing that is now permanently gone from the Livejournal era is the ability to easily follow and like your friend’s blog, and publish only to your network of friends. I hope something like this can exist on federated systems one day.
Sadly Livejournal got sold, and I moved to Vox, which also got sold, then to Posterous – well you get the idea. I finally bought the domain winnielim.org sometime in 2012 and set up my blog there. I had loved the network effects and community of early twitter, so when Medium came along I got a job there, hence publishing exclusively there for a while, continued even after I left the job but stopped when it started putting up paywalls. My personal lived history of the internet has taught me it is really important to have our own domain. It is not just about the ownership of content but it is sad when urls go dead.
I felt very alienated and lonely as a young person in the 1990s. It was incredible to discover the internet and know there is an entire world out there, that there are actually many people living diverse lives that were not visible or encouraged in Singapore. Reading people’s vulnerable and honest writing on their blogs made me feel like I was not alone. So I try to pay it forward by doing the same with my writing.
Since 2013 I mostly just turn up every Sunday, and start writing. Half the time I have no idea what I’m writing about till I finish writing it. The other times I have an idea but it becomes something else entirely in the writing process. They call it intuitive writing I guess. Once in a long while I write book reviews or essays to share something in a more structured way. Those take considerable focus and multiple-sittings, so I don’t do it very often.
I do publish more frequently than weekly if I get inspired or if circumstances encourage it, like my recent trip to Japan where I tried to travel blog during the trip.
I’ve tried writing “proper” pieces before where there is a ton of editing and proofreading by other people, but I didn’t enjoy the process. It made me feel disconnected from the writing. Some of these pieces did very well, which made me realise that being able to write however I want is more important than views.
I do believe that physical space influences creativity. I constantly feel inspired in a place like Japan, where the culture itself has aesthetic and creative elements. But I also believe it is important to cultivate a capacity to be creative anywhere, because sometimes in life we get caught in circumstances and environments that are not ideal.
I try to keep my entire home a creative environment. It is not one of those beautiful minimalistic environments like you see in youtube videos. It is more like zakka style, where it contains things that feel creative to me: lots of (my partner’s) artwork hung up on the walls, tons of books, art materials and tools, a warm and cosy space that feels psychologically safe. A lot of it is thanks to my partner who is an artist and an efficient organiser.
I use Opalstack as my webhost, they offer VPS-like hosting but managed. I chose them because I used to use Webfaction, which got sold. For a few years in between I hosted my website on a droplet at Digital Ocean, but I decided managing my own server is too tedious.
Like many others I use Namecheap for my domains. It was highly recommended in the 2000s, so I used it and stuck with it since I have no issues with it so far.
For the beginning few years my blog in its current incarnation was on Jekyll, but it is now on Wordpress because I want to be able to dynamically query it like I am querying my second brain. I also use a plugin called Pods that allows me to create custom post types and surface relationships between them easily. Everything is connected, and I want to demonstrate and understand these connections. A blog post is not just a piece of writing to me. It is a piece of my self, and these pieces track the process of my becoming. Sometimes I forget and I get lost, so these pieces and connections help to bring me back to who I am and who I aspired to be. These are not things that a static website can do, so I stay with Wordpress despite its obvious issues.
It is also important to use something that has proven stability and longevity.
I would host my own website using the same domain right from the start. But given the highly-ephemeral and experimental nature of the web back then, I think it would have been challenging not to hop on new technologies and platforms, especially because I have an experimental nature. But I am envious of blogs who ignored all of those things and persistently stayed on their own domain or even on Blogger. It is such a magnificent thing to see an archive that spans decades because on the internet we create and destroy content like it doesn’t matter since it is so easy to do so. Witnessing some permanence is beautiful when everything is so transient.
For now Opalstack is $115 a year, and it costs $15 to renew my domain. These costs increase every now and then. So roughly it is about $11 a month, which is about 2 cups of coffee.
When I first quit my job I tried to use Patreon to gather monetary support, not so much for my writing but for my interactive experiments. However along with my chronic illness, that experience made me realise I don’t have the personality required for this. I am too afraid of rejection, and it also makes me deeply uncomfortable to the point of being perpetually anxious when people do support me. It felt stressful to try to upkeep something to some invisible expectations, and during times when I fell sick and was unable to work on my projects I felt like I was letting people down.
I do understand when people monetise blogs, but I hope it can be a model where some people are supporting the content financially in order for everybody else to read it free. This is because there is already deep inequality in this world, and putting content behind pay walls is exacerbating that inequality.
Having freely accessible information on the internet during the 90s impacted my life so deeply, a major contributor to my career. I know it changed so many people’s lives, and lifted people out of their poor living circumstances. However I understand that it is the only source of income for some people and paywalls are the only way to go for them. I am encouraged by examples of people who are successful with the some-supporters-pay-for-the-rest model though, like kottke.org.
I love a ton of blogs – I have hundreds of blogs on my rss reader – so it is difficult to pick a few, but if I really have to:
I also love blogroll.org for always recommending new interesting blogs to follow. I think Wouter of Brain Baking would be a great interview subject.
The longevity of websites is something I still think about. I often wonder what would happen to my website after I pass on. I know of at least one great website that is being maintained by family and friends after the owner passed on, but what would happen when they too are no longer around? There is this attitude that websites are ephemeral and not important, but there is a lot of richness, history and information within them that deserves to be preserved. It would be sad that we didn’t try hard enough to keep them. I know there is the Internet Archive that is doing great work, but I wish there was an option to keep a website in its entirety. Wordpress has recently launched a 100-year plan, but it is only for wordpress.com users and it costs 38k. I wish there are more viable solutions out there.
Finally, I hope people will not be afraid to pick up new skills, hobbies or any learnings at any age. I recently started to learn how to draw, and I think being unafraid of “being ugly” or failure goes a long way. I see too many people not pursue art/skills/hobbies because it is “too late”, “no talent”, or if they do they give up because they cannot tolerate not living up to their internal standards. But we can relish the process of doing things without being great at it. For me, it is also an act of rebellion towards an utilitarian world.
This was the 23rd edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Winnie. Make sure to follow her blog (RSS) and get in touch with her if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and all supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can:
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2024-02-02 02:05:00
This is my entry for February’s IndieWeb carnival. This month is hosted by yours truly and I’d love to have you as part of this initiative.
Digital relationships are a fascinating concept. The idea that a relationship with someone else can be lived, consumed, and enjoyed entirely inside the digital space is something we probably take for granted but it’s such a unique and distinctive feature of this time we live in.
If you’re like me, you probably met and interacted with more people in the digital world than in real life. And I’m not saying this because I’m an introvert, I don’t think I am. I’m saying this simply because it’s the result of the life I live.
Daily I receive emails or messages from people I don’t know and will never meet “in real life”. And daily I send back messages to these people sharing thoughts, opinions, bits of my life. That’s just what my life is these days and, to be honest with you, I find it incredibly rewarding at a personal level.
But my life hasn’t always been like that. I’m technically a child of the 80s—juuuuust barely—but I grew up in the 90s. The internet wasn’t part of my life and the same can be said for most of the technology we take for granted nowadays. I had a cellphone—not a smartphone—and SMS was how we communicated. But SMS was such a limited and costly way to interact that using it to have digital relationships was not an option. And you had to have someone’s number first.
My first experience with a digital relationship happened on a forum. Do you remember those? I love forums. They’re such a neat way to organize an online community. I’m even considering setting up one myself! Anyway, I remember browsing and posting on hwupgrade.it/forum/ in the early 2000s and becoming friends with an Italian girl. We talked PS1 games and it was awesome. I never met her, never seen a picture of her, never even cared about asking for one. The only thing we exchanged were names and that was it.
That was just the first in a long series of fun digital relationships. I met people playing the original COD MW2, back in 2009, I connected with strangers during the #followfriday days of early Twitter, and I exchanged countless emails with designers and developers during my years curating the—now defunct—thegallery.io.
With most of the people I consider friends I have digital relationships. I met Rob in person once in my life. We’ve known each other since I think 2012 and I hear from him pretty much daily. The same is true for Carl. We met in person exactly once and I hear from him daily. Mike connected with me via email in 2015 and we’re still friends to this day. We never met in person and that’s absolutely fine.
Digital relationships are powerful. Some people discard them because they think they’re not at the same level as “real relationships” but I disagree. Digital relationships are their own thing. They have their own rules, and their own ways to be unique. And they can be as important as any other relationship.
The current internet can be a miserable place, I know. Social media can be a cesspool, people are mean, and there are weirdos everywhere. It sucks. I’m not going to pretend everything is wonderful out there. But I still have hope. I do because of the countless lovely exchanges I had via email with people like you.
You, are a wonderful person. I don’t have any reason to think otherwise. And I’m sure there are others like you out there. Curious people, kind people, generous people. People who like to share, to engage honestly.
Digital relationships are powerful but don’t take my word for it. Try for yourself. Next time you stumble on a personal site you find interesting, try to connect with the person behind that site. Write an email, say hi, send them some love. You won’t regret it.
You have time until March 1st to publish something on the topic of “Digital Relationships” and be part of the IndieWeb Carnival. Just make sure to send me an email with the link if you want to be included in the roundup post.
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2024-02-01 00:25:00
January is about to end. That means that January’s IndieWeb Carnival, hosted by foreverliketh.is, is also about to end. If you want to submit your entry on the topic of Positive Internalization you should hurry up.
As mentioned previously on this blog I’m going to host the next month and the topic for the month of February is going to be “Digital relationships”. The meaning of the topic is intentionally vague but I can think of at least three ways to interpret it.
The first is probably the most obvious: relationships between us human beings that are lived primarily—or entirely—on the digital world.
The second is the relationship between us and the digital world itself.
The third is the growing trend of people having relationships with digital creations such as AI fiends, boyfriends and girlfriends.
Those are three ways you can interpret the topic but don’t feel limited to just those three. Go nuts and be creative. This site doesn’t have pingbacks or webmentions so if you plan to participate send me a link to your entry via email. I’m going to accept everything that’s sent to me before March 1st and I plan to write at least one roundup post with your links. Look forward to read your entries and don’t forget to spread the word about the IndieWeb Carnival and if you want to get involved you can still become a host yourself. Just claim your spot here indieweb.org/indieweb-carnival
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2024-01-31 02:05:00
You might be confused by the title of this post. You might be wondering why on earth am I writing about the best laptop of 2024. I never reviewed products on this blog. There was no best laptop of 2023 post nor a best laptop of 2022. And fear not, there won’t be a post about the best laptop of 2024 either.
You see, this is not going to be a post about laptops. It’s going to be a post about words, about generated content, and about SEO. It’s also going to be an experiment because I’m a curious person and the inner workings of search engines fascinate me.
I was listening to a tech podcast the other day and in it, they were talking about the evolving landscape of the publishing industry with the increasing trend of companies making AI-generated listicles in an attempt to rank high on Google. And then you have things like the Arc search browser that will use Ai to generate summaries of the pages they browsed on your behalf. The result is that you have Ai consuming content written by Ai in an attempt to do... something? I’m not sure what the end game is to be perfectly honest with you but I’m interested because this all looks like a shit show.
Anyway, back to the best laptops of 2024. In that podcast, they mentioned that one of the prime targets in the search results tech space is, you guessed it, the first page of results for the query “best laptops of 2024”. And while I was listening I thought “I wonder how high can a stupid blog post get on that SERP if I don’t actually write content that’s relevant to the query”.
And this is that post. I have no interest in laptops. I know nothing about laptops. I don’t care about laptops. I don’t even know which laptops came out in 2024. I do know people are interested in knowing which laptop is the best laptop in 2024 which is why I just wasted some of your time (I’m sorry) making you read a silly post about the best laptops in 2024 that has nothing to do with laptops.
Will google pick this one up? Will I even reach the first page? Who knows! But if for some reason you landed on this blog post searching for the best laptop of 2024 send me an email. I promise you I’ll do my best to help you figure out what’s the best laptop for you.
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2024-01-27 21:55:00
Quick PSA for all the people who are subscribed to the People and Blog newsletter with an address that converts the newsletter to an RSS feed: there is a dedicated RSS feed.
Your reader app of choice should pick it up automatically on the peopleandblogs.com website but if it doesn’t you can find it at the address https://manuelmoreale.com/feed/peopleandblogs
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2024-01-26 20:00:00
This is the 22nd edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Ran Prieur and his blog, ranprieur.com
Ran's an interesting character to say the least and his site reflects that. I especially love the very old school vibe.
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My name is Ran Prieur. I've lived most of my life in Washington state. I did well in school, and I was expected to be a computer engineer. But looking back, the kids who went on to do that, were actually excited about computers. For me, it was just one more tedious academic subject. In college, after cruising through the "weed-out" courses, I couldn't bring myself to take an actual engineering course, and switched to the humanities, which were somewhat interesting. I ended up getting two BAs, in English and Philosophy.
I was born to be retired. Most people are always trying to fill time, and I'm always trying to empty it. I had enough self-discipline to grind through the academic system, but any full time job exhausts me, and I spent the 90s working part time office jobs and living super-frugally. I would have probably become high-end homeless, but I did some housesitting for my family, and had some luck with money, and now I'm retired on less than they say you need to retire.
For some reason, it's easy for me to keep blogging, and I've been doing it for almost 20 years. More recently I've been writing fiction, which is harder than blogging but more rewarding. I practice improvisational piano, where my style is to see how much I can squeeze out of one chord. And when I have a lot of time, I play solo games of my favorite board game, Spirit Island, and I've designed some custom spirits that I haven't released yet.
In the 90s I made zines: hand-written, photocopied, and mailed. When the internet came along, it was a much more efficient way to get words to an audience. Two other zine people started a website called Unknown News, and I started writing a column there every few weeks. After maybe a year, around 2003, I bought my own domain name and posted my stuff there.
I named the blog after myself, because whatever I end up writing about, the name is still accurate. I started out writing essays about contemporary politics and the critique of civilization, and now I write short posts about different things, lately psychology, metaphysics, societal collapse, and little personal tidbits. The main reason I shifted to a shorter form, is that I learned to say things in fewer words, in five paragraphs instead of five pages.
The most famous thing I've written, by far, is a 2004 essay called How To Drop Out. I haven't read it in more than ten years, because I'm sure I'll find all kinds of cringey stuff. But it continues to bring people to my website.
Elvis Costello said, people think being a songwriter is cool, but really it means walking around all day humming to yourself like a loony. That's basically my process. I have an idea, and I run the words through my head, often muttering them in a whisper, until I'm ready to write them down. That could take anywhere from ten minutes to a week. Sometimes I do it in the middle of the night when I can't sleep, and by morning I have a whole post laid out in my head. But when I go to type it in, there are always complications and changes.
For minor posts, I do the writing straight to the file manager. For major posts, I type them into Notepad++, and I usually keep massaging the words for a few days before posting them. I have a large text file full of posts that are half finished or not good enough. Nobody reads my stuff before I post it, but I often get reader feedback that sends me off on tangents to new posts.
Asking a writer where ideas come from, is like asking a sailor where the wind comes from. If your sails are working, the wind is just there. So in terms of the work I put into writing, getting ideas is zero percent. Ten percent is figuring out how to word it. And ninety percent is figuring out how to order it. Even non-fiction has to be written like a story, where one idea flows into the next.
I haven't noticed any differences between physical spaces. It's all about mental space, and all I need is a block of time with no other demands on my attention, which is hard to get in this world. I often fantasize about being in solitary confinement, except with good food. I would have loved to be a medieval monk, doing a couple hours a day of simple useful tasks, and then going to my tiny room to contemplate the divine.
When I'm writing fiction or playing music, cannabis does wonders for my creativity. But when I write blog posts high, they turn out to be second-rate. I suppose weed improves my intuition but not my rational thinking.
My original web host was DR2, a tiny company that later got bought by Mesopia, which got bought by Netbunch, which suspiciously lost my site and all backups around 2006. I recovered it from my own old backups and the web archive, and switched to a Hong Kong company called ICDsoft, where I've been ever since for both domain registration and hosting.
From the beginning, I've used simple hand-coded html and css. It took me a few weeks to build the site, and now it's just a matter of copying and pasting text and a few tags. I like to have my hands right on the actual stuff, and I'm trying to hold onto the golden age of web 1.0, when a non-programmer could get under the hood, and when sites had to be compact for fast loading. I try to keep my home page under 40kB, and I don't run any scripts, except one that a reader contributed to do an automatic archive, because I only archive about half my stuff.
In terms of technical choices, I wouldn't do anything differently. What I regret about my early writing, is that it was too exciting and inspirational, and also too negative. I was trying to slay dragons, and it felt good and got me readers, but at some point the overall vibe of reader feedback led me to dial it down, and I remain fame-phobic. Fame is when people who don't know you, build an image of you in their head for their own purposes, and if you behave differently from that image, they get mad at you.
The site costs me less than $100 a year. In the early years I had a link where people could donate, but now I don't take any money.
It's a tragedy of the modern world that we need money to not die on the streets. I'm lucky that I don't need to monetize my blog, because it's difficult to not start making decisions about what you write, based on where the money is coming from.
My favorite obscure blog is a newsletter called The Whippet.
Another good one is Skunk Ledger
My latest philosophical interest is acausal metaphysics. I learned about it from a brilliant 1982 book called Physics as Metaphor, and there's an important 2003 paper called Causation as Folk Science. Physics is causal: For two things to have a legitimate connection, there has to be some chain of influence through matter directly influencing other matter -- although physics has a hint of acausality with quantum entanglement.
An example of acausality at work is astrology. In physics, there's no realistic way that remote planets can influence your life. But in acausal metaphysics, the positions of the planets, and events in your life, might be two different aspects of something deeper that we don't understand yet, so they can line up without any causality. This was what Jung was trying to get at with synchronicity, and I try to cultivate synchronicity in everyday life, by noticing and being grateful when little things line up.
This was the 22nd edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Ran. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and all supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can:
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2024-01-26 04:20:00
This is my entry for January’s IndieWeb Carnival, hosted by foreverliketh.is on the topic of positive internalisation, hence the title of this post.
When I first read the topic for this month I thought it was going to be an easy write:
Your entry for this month’s carnival will have you intentionally seek out positive memories. Memories that remind you of the good parts of yourself; the facets of your being that you want to see more of, that you wish to nurture and grow.
I was wrong. Extracting memories that remind me about the good parts of myself is hard. Painfully hard. And that’s because each good memory is covered by a veil of self-criticism and self-doubt. And the older I grow the more that vision of myself solidifies: I’m convinced I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough, but also don’t have enough willpower to change any of that. Was I always like this? I honestly can’t tell you.
The only genuinely happy memories I have are not tied to me but to others. Doing something—no matter how big or small—for someone else is one of the few things in life that can consistently make me happy. This is especially great when that someone else is a stranger. We live in such a sad world that people are genuinely surprised when you go out of your way to help them just because you want to be kind.
Actually, now that I think about it, there is something I used to do that I want back. Years ago, when I was still in high school, I used to walk around the city, listening to music, and having a great time smiling at people. It was such a great way to live my life. Rather than looking down and marching towards my destination I was taking my time, walking slowly, smiling at random people on the sidewalk.
I kinda loved that version of me and I’m sure it’s still there somewhere. I only need to figure out how to bring it out again.
Eden, I’m not sure this nonsense I just wrote fits with the topic you set up for January’s carnival but since I know you read my blog you know I’m all over the place with my thinking and so this is what you gonna get.
As for everyone else, the carnival needs hosts for the months of July, August, September, October, and November. If you have a blog and—like me—love the IndieWeb you should consider becoming a host for one of those months. You can do it by calming your spot on the wiki page of the carnival
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2024-01-22 19:30:00
I’m currently taking part in Jason’s Letters experiment and I have to say that it’s a lot of fun. As I said to him, writing something that is usually meant to be private knowing that will be published somewhere is a weird feeling.
I like that it offers readers a glimpse into what corresponding with people online looks like. As I wrote many times before, if you want to engage with me, please do write me an email. I read every single one of them and I also try my best to reply to everyone. Sometimes life takes over and I forget but I really do try my best to reply because I believe it’s important to connect with others.
I also believe in kindness, in curiosity, in being open to learn about others and their lives. I love to know what you do, and what you’re passionate about so, again, if you want to make a new connection, please do get in touch.
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2024-01-19 20:00:00
This is the 21st edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Tom MacWright and his blog, macwright.com
Tom is an American programmer, with a very minimal blog—something I really appreciate—and he's currently working on Val.town, a social website to code in the cloud.
To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
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Hi! I'm from New Jersey and I live in Brooklyn now. I studied Computer Science in college a lot time ago, and that led to a series of jobs at early-stage startups: I've worked on CAD software extensions, visualization tools, geospatial software, and programming tools. It can be a little hectic, the urgency to get these companies from point A to B, but I like it.
I've always had a lot of hobbies, and have kept most of them. Guitar, banjo, running, art, writing, gardening, hardware projects: having a few things to do is pretty important to me. The creative energy from one project can spill over to another, and you can get a fresh perspective by taking a break from some long-running task.
When I started writing online in 2010, there were a lot of people leading the way. I remember SimpleBits and kottke, Rebekah Cox and David Heinemeier Hansson. Rasmus Andersson had a perfect look for his blog that heavily influenced mine. One of my earliest jobs, working at a company called Development Seed, encouraged us all to write. Bonnie Bogle, one of the founders, had worked professionally as a writer and helped a lot with editing and taught us all how to write for the web.
I write to think, so I do it all the time and not just for the blog. I keep paper journals. I like that quote on the back of all my Field Notes notebooks: "I’m not writing it down to remember it later, I’m writing it down to remember it now."
For the current blog, I'm kind of proud of how little it's changed. It's so easy to just chase the latest blog software or design, but with my current blog I've been able to really restrain myself. I like the design and the technology just works. The content has definitely changed as what I've worked on shifted. There's usually some writing that's work-related, some that's about what I'm interested in now. I've added sections for photos and book reviews.
I don't have a process for getting inspired or finding topics to write about. I just write about what I'm interested in and what I think is fun to share. So sometimes months go by without finishing anything, and sometimes it's four posts in a month.
It's scary when the inspiration doesn't come. Right now is one of those times: it's been three months since I wrote a standalone blog post. But I write one a month, always called "Recently," which is there to keep a cadence. The Recently posts have a consistent structure and are less of a commitment to write - I think they've helped me keep the habit through all these years.
I don't have anyone proofread my drafts. I make grammar and spelling mistakes all the time, and would probably benefit from an editor, but it's a solo operation, for better or worse.
I don't write outlines. Sometimes I'll write multiple drafts when I can't figure out which part of the topic is really interesting. I'll write long blog posts just to find the 25% that's actually good, and I'll keep just that part.
I'm either incredibly neat in my own space, with everything on the table arranged at right angles, or writing on a laptop at a chaotic cafe. If I'm listening to anything when I'm writing, it's Tim Hecker.
Sure! It's simple. The blog is generated by Jekyll, stored on GitHub and hosted on Netlify. I recently switched to using Cloudflare as my domain registrar – really happy with them so far. I also used Cloudflare to store photos, with their R2 service. I also have my own email address on the site, using Fastmail, which is fantastic.
And that's really it – it's a static site. I've made small changes to the tech stack like switching from GitHub Pages to Netlify and from Gandi to Cloudflare. But overall, I've used simple tools to make something simple and it has been unproblematic.
Not really: I like how I have it set up. Maybe I'd use Hugo or Eleventy instead of Jekyll, just because it's annoying to set up Ruby on new computers. But Jekyll has been great otherwise.
It's easy to overcomplicate these things.
The domain costs about $20 a year. Hosting images on Cloudflare R2 costs a few cents a month. Fastmail costs $5 a month.
Thanks to Brooklyn rents, these numbers are relatively insignificant to me.
I've tried a few things to monetize it: affiliate links, hooking up the Brave Browser's advertising system, and a ko-fi.com link for donations.
I also sell the blog's theme for $100, because people kept asking for it. But, I try to make it clear that if you just want to recreate it on your own or rip off design elements, be my guest, don't pay me!
I shut down the Brave advertising setup, which paid me in BAT tokens, because the annoyance of accounting for "crypto income" outweighed the income itself. I don't use affiliate links anymore – they were always a paltry income.
For me, I've had a relatively comfortable career in the tech industry. The most value that my blog has provided me is job flexibility and exposure. I feel awkward about the prospect of monetizing my audience and I have the luxury not to do so.
But that's not a universal experience at all, and I think it's totally cool and fair for anyone to monetize their blog. Some people have done really well that way!
I read enough tech stuff at work, so I don't really need programming blogs. I have a few RSS subscriptions that I still treasure: Cycfi Research is from a company that is building wild MIDI-compatible guitars out of carbon fiber. Zeptobars is a very focused blog that posts die shots - images of chips after the coating has been etched away. Drew DeVault’s blog is software engineering feats of strength and some very strong opinions. Light Blue Touchpaper always has some post about a mind-blowing security vulnerability. Language Log has wild language-crossover examples. And of course there's 100 Rabbits posting about their art, programming, music, and boat adventures.
Right now I'm spending a lot of time on Val Town, so check that out!
This was the 21st edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Tom. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and all supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can:
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2024-01-19 01:05:00
I got asked to host an edition of the IndieWeb carnival and who am I to say no to such a request? As you know, I love blogging and I think more people should blog and I’m more than happy to take part in these initiatives.
I already have a topic in mind but I’m going to wait until February 1st to reveal it here on the site. That said, if you already like the idea and want to participate, send me an email and I’ll let you know the topic so you can start working on your post in advance.
Oh and by the way, I’m hosting the carnival for the month of February but they’re looking for new hosts for the upcoming months so, people out there with blogs, you know what to do!
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2024-01-17 04:35:00
Let’s just state the obvious here: AIs are not human. Should be obvious but apparently it’s not. I say it’s not because the amount of people who justify all sorts of shitty behavior coming from people working on AI models is astounding.
And the reasoning it’s always the same: it’s ok for an AI model to do X because if a human were to also do X the results would be the same. Which is a completely idiotic way of reasoning. And it’s idiotic for a few reasons.
First, if a human were to spend their time learning how to draw and paint in the style of 4000 different artists you’d be dead before getting halfway through that list. The same is true for any other stupid example.
And second, if a human were to do that we’d all condemn it pretty quickly because it goes against everything we find valuable. When a big company rips off a smaller artist everyone yells and screams. But now that AIs are doing the same that’s fine because they’re clearly not ripping off anyone, they’re just taking inspiration, like humans would do.
Except that if fucking Disney were to “just take inspiration” and steal designs from smaller artists we’d all be enraged, and for good reasons.
So please, cut the bullshit. Train your goddamn AI on whatever you want, steal all the content, but at least be honest and feel some shame.
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2024-01-15 02:55:00
Working on a project of any kind is a journey. And like any type of journey, what matters the most is not the destination, but the journey itself. It’s easy for me to forget that crucial aspect while I’m working through any type of project. I jump from one project to the next, with my eyes set on the finish line but I forget to pay attention to the process. And in doing that I often find myself to be quite miserable. Because there’s no joy to be found at the finish line. The enjoyable part is the process. Trying new things, failing, making mistakes, experimenting, getting hurt. It’s all part of the process and it’s what makes the journey enjoyable.
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2024-01-12 20:30:00
This is the 20th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Rachel Smith and her blog, rachsmith.com
Rachel is an Australian developer, working at CodePen and she's been suggested by three of the previous guests so I had to get her on P&B.
To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
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I'm Rach, a 37 year old from Australia. I'm a mum to two little ones and I work as a developer at CodePen.
I always loved computers as a kid and the internet as a teen, but I struggled to find a place for me until I discovered front-end development as a profession in 2011.
I spent the first half of my career working in digital advertising, allowing me to live abroad working for agencies in the UK and USA, and the second half working on a single product (CodePen). Working for CodePen has allowed me to expand my skills far beyond the front end, and now I do a bit of everything.)
This is actually somewhere around the seventh attempt at keeping a blog. I had two LiveJournals and a Blogspot as a teen. Since I started my career as a developer I've had maybe three different self-hosted blogs, that I tore down and started again, as well as a now-defunct CodePen blog that had code-tutorial style posts. This iteration is the one that has stuck the longest. )
Something that has been really helpful with my blog was actually to stop thinking about it in terms of a "blog", and more of a "digital garden". I can default to perfectionistic thinking if I'm not careful, and I used to treat blog posts like a finished piece that needed to be polished until it was just right before publishing. By changing my "blog posts" to "notes", it changes the way I think about writing them and gets me to publish far more often.
I do all of my writing in an Obsidian vault. It keeps my personal notes as well as the published ones. When I want to publish a note I run a script that copies the note content to the directory holding my website's content.)
Before having kids, I could be quite precious about needing a specific environment to get any work done. Now, it is certainly nice to be able to write in a peaceful setting, but I'm also able to do it from anywhere - on the phone in my car, at the kitchen bench with Paw Patrol playing in the background.
One thing I will say is by far the biggest environmental factor that influences my creativity is how much I am on my phone. If I'm on my phone consuming all the time, there is no space for having thoughts about what to write. If I put the phone away, the ideas arrive.)
I write all my posts in Markdown and use Astro to publish them on the web. All the content is kept in a GitHub repository with the site's code. The site is hosted for free with Netlify. )
If I were to do it all again, I think I would make an effort to save more of the old posts I had on previous versions of this blog. I'm like the opposite of a hoarder - I think nothing of tossing things away as I love the idea of a fresh start. But sometimes I think it would be nice to go back and read what I wrote 10 years ago. )
All I have to pay for in the running of my blog is the analytics (Plausible) and the domain registration.
I've had a couple of ad networks offer to place ads on my blog but I've always turned them down. My audience is quite small, but very engaged and loyal. Annoying my regular readers wouldn't be worth the small amount income I'd make from an attempt at monetisation. )
I love reading blogs via RSS and am subscribed to about 30 personal blog feeds, including many of the people you've featured in this series already, so it is hard to choose favourites. I intend to add a blogroll to my site soon.
Speaking of blogrolls, I would suggest you interview Stefan Judis. His website is goals.)
If you desire to write on your own blog but something is holding you back I would say: don't make assumptions about what people will or won't find interesting or useful. Every time I think I'm sharing something "too niche" I am surprised at the interest from readers.
This was the 20th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Rachel. Make sure to follow her blog (RSS) and get in touch with her if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and all supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
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2024-01-10 18:35:00
In a post a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I was going to take over Minimalissimo—aka Mimo—starting January 1st and that I was planning to blog about the whole experience.
Well, it’s January 10th, I am in charge of the site and I do plan to post updates on this journey under the title “The Mimo Diaries” and this is the first entry of the series.
So how is it going? I’d say so far so good. If you are a visitor of the site you might have noticed that a first change is already in place: posts no longer have short text content. Let me explain the reasoning behind that decision.
Minimalissimo started back in 2009 and the web was a very different place. Content generation and content consumption were substantially different than they are now and it made sense to have a “traditional” blog/magazine with text and images.
But I believe that is no longer true in 2024. I’m not saying writing on the web is pointless, quite the contrary. What I’m saying is that I don’t think there’s much added value to the user in writing short posts to go along with the images on the site. It’s probably useful from a SEO perspective but, as you know, I don’t care about SEO all that much. I care about users and user experience. And I think the value that Mimo provides is in the visual curation, not in the written content.
Now, that is true for short posts but it’s definitely not true for the newsletter. I do plan to keep that one going and make it a more important part of the Mimo ecosystem. The newsletter is going to be the place for longer content, focused on the topic of minimalism. That’s my current plan and we’ll see how it goes. So, make sure you subscribe to the Minimalissimo newsletter if you want to get the full Minimalissimo experience.
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2024-01-06 18:05:00
The other day I finished reading Things Become Other Things by Craig Mod and for the first time in my life, a book made me feel the need to hug the author. Craig, thank you for creating this book.
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2024-01-05 20:00:00
This is the 19th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Arun Venkatesan and his blog, arun.is
Arun was suggested as a potential guest by Victor Kernes—who also happen to have a lovely newsletter focused on style, menswear, and fashion—and the suggestion was spot on.
To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
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I was born in Dallas, Texas to two Indian immigrants. My mom owns her own businesses and my dad is a Computer Science Professor. I grew up surrounded by children whose parents are in IT fields. Unsurprisingly, computers became a strong part of my identity.
I went to school at Columbia University in New York to study Electrical Engineering thinking I wanted to get into consumer electronics. I learned EE was not for me and took a software engineering job after graduating. I kept working my way up the stack, eventually becoming a designer.
I’ve worked exclusively at startups, including as a cofounder at Carrot Fertility.
When I’m not working, I like to take photographs, travel with my wife and two kids, run, bike, and write.
I grew up reading blogs as a teenager in the 00s. I loved how each blog could be vastly different, unlike more standardized mediums like books. I always had the idea in the back of my mind of starting one of my own.
I briefly wrote for a technology blog, where I learned that professional writing in a newsroom wasn’t for me. So, I started a simple Wordpress blog where I life blogged like one of my influences, Danny Choo.
I eventually abandoned that blog on a trip to Japan that was a major turning point in my life.
This current blog started as a playground for front end tools. Since I built it from the ground up, unlike the earlier Wordpress one, I felt more motivation to develop it and poured more and more time into it. Design and technology naturally became the focus.
Some influences are Andrew Kim’s now defunct Minimally Minimal, Craig Mod, Anton Repponen, julian.digital, Maggie Appleton, and Paul Stamitiou.
Most of my ideas come up when I’m out and about, especially when I’m running. I run along the same path every day. I find that movement in a familiar environment allows me to tune out everything else. Somehow, connections between ideas magically start to happen in this frame of mind.
I add all new ideas into a long list I keep in Notion. Adding it to the list seems to turn vague thoughts into an idea that then persists and bounces around my head. When something seems clear enough to write about, I start delving in.
Some posts require a lot of research. In these cases, I use Readwise for capturing highlights from books and articles, Figjam for organizing thoughts on a canvas, and Notion if I need structured data.
I often write using Otter.ai for speech to text while taking a walk. This is especially helpful when I feel a lot of Resistance.
My wife reads all my drafts. She points out places where a non-native English speaker may have trouble and where I use too much jargon.
I’m a big believer in the influence of environment on creativity. I’ve learned over time the effects that things like smell, temperature, and visual appearance of a space can have on my mood and creative impulses.
I have a desk setup that I find essential, especially when editing photos or writing. Having a space that I know by feel lowers friction and makes the process feel much smoother.
Sometimes, though, I feel stuck after spending too much time at my desk. In these cases, I like working out of the Apple Park Visitor Center. It’s kind of like a cafe within an Apple Store.
The blog has gone through many iterations over time while sticking to the same repo. Currently, the site is built using Gatsby, React, and Tailwind. Posts are written in MDX. Type is set in Inter and IBM Plex Mono. I use Plausible for analytics.
I have a handful of scripts and tools that speed up specific parts of my blogging workflow. One example is a tool that turns a directory of images into markup including EXIF information like aperture, shutter speed, etc. I’ve been writing even more tools now with the help of LLMs.
I write my drafts in Obsidian and copy them over to my repo. I edit code in VSCode.
Photos have been shot on a variety of cameras, though I mostly use the Leica CL digital camera these days. I process them in a Lightroom with a set of custom presets.
I design the site and draw graphics in Figma.
The site is hosted on Netlify.
I use Mailchimp for my newsletter.
The main change I would make (which I still may make in the future) is to not use Gatsby, and stick with something simpler. I have found Gatsby to be more trouble than it is worth. For example, my build times out on cloud services like Netlify and Vercel. Hence, I manually deploy and don’t get the advantage of automatic deploys.
Per month, I pay $19 for Netlify, $19 for Plausible Analytics, $12 for Vimeo video hosting, $19.99 for Lightroom and Photoshop, and $20 for Figma. My Domain is €34.90 a year. I will soon start paying for Mailchimp once I hit my maximum of 2000 free subscribers. Altogether that’s about $90 a month.
I currently make a tiny bit of money from affiliate links on my review and desk setup posts. These cover some of the monthly fees. I’m considering setting up a membership program in the far future, but I don’t mind losing money on the blog since I consider it a hobby.
I also don’t mind when creators charge for their writing, especially if it is done thoughtfully like Craig Mod and Ben Thompson. I support a dozen or so people at the moment.
Aside from the blogs I mentioned earlier, I’d check out Aegir.org, Matt Sephton, Faith Arslan, frantic.im.
I’m making a product recommendation site called zen of things. It’s a bit like Wirecutter, but with a focus on good design instead of price. Check it out and provide feedback if you like well designed objects!
This was the 19th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Arun. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and all supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can:
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2024-01-03 16:10:00
I’m aware it’s not Saturday but I realised I didn’t need to collect a full week worth of data to get an answer to my question and so I decided that three full days were enough. I have data for December 30th and 31st and January 1st. That’s more that enough. So let’s do some digging shall we.
Before I cruch the numbers I want to highlight two people who got in touch mentioning their similar experiments: Jim Nielsen—who's also a P&B guest—and Chris Krycho.
I think it’s important to first establish what these tools are measuring. I’m interested in one single data point: how many people have accessed my content. Should be simple enough in theory. That information is often referred to as Unique user or Unique visitor. But how are these tools determining what counts as unique?
Plausible doesn’t use cookies and to track unique visitors they do the following:
Every single HTTP request sends the IP address and the User-Agent to the server so that’s what we use. We generate a daily changing identifier using the visitor’s IP address and User-Agent. To anonymize these datapoints and make them impossible to relate back to the user, we run them through a hash function with a rotating salt.
So a combination of IP and User Agent. So if someone is browsing from different devices they’d probably be counted multiple times. More info is available on the Plausible website.
Simple Analytics tracks a slightly different metric called “unique visits” which is based, according to their docs, on the referrer. More info at this page.
Fathom tracks “Visitors” defined as:
A visitor is a unique person who's visited your site.
Not very helpful. I tried to poke around the docs but I couldn’t find how they track it so I’ll move on to the final platform, Pirsch. They do something similar to what Plausible is doing
Pirsch generates a unique number for each visitor calculated from the visitor's IP address, the User-Agent, and a random string that is set for each website.
Finally, we have Goaccess, the tool I’m going to use to analyse my server logs. Goaccess defines a Unique Visitor as
HTTP requests containing the same IP, the same date, and the same user agent are considered a unique visitor. By default, it includes web crawlers/spiders.
We have our definitions, it’s time to get to some numbers.
These are the (Unique) Visitors reported by the four online services and my server logs
3584032737283894Already, the difference between logs and client analytics is HUGE. But we need to dig a bit deeper into the logs because the situation there is messy. To start, there’s the issue of bots, spiders and crawlers. Goaccess has an optional flag I turned on to ignore a huge number of those. That 3894 is already ignoring a good % of non-human traffic. But I am sure something is still slipping through. Another thing that is present in my server logs that is obviously not present in the other four tools is RSS traffic because the JS necessary to keep track of the traffic is not included in the RSS feed. If I remove all the entries in my logs mentioning either rss or feed the Unique Visitors go from 3894 to 2111. Lower but still way higher than the client side data that was averaging around 440.
Clearly more work is needed on these logs because they’re incredibly noisy. I removed all 404s, manually removed all the entries mentioning any type of bot, I also grabbed only entries matching this regex (Gecko|Chrome|Firefox|AppleWebKit|Mac OS|Windows NT|Android). And that leaves us with 1821 unique visitors, according to my logs.
That number is still a lot higher than what I’m seeing in the online dashboard so what gives? Well, I think something obvious is happening here. I am a web developer with an indie blog that is followed by a lot of people who are also passionate about the web and are tech savvy. So I’d bet the % of people running one or multiple ad blockers between my readers is quite high. An article from the Plausible blog reports that a huge % of people is blocking google analytics for example but I’m sure modern ad blockers are also preventing these tools to work properly. Hell I had to disable mine just to access those dashboards. My visits to my site were not counted. Estimating the number of people running ad blockers is impossible and a quick online search tells me the numbers are anything between 30% to 65%.
If I were to adjust the numbers coming out of the four tools I used based on the 65% which is probably reasonable considering my type of audience we’d get
96710897371967A lot closer to the 1821 coming out of my server logs. We can probably safely assume that some of those 1821 are bots cleverly disguised as genuine traffic and the true number has to be somewhere in the ~1200 range.
So, do I finally have an answer? Is ~1200 the answer I was looking for? Well, not quite. We excluded RSS earlier because it was not part of the data gathered by the four client side tools but RSS traffic is still traffic worth counting. Especially in 2024! Figuring out actual RSS traffic is close to impossible. Goaccess tells me there were 1973 unique IPs pinging the various feeds on my site. I’m going to follow Darek lead here and simply count exposed subscribers. According to my logs we have:
feed-id for a total of 439 subscribers;12639170So the total, according to these services is 1026 subscribers, if my math is correct. Only thing missing to this weird roundup is the 110 people who are getting my posts directly in their inbox.
Is there even a lesson to be learn here? Don’t trust numbers blindly perhaps? Server logs are messy and can be over inflated while client based analytics can greatly under report your numbers if you have a very tech savvy audience. Also RSS is still doing fine and you should definitely have an RSS feed if you have a personal blog. And if you don’t have a personal blog I don’t know what you’re waiting for. Ditch social media and start blogging. You can thank me later. And if you don’t know where to start hit me up and I’ll be happy to help.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2024-01-02 18:10:00
I spend a lot of time online. One could argue it’s too much time. And in that time, I consume content. Mountains of content. Huge mountains of content. Maybe insurmountable mountains of content. No matter how much I try, there will always be another interesting blog post, YouTube video, or podcast episode. I consume a lot more than I create. I suspect I’m not alone in this. And I think there’s a good balance to be found here. Right now I feel the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of the consumption and I have to bring it back towards the middle.
I feel that is something I need to do for myself, for the sake of my mental sanity but I also think that’s something the internet as a whole would benefit from. Consuming content online is, for the most part, a mindless act. But creating content forces you to reflect, to introspect, to look at yourself and the world around you in different ways.
More people should follow Matt’s advice:
Publish a post. About anything! It can be long or short, a photo or a video, maybe a quote or a link to something you found interesting. Don’t sweat it. Just blog. Share something you created, or amplify something you enjoyed. It doesn’t take much. The act of publishing will be a gift for you and me.
I think this is going to be my 2024 mantra: Create more. Consume less.
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2024-01-01 17:15:00
Years ago, inspired by Leo Babauta, I did a year of living without. Each month I tried to live without something to see if it was actually something I needed in my life. It’s a fun experiment, one I personally recommend to anyone.
This year, I’m gonna do it again but with the same twist I tried—very unsucessfully—last year. Instead of doing twelve one-month long experiments, I’m just going to do two but for the entire year. The two things I’m going to live without are:
Coffee is something I don’t think I need in my life and I can replace it with tea or with something else. I went months here and there without coffee but never an entire year so it’s going to be interesting to see if that has any effect on my body.
YouTube, I just think it does more harm than good to my mind and so I’m gonna try to the entire year without consuming content on the platform. Two exceptions:
Those are the two exceptions, everything else is banned in 2024. I’ll replace YouTube with more books and podcasts. And speaking of books...
Read more books is one of my new year resolutions. I might write about what I’m reading during the year. Will also try to keep my Literal profile up to date. The other resolutions are to drink more water, no screens in the bedroom, and take more care of my body. I have plans for how to tackle all those items and I’ll blog about in the upcoming weeks.
Have a great new year everyone!
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2023-12-30 17:35:00
A few days ago I had a fun chat with some Internet people and we were talking about website numbers and analytics. As you know, my site doesn’t have analytics of any kind. I’m not interested in knowing what people are reading and what they’re doing on the site. The only numbers I have available are the ones coming out of the server logs and those are as messy as it gets.
In my chat, we were discussing the discrepancy between log numbers and the ones coming out of the various analytics platforms and were noticing how they all spit out different data. Which to me makes no sense. Still, it’s an interesting topic and I decided to run a little experiment to gather more info on the subject.
From now until next Saturday morning—January 6th—I’ll run four different analytics services on this site. Then, next Saturday I’ll remove everything, grab the data from the various dashboards, delete all the accounts and associated data, and then compare those numbers against a week's worth of server logs.
I decided not to use Google Analytics because fuck Google and so my four picks are:
The reason why I’m doing this now it’s because the end of the year is usually a slow time online so there’s going to be less traffic coming through my site and that means fewer people being tracked as a result of my experiment. Also, I’m not interested in the data itself, I’m just interested in comparing the various results against each other so it’s fine if I get less data overall on each of the four services.
I plan to share as much as possible about this experiment so if you want to learn more about it just come back next week.
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2023-12-29 20:00:00
This is the 18th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Derek Sivers and his blog, sive.rs
Derek is currently a writer but he's been many things in his life, from entrepreneur, to musician, to public speaker. He's also the creator of the /now page movement. I have a /now page thanks to him and so are many other people.
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I’ve been a musician, circus performer, entrepreneur, and TED speaker. I’m a slow thinker, explorer, xenophile, and I love a different point of view. California native, I now live in New Zealand.
I sold my company (CD Baby) in 2008, and had previously used its blog to communicate with my audience of 200,000 musicians. So I set up https://sive.rs/ as the new place to share my thoughts.
This is what I do for everything I post:
Space matters, but when you're really inspired and driven, it's almost like going into a trance. You don't care where you are or how comfortable the chair.
Static HTML on my own OpenBSD server.
I actually write in HTML. I wrote one sentence per line - see sive.rs/1s - then just fill in </p><p> where I want to make a paragraph break. I find this simpler than depending on some tools to convert my writing into HTML.
Domain at porkbun.com and DNS and CDN with bunny.net (I love them).
Whenever I realize I'd like something to be different, I change it.
Long ago, my blog was on WordPress. But I kept removing more and more from the default template until I realized WordPress was really unnecessary and a bloated obstacle.
$5/month for my OpenBSD server at vultr.com
The blog itself earns nothing, and I don't want it to.
But I sell my books on sivers.com and that makes a ton of money for charity.
Definitely jvns.ca
See legacytrust.nz and hundredyearhost.com
I want to help people's personal websites stay alive for a hundred years - to be their lasting digital legacy after their death.
This was the 18th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Derek. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and all supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can:
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my awesome supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
2023-12-28 02:05:00
Carl wrote a lovely post the other day, listing 20 things he learned this year. I’m not going to write a list myself and you should definitely go read his instead. I am going to comment on two of his entries though.
Move to your own rhythm. This is where progress is realized. Keeping pace with others is a losing battle.
Finding your own pace in life is incredibly hard. Especially when trying to keep up with the world around us. Also, slowing down is often a lot harder than speeding up.
Drinking enough water in a day is actually pretty hard.
It really is. And I’m personally doing a terrible job. Need to get better at that in the upcoming year. Again, go read Carl’s list and if you write a list yourself let me know.
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2023-12-26 22:50:00
Malcesine and its castle. Some say it's the second most beautiful town on the lake. They're probably right.
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2023-12-22 20:00:00
This is the 17th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Chris Butler and his blog, chrbutler.com
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Hi, I'm Chris Butler. I'm a digital graphic designer. I work at Newfangled.com and write at Chrbutler.com.
I was fortunate to study art and design at RISD.edu. While majoring in Film/Animation/Video, I became interested in motion graphics, which began a winding path toward interaction design.
Though I've been happily settled in Durham, NC for over a decade now – the longest I've lived in one spot! – I've lived in many places; the most distant was Penang, Malaysia.
I was recently asked to choose three adjectives to describe myself. The first that came to mind was "curious." I have more interests than I have time to pursue them. Many come up in the course of my writing. More on that in a bit...
I'm not sure there's much of a story other than that I've always wanted to maintain a record of some kind. I created my first webpage in the late 1990s and have tried to maintain the ability to do so ever since. I've kept several different personal URLs over the years, but my current one (chrbutler.com) – just the shortest viable and available version of my name when I registered it – has endured the longest.
I've written professionally at several different places. Newfangled.com has been where I've published the most practical writing on interaction design. I wrote the Interaction design column for PRINT Magazine for several years, contributed to their blog as well as their sister publication, HOW Magazine, and wrote a book published by HOW Books called The Strategic Web Designer. I've also written for SmashingMagazine.com.
But on my website, I'm less focused on a particular topic. I'm much more seasonal in the way I write there – sometimes longer, developed essays, sometimes very brief blog posts. Most of the time, I share my writing with my email list.
I keep a "Files" drive connected to my machine, and on it, a folder called "TEXTS." In it are a few sub-folders: Articles, Fragments, Journal, Notes. In those are thousands of .txt files. I back this up on another RAID drive and on the cloud.
Every day I create some kind of entry on that drive. If it's not a journal entry, I typically start with hastily writing down scattered comments about something I am thinking about and save it to the Notes folder. If I begin to develop that entry, I'll usually move it up to the root level. When it's finished, I file it under Articles. If it languishes for too long, I'll move it to Fragments. Every now and then, I mine the Fragments folder. Most of the time, I read over something and remark, "what on Earth was I thinking." But every now and then, I'll pull something back out of there and work on it again. A few months ago, I published an essay called "Personal Machines and Portable Worlds" that was the result of several resurrections from the Fragments folder – some nearly a decade old.
When I'm ready to publish something, I duplicate the .txt file to a Dropbox folder that syncs with my Blot.im account. Blot is a lovely, simple flat-file CMS. I've used it for many years now and would recommend it to anyone.
I have these childhood memories of visiting my sister's room, which was always in a state of near-chaos, and being inspired by the energy in there. She'd often be making things and always had a creative spark that was just so different from mine. I began to associate creativity and disorder, which, for me, has been a lifelong irony because, back then, I'd return to my room, which I'd probably just meticulously cleaned. I'm still that way – I put a huge amount of energy toward creating and maintaining order. I've learned over the years that creativity isn't dependent upon either disorder or order. Both can feed it.
And so both are present in my working space. I'll probably always lean more toward order (this post on my setup will make that clear), but the disorder comes from having a lot of variety available around me. I love having interesting things to look at – even just a glance at something can inspire me and fuel me through the day. I am constantly shuffling the things on my office's display shelves to feed my mind with images and ideas that I can use.
The post I referenced above will provide much more exhaustive detail on this, but to summarize:
I work at home, and my primary machine is an M1 Mac Mini. I haven't owned a laptop in many years. I like to keep my computer time focused in one place, for the most part (though I do have an iPad Mini, which is a very useful device and optimally sized, in my opinion). I connect into a large LG display and communicate via Zoom using a Sony a7c and a Shure SM7B connected through a Focusrite Scarlett interface.
I write with Ulysses and store all my text files on a 1TB NVMe SSD I assembled myself. I back up everything on a LaCIE RAID.
As I mentioned above, my blog is run on Blot.im and all its files are stored on Dropbox.
I'm an evangelist for maintaining an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). In a time of increasingly weird weather, power outages are becoming more common. The CyberPower CP1500 keeps us up and running so we can save our work and shutdown when we feel like it.
Content-wise, I don't think so. I like the personal nature of my website and how its variety reflects who I am. If I were motivated to build a larger audience and somehow monetize that attention, then specializing in some way would probably be necessary. But that's not what my website is for.
What my website is for is, first and foremost, to be a record for me. I like that it traces interests and modes over the years, and I like that it's there for anyone to see. On that note, it's also for making connections. I have made numerous friends through engaging online. These are relationships that have developed far beyond digital acquaintance – they've gone deep and lasted for many years. I met of my very good friends because I commented on his blog and then he on mine. I love that the internet makes this possible.
Technically and creatively, of course I am often itchy. I routinely want to try out a new technology or platform and experiment with the design. I've revamped my site plenty of times, but the ease of the flat-file approach on Blot is hard to trade in for something that might offer me more creative options. It makes it easy for me to write and publish things, which has always been the point.
The website's direct, yearly costs are:
Total: $176
That breaks down to ~$15/month, which is a pretty cheap price for such an enriching hobby, I think.
Meanwhile, the site generates no revenue! Like some of your previous guests, it has created connections that have led to money through various side writing, speaking, or consulting work, but that's never been its purpose. When that happens, it's a nice thing, and I'm happy to leave it at that for now. (It has happened a handful of times, and in the aggregate, they have paid for the all-time costs of the site so far. I'd be fine with it if that wasn't true.)
My position on monetizing personal blogs is to each their own!
Patrick Tanguay's Sentiers (sentiers.media) is a must. I will read anything that Maciej Ceglowski (idlewords.com) writes. Erin Kissane recently wrapped a series examining Meta's role in the genocide of Rohingya people in Myanmar (erinkissane.com).
Lara Hogan's wisdom overflows here: larahogan.me. Reading Nicholas Magand (thejollyteapot.com) got me to loosen up on my blog. Maggie Appleton (maggieappleton.com) is inspiring. I like Carl Barenbrug's blog (carlbarenbrug.com), Chris Hannah's (chrishannah.me), and Jose Gilgado's (josem.co). Scott Buffington's "Full Pints" posts always yield something of interest (irongeek.net).
I just met Robert Rackley through my own blog and I've been enjoying catching up on his (canneddragons.net).
When it comes to the weird, I never miss a post from Håkan Blomqvist (ufoarchives.blogspot.com) or The Anomalist (anomalist.com).
I wrapped my last episode of my Design Tomorrow podcast nearly five years ago, but I still think it's good and worth a listen.
This was the 17th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Chris. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and all supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
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2023-12-16 21:50:00
How do you pirate a social media product though?
Sometimes you face questions that force you to think creatively. How do you pirate a social media product? What does it mean to pirate something and what’s “pirateable” in a social media product?
Online piracy or software piracy is the practice of downloading and distributing copyrighted works digitally without permission, such as music or software.
If we’re talking social media, what part of the whole experience is the pirateable product? Is it the shared content? In that case, pirating is easy: you grab whatever is shared, you take it out of the platform walls and you republish it somewhere else. Let’s pirate something now, shall we?
That right there, is social media content. You’re not consuming it on a social media platform. Meta will never know you saw that post (tweet?), your consumption of that content won’t be registered anywhere. I took it—without permission—and I’m now redistributing it.
Or maybe, the real product of a social media platform is not the content, but the social interactions. And the way you pirate those is by simply not engaging with the platform. By removing yourself from the platform you force the social interaction to happen elsewhere—on your blog, on your personal newsletter, in real life.
It’s a silly problem to think about. Silly, but also fun.
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2023-12-15 20:00:00
This is the 16th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Jamie Thingelstad and his blog, thingelstad.com.
Jamie was the first person to become a supporter of the P&B series, even before the first edition was out, something I really appreciate. I really enjoy how his blog is a proper personal blog, with a mix of work related content, things he's passionate about, family posts, and everything in between. It's also great how he's been online with a blog for almost two decades, quite a stark contrast with the current state of the web where things tend to last 12 nanoseconds on average. And lastly, I love that his entire family has blogs. It's such a neat idea.
To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
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Hello there! My name is Jamie Thingelstad, and I'm writing to you from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the United States. Thank You, Manuel, for having me and thank you for reading! I'm happily married to my fantastic partner Tammy, and we have two children, Mazie and Tyler. Our family unit is rounded out with our Bernedoodle Lucky, who is equal parts loving, lazy, and large.
I am a passionate technologist and have been intrigued by computers since my mother got me a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A for $99 at JC Penney when they were exiting the computer business. My Uncle Tim helped me take that Christmas present, attach the RF modulator to a TV, and create my first BASIC program. I've been fascinated by technology my whole life. When I discovered the Internet at the University of Minnesota, in the days of FTP and Gopher, when the Web was still being born, I was smitten. While many undergrads were spending Friday nights out and about, I could often be found on the SPARCstation in the labs, learning Unix and exploring the early Internet.
I was lucky enough to start my career along with the Web. I left the University before completing my degree. I started an Internet Service Provider for businesses, helped build BigCharts as CTO, and led our technology into MarketWatch and, finally Dow Jones. I've spent significant time in publishing, financial services, social, and retail Software as a Service. Today, I am CTO for SPS Commerce, leading a team of 500 technologists to build and grow the World's Retail Network.
While my role is about leadership, I remain very close to technology. Some folks have hobbies like gardening, and mine are mostly around technology. I'm an active blogger. I write a newsletter. I love to explore and play with tech. Overall, I like learning. I enjoy photography to push my creative side. I enjoy writing. I enjoy cooking and entertaining. I make candles. We enjoy traveling both near and far.
Most of all, I enjoy time with family and friends.
I started my blog nearly 20 years ago, and I don't remember the impetus to create it. I registered thingelstad.com in 1999, even before I set up my blog. I had a handmade HTML "home page" and other hand-created HTML pages for some trips. In 2004, I decided to start using .Text as a blogging system. I've used a variety of different technologies over the years.
.Text → WordPress → SquareSpace → Pelican → Jekyll → micro.blog
For nearly two decades, my blog has been my home on the Web. It is where I share my writing. It is where I record things I care about. There isn't a single story of my blog. There are hundreds. And that is what I love about it.
Having published for this long and now in my fifties, I think of my blog as one of my "life works." It is part of my long-term memory. It is part of how I want to leave an impact on the future.
"Creative process" is a pretty big word for my blogging. I tend to write on the fly when I find the energy and motivation flowing. My blogging is often things that happen in my life, stories I want to share, or my opinions. I don't do a lot of research, but I do make sure I add links to related websites.
Short posts I do right in the Micro.blog app. Longer posts I will write in Drafts. I typically author posts in one sitting. I prefer to do any final editing after the post is published. Longer posts I will often read the next day on my site and will make edits at that point.
I do have lists of blog posts I may want to write, and they are usually in OmniFocus in a "Create blog posts" project, or I will have a stub in Drafts in the "Blog/Ideas" tag. Most of these "ideas" never actually go anywhere. The posts that happen the most are the ones that I feel compelled to write about.
Building this need to write is something I recognized that Twitter was hurting. I'm not sure how to explain it, but over time, I feel compelled to write. I realized after a long time (too long) that blabbing 140 characters at a time on Twitter was scratching that same itch. Still, the outcome was just these blips of words disconnected from context. When I do less of that, the "urge to write" builds, and before I know it, I'm writing 1,000 words on something.
One last thing is I don't ever use "Drafts" in the blogging platform I'm using. I'm unsure why, but creating a draft in the system is like death for that post. It will never happen. For some reason, keeping that in the Drafts app or a list in OmniFocus works much better. I never use the Draft feature of micro.blog or other blogging systems.
For me it is less about the physical where (beyond basic comfort) and more about the when. My most prolific time for writing things of any length is on a weekend morning. Coffee nearby, everyone else still asleep, and the sun low in the sky. Usually, I'm on my laptop, but a desktop is fine. I'm nearly always going to be typing into Drafts. I have an outline I'm working to fill out.
The physical space can have an impact. If things are cluttered or distracting, that takes energy away. But that has a minor effect on me. It is all about energy, and that is most present in the morning for me.
That said, I'm okay writing at any other time, but I may prefer shorter or simpler things.
Mostly, "just write".
Here is my current setup for running my blog.
Having blogged for nearly two decades, I get asked for suggestions about how to start a blog, and my main point of advice is just one thing:
Just write.
Most people get hung up on "write about what?" I suggest writing about something they recently learned or experienced. Start as a journal and keep writing. Over time, you will find your voice and the topics or themes that resonate with you. But the most important thing is to write. Everything else is noise.
For folks who agree with the above, I have three suggestions.
First, embrace the KISS principle. Blogging platforms have a ton of options and customizations. I would ignore them all. One of the things I love about the modern pattern of using markdown and site generators is its simplicity. Customizations to a specific system are to be avoided, and for sure, ignore theme customizations. You will change themes, and you don't want any content dependencies.
Second, I've found Collections and Lists to be a fun thing on my blog. Like most blogging systems micro.blog allows for posts by date or pages using a manual structure. Collections are pages that I create to collect a set of blog posts together. You could think of them as a category, but they are usually time-bound events like a trip to Yellowstone. Having a page I can add content to and link to is a great way to curate a set of posts on something and add additional context about it. Lists use the same page function and are just various lists like a list of escape rooms, a list of words, and a list of POAP events I've created. Both of these pages are in the navigation of my site, and I've had people comment on how much they like them.
The last suggestion is to only have one site, one blog. This goes back to my main thing about "just write". Having multiple websites adds a decision point of "write where?". I find this question to be a big problem, and it stops me in my tracks. It's best to have only one place that you write so there is no decision.)
Running thingelstad.com requires two things: a subscription to micro.blog and my domain name. I subscribe to the premium version of micro.blog more because I want to support the business than share videos, which is $100/year. I manage my domain registration with NameCheap, which is approximately $16/year. I also defensively own thinglestad.com (the most common misspelling of my name) and jamiethingelstad.com, which redirects, but that is an optional spend.
I love that micro.blog gives you an on-ramp to blogging for as low as $5/mo or $50 + domain name annually. That is a great deal.
I do not try to make money off of my blog at all. Like most bloggers, when affiliate stuff was big, I did try it. I even had a couple of hobby sites that I ran Google AdWords on. That was all before I developed as informed and vigorous a view on privacy as I do now. And in the early days, affiliate and ad networks were not the surveillance systems they are now.
I also do not have any analytics on my website.
My metaphor to think about all of this stuff is my home. I like to think of people visiting my blog as a digital version of somebody coming over for dinner or stopping by to visit. I do not give people who come to our house a unique identifier and follow them around after they leave. I don't provide them with coupons or ask if they bought the book we discussed. And I don't keep counters of how long they stay or if they "bounced" right after stopping by.
I want to respect the people who visit my site and respect their privacy, so I don't monetize any aspect of it and have no tracking codes at all.)
I must first recommend the blogs of Tammy and my kids, Mazie and Tyler. A long time ago, Tammy had a blog that she posted somewhat regularly with the delightful name "Smaller Than A Redwood." She took the site off the Web several years ago, and a couple years back I asked her if she would mind me resurrecting it back into micro.blog via the backup I took. She thought fine, and then, out of the blue this summer on our vacation, she made her first post in about 10 years.
I also set my kids up with their own blogs. All of them are on micro.blog. They don't post regularly, and I'm not pushing them. I'm vocal about my disdain for social media, and my kids have absorbed that opinion. Neither of them wants anything to do with those services. So we've set them up with a way to authentically publish online if or when the spirit moves them. They have it available to use as they wish.
Also, here are some bloggers that I particularly get excited about when I see a new item appear in my feed: Allen Pike, Om Malik, Tim Bray, Josh Bernoff, Fred Wilson, Rajiv Pant, Annie Mueller, Lee Zukor, David O'Hara, and Patrick Rhone.
Over 6 years ago, I decided to explore having a newsletter. I'd been blogging for 13 years then, so I had a consistent stream of things I was writing. I also had been a broad reader and curating links for years. I decided to bring those things as the core of the Weekly Thing. The name is a play on my last name, and it is weekly. I've published over 250 issues, and many people refer to the Weekly Thing as my "blog."
Publishing a newsletter has been an exciting journey and is similar to blogging but also very different. There is a reply mechanism that blogs don't have. There is no need for a feed reader to get to people. I like it and find it a great complement to my blog. I'm also honored to have over 1,400 people who have decided to let me into their mailbox. I don't know how many people subscribe to my RSS feed, but I suspect that the Weekly Thing is now the most common way people "subscribe" to my blog.
I also recently rebooted a fun hobby site of mine — Road Sign Math! This is a driving game we've played as a family for years. At one point, I had a complicated website running for it with multiple players and a leaderboard. I even transitioned it from a blog to a wiki. I took it and many other sites off the Web a long time ago, but mathematically significant road signs still delighted me, so I decided to bring it back with a reboot using micro.blog. It is a fun site, a great time on road trips, and my little contribution to keeping the Web weird.
I'd also put a plug out for book clubs. I've been in a book club for years with four other super-intelligent people, and reading and discussing books has been an incredible learning process and a great social connection. If you can be in a book club, leap at it. Or even better, start your own.
I love to learn and believe it is part of my purpose. I greatly enjoy (and subscribe) to two podcasts I learn from: Making Sense by Sam Harris and The Drive with Peter Attia. The Weekly Thing is my attempt to share my learning with others. Overall, the community of bloggers is a community of learners.
The thing I want to share the most, though, is gratitude. How fortunate I was to watch the Web coming to life when I was at the University of Minnesota in the early 1990's. How incredible it is to get to experience all of this technology. How lucky I am to be able to type on my laptop on a weekend morning and have those words appear anywhere in the world instantly. How honored that people actually read those words. And how my kid's kids and their descendants may even be able to read them after I'm gone.
That is truly remarkable, and I can't thank the Internet, the Web, and the amazing world it created enough.
This was the 16th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Jamie. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and all supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can:
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my awesome supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
2023-12-14 23:50:00
Well, it’s happening. The days of a carefully curated Minimalissimo are over. Carl has decided to take a break after 10 years running the site and I’m taking over which means chaos is about to ensue.
Just kidding. I am taking over the site though. Carl has written about the reasons behind his decision on his blog so if you want to know more head over to his blog. He was willing to just leave the site up as an archive and stop posting but I can’t let that happen.
Minimalissimo is such a nice project and has a massive archive so I offered to take over the day-to-day operations. But I had one condition and that was that I must be allowed to experiment with the site because you know I can’t help myself when it comes to play with online side projects.
I plan to write about the whole experience throughout the year and I’m going to be very transparent about it so if you’re interested in some behind-the-scenes keep an eye on this blog.
Minimalissimo ”Manu Edition” starts on January 1st. Gonna be a fun 2024.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2023-12-08 20:00:00
This is the 15th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Eli Mellen and his blog, Oatmeal.
I was introduced to Eli's blog by Piper Haywood, previously featured on the series, and loved the "tumblrness" of his digital home. That's a terrible description but still, if you used tumblr before you probably understand what I'm talking about.
To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
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Hi, I’m Eli. I live on the coast of Maine in the US with my family and a number of pets. I have a weird background in literary theory, art history, philosophy, animation and design, but backed my way into a career as an approximately programmer-shaped person. I’ve worked as a software architect, QA lead, accessibility specialist and product manager. These days I do that sorta stuff in the civic tech space. I love to read, play SNES-era jrpgs, cook vegetarian food, and wander around outside with my kids.
I’ve had some iteration of my website at my current domain name since the spring of 2013. Before that, though, I also had various (embarrassing) tumblrs and livejournals. I’ve written online, for good and ill, for as long as I’ve been online. The first iteration of my current website was born a bit out of desperation and hubris. I thought being online could land me a job. It was also a space where I could teach myself more about web hosting and development.
I was freshly out of undergrad, and was barreling my way out of graduate school with a family on the way. I’d always dabbled with technology and programming, even though I hadn’t studied it in school, so it seemed like a good place to look for work. The internet world was all Bootstrap and Ruby on Rails at the time, so I dove deep into those things, and everything else that seemed hip at the time. I guess my hope was to blog so good that I got a job? And, it sort of worked out in that my website became a playground for me to learn technical skills that would eventually help me be employable.
Everything has changed a lot over the years. Around 2018 I got really excited about the indieweb and rebuilt my website to support all the indieweb functionality I could cram into my homespun CMS. At that point things took a turn towards microblogging — quick, short posts without titles — so, I did that on my website.
These days my setup is simpler. I’ve removed all the indieweb features, like webmentions and use a content management system called blot to publish plaintext as pretty well formatted HTML, with an RSS feed.
My domain name is entirely uncreative. I wanted the shortest, yet most affordable thing I could find, and my name happened to work out.)
I wish I had an elegant answer. Something about going for a swim in a mountain lake, then sitting on the floor with a beautiful notebook and drafting an initial sketch of a thing while a concerto plays softly in the background, leaf-dappled light filling the minimal, wood-hewn space.
In reality I’m more of a goblin than that. I tend to bang things out over breaks, or in little spare windows of time.
I have a drafts folder filled with dozens of long form things, partially researched and mostly unfinished. What gets posted to my website these days tends to be the quicker stuff. Photos and things I write on my phone or directly on my desktop, then read through once or twice before I share them.
I think I do have an ideal creative environment, I don’t think I’ve discovered it yet. Reading a lot helps me feel creative, as does listening to music. When I’m in a rut I usually pick up a book.
I have a strange relationship with technology. As a person who “does tech” for a job, I really really loathe most technology. I find it cumbersome and not something I wanna give attention to, so, these days I seek out things that get out of my way, support the accessibility features I need, and that won’t require heaps of my attention after setting them up.
Because of this I end up using a lot of default, or barebones, applications. Almost all my blog posts are composed in macOS’ default TextEdit application. If I’m writing something longer than a normal post, or writing code I’ll reach for either Acme or Emacs.
I like a clicky keyboard, but don’t have strong opinions about which ones, or types of keys.
The tech stack has changed a number of times. Originally my website was totally static, hosted with GitHub pages. I used a variety of static site generators there, including a few I made myself. For the hottest of seconds I used Wordpress hosted on a VPS, but I quickly became frustrated with how limiting that felt, and tore it all down to write my own CMS. That CMS took a few forms, in a few languages, but was mostly a PHP monstrosity that supported micropub for creating and editing posts.
These days I use blot.im — my website is a pile of directories and plaintext files on my computer that get synced to blot automatically. It is pretty magical. I built a custom theme for blot that I recently updated to make more accessible. Blot is one of the very few legitimately great web services I’ve ever used.
If I was starting again today, I think I would do a few things differently:
I would consider blogging anonymously, or more disconnected from my lived life. The hope would be that would let me feel cozier being more weird (I’m excited about a weirder, quieter internet).
I would lean away from the chronological timeline as the primary organizing mechanism of the website, and have better URLs without dates in them.
I have a wiki section these days, and like how that invites me to revisit stuff I’ve written, keeping it up-to-date and alive in a way that the chronological timeline doesn’t.
I make, and have made exactly $0 from my website to date. I’ve no plans to try and monetize it. I have no clue how many folks read my site. I’ve never had analytics or anything of the sort.
I pay $20/year for my CMS, and $25/year for my domain name.
I’ve got no qualms with folks monetizing their websites, especially when they’re upfront about it. I’ve thought about it before, but nothing more than fancifully thinking “it’d be nice to work less and play more.”
Oh! So many!
I keep a blogroll of personal sites that I enjoy. Two great sites that I find really inspiring are maya.land and Bill Mill’s notes blog. I think they’d each make for fascinating interviews!
I love the writing, and sprawling topics across maya.land, and I dig how Bill’s website leans more personal tool than personal website. I used to post a ton of links to my website, but was never as organized about it.
I also love to explore spaces like Marginalia and the Merveilles webring.
Thanks for this opportunity and for maintaining this awesome project!
If anyone reading is looking for a lower key version of the Advent of Code, check out the December Adventure!
Supposedly, one day, I’ll either share a video game or some fiction I’ve created. Those will land on my website when that time comes, but for now I have a shout outs page on my website. I update that with stuff that I think is worth shouting out.
This was the 15th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Eli. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can:
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my awesome supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
2023-12-07 15:45:00
With his “I am a poem I am not software” post Robin touched on an interesting problem related to personal websites. I’m not going to summarise Robin’s post because his writing is great and you should read his words on his blog.
what should our personal websites do? Should we prioritize getting a new gig or selling a service? Or can we be ourselves? Weird and fun and peculiar? Should we talk about topic X but avoid topic Y?
These are all very interesting questions but for me, the more pressing question is a slightly different one: which you is your personal site representing? We often don’t pay too much attention to this but we all have different ways of being ourselves.
So which one of these should my site represent? Should my site be the personal site of the Manu freelance web developer, with his interests in digital typography, minimal design, and simple websites? Or should represent the slightly competitive on the basketball court Manu, who doesn’t really care all that much about winning but is concerned about having fun? Or maybe it should represent Manu the romantic partner, with all his worry about the practical aspects of life but also full of affection for his partner? The list goes on and on.
All of these "me" have a different way of communicating because they all live in different parts of my life. Which one should this site represent? Hard to say.
Personal sites—and, more broadly, our digital lives—are a mirror of who we are. Some of us will try to neatly organize everything under one hyper-curated digital roof while others will scatter things around on 12 different domains and 24 services. Some will design a site for themselves and not touch it again for a decade while others will feel the need to redesign every 6 months. Those are all right answers to a question that doesn’t have wrong answers.
A personal site is—or at least it should be—a reflection of whoever you want to be. It could be the complete you, one of the many versions of you, or even an aspirational you. Just be comfortable in your digital home. It’s all that matters.
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2023-12-06 18:30:00
Over the past 10+ years, I created countless side projects and tried all sorts of monetization schemes. I tried to sell digital products, I tried memberships, I tried affiliate links and none ever felt right. Not saying those methods aren’t right, just saying they don’t feel right to me.
When I started People and Blogs a few months ago I decided I didn’t want to focus too much on the financial aspects of the project which is why I set up a simple Ko-Fi account, created three tiers of memberships/donations, and called it a day.
But I recently realized that tiers are the wrong approach. At least for me. I believe in kindness. I believe that if you decide to support something I do, you should get all the benefits, no matter how much you pay.
I also realized that 1$+/month is the best price possible when it comes to supporting online creators. The 1$ part means you can set it up and forget about it because it’s a low enough amount that won’t make too much of a difference for the majority of people who are considering supporting online creators. The + part allows you to contribute more if you want to do so. And that’s just perfect.
As a result of that I decided to simplify my Ko-Fi page. If you like what I’m doing with my various online projects—this blog, the P&B series, the forest, the summit newsletter—and want to contribute you can do it there. Also, if you do agree with me on the one-a-month membership and decide to set up one for yourself, get in touch. I’m going to subscribe to a bunch of you and list them here on the site to spread some good vibes. Because as they say, sharing is caring.
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2023-12-03 02:05:00
For blogging to form communities (again'-ish), we're going to need new protocols. I don't think HTTP is the future for growth.
A tale as old as time, trying to fix current technology with more—and new—technology. As if technology is the problem and not the people who are using it. For blogging to form communities you just need some goodwill. All the tools are out there. HTTP is a perfectly fine protocol, email still works, RCS and Matrix are good-enough for chats and if those aren’t your jam you can pick one of the countless alternatives.
We don’t need more technology. Technology won’t fix human behaviour. We need kindness, we need compassion, we need a willingness to interact honestly with strangers online. That’s not something you can solve with a better protocol. We simply have to fight the good fight, day after day, trying our best to make the web a better place.
Make yourself a blog, write, share, connect with others. Be curious, click around, follow random links, see where they take you. And write to people. Don’t be afraid of sending an email to someone you don’t know. If someone’s out there on the web, it probably means they want to be found.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2023-12-01 20:00:00
This is the 14th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Nicolas Magand and his blog, thejollyteapot.com.
I think I first connected with Nicolas ages ago through our blogs. I can't remember if he wrote to me or I wrote to him but I'm happy we did ultimatelly connect and he's been a presence in my RSS feed ever since.
To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
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My name is Nicolas Magand, and I was born in Saint-Étienne, France. At first, I wasn't very interested in the web. I preferred playing video games and watching football on TV. I was studying sustainable development and biology at university. However, once I got my first computer at the age of 20, around 2004 when I was living abroad in Scotland, I discovered a new passion for technology: Twitter, iPods, software, blogs, computers, BlackBerry phones, podcasts, and so on. This hobby eventually led me to a career, and I ended up working in content marketing for companies like Microsoft and Xiaomi. I spent most of the 2010s in Paris, but the pandemic and my current employer (PrestaShop) allowed me in 2020 to work remotely from the beautiful city of Strasbourg, which is where I happily live now.
The blog in its current form is ten years old, more or less. I had numerous versions of it before, on (many) different platforms, and other blogs before it. I think I started blogging on Windows Live Spaces, back in 2005, then Blogger, I think. I then switched from writing in French to English (the de facto language of the web, especially in my interest circles), and ended up using Posterous, Tumblr, and Squarespace. I used to share all the things I found interesting online and rant about different topics. Unfortunately, this blogging habit ended up being replaced by Twitter itself, and if you look at my archives, you'll see huge time gaps between some articles: blogging felt redundant at times, and tweets were so much easier to write.
Once I finally managed to post more regularly, I felt that my blog needed its own name and identity, instead of just being "my name dot com." The name The Jolly Teapot is loosely inspired by a comic strip from the excellent Tom Gauld, and I found that it had a nice "early 2000s" vibe.
The past couple of years were mostly focused on working on its barebones design, during which I learned a lot about CSS and HTML. It also served as a way for me to procrastinate any form of writing, which sometimes feels too much like my day job.
I want to say that three quarters of my blog posts come from reading an article I just read on a topic that I'm familiar with, on which I feel I have something of value to add. I read a column or a blog post, and I want to add something, comment, criticise, rant, approve, etc. These are the cherished moments where I realise that blogging is part of my web habits, and part of me. Without this blogging action, my experience of the web would feel incomplete.
I love to read and write very early in the morning when it's quiet and dark. I just need my MacBook Air on my lap and a fresh cup of coffee. In the evening my brain is too foggy to write anything interesting. What I like to do is edit a draft on a different day than I wrote it: I find that it improves the process quite a lot, even if it means publishing a day or two later (my posts need a lot of editing).
My blog uses Blot as a CMS, which is absolutely fantastic and I couldn't think of something better for me: I just use my text editor app of choice, and everything happens in the background via Dropbox, it's really great. My domain is registered on Cloudflare, where I have set up a CDN for the blog to gain a few precious milliseconds of loading time, which is both unnecessary and essential. I am currently trying to fit AI into my workflow, and so far it can be pretty great for editing, which is something at which I am really bad and hate doing. I'm less convinced by transcription: I thought I could save a lot of time by dictating my thoughts instead of typing them, but I quickly realised that typing is what makes my thoughts work. Without writing my thoughts are just all over the place and the transcripts are barely usable.
If I were to start today, I would like to think that I'd use the exact same tech stack and the same name. What I would definitely do differently, though, is better define the topics I would write about from the start. I think consistency is key in maintaining a good publishing pace, and I also think readers like to know what they can expect from a specific blogger. If I were to start today, I'd either stick to one, two, or three specific topics and formats. I think these artificial boundaries would have helped me find a voice sooner and publish more posts.
Between Cloudflare, the domain name, and Blot, I think I spend around 100 euros per year for my blog, which is quite cheap considering the amount of joy it's giving me: after publishing an article I'm happy with, I feel like a million bucks as the Americans would say. I would definitely not consider this a cost, but an investment in myself.
If one has the opportunity to earn some money with their blog, I think it's fantastic, as long as it doesn't ruin the website, or the content itself. If I could make a living blogging, I would. I am happy to support a few bloggers, either through subscriptions, or through one-time contributions.
I have so many names in mind, but right now I'm thinking of Winnie Lim, always great to read and her blog feels like the essence of blogging, just like Maggie Appleton. Another name I have in mind is Robin Rendle (Robin's P&B interview is available here). Robin's blog has one of the best designs around, even if it changes often. Then there's Daniel Gray's Meanwhile, which isn't really a "blog" but could be. Also, Kev Quirk (Kev's P&B interview is available here) and Bradley Taunt, who surely have something very interesting to say about blogging.
If I were still on social media, I would probably share most of the entries from The Onion's American Voices section, which, to me, is the best corner of the web. I also tell all my friends to subscribe to the Dense Discovery newsletter. When I travel to Paris by train once a month for work, I'm always hoping to find a new episode of the North v South design podcast.
This was the 14th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Nicolas. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and top supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can:
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2023-11-28 23:50:00
Time for probably the final housekeeping post of 2023. I doubt I'll make a new one in December but we'll see.
This site now runs on Kirby 4! I absolutely love Kirby, been using it to run this site since 2017 and I also used it for countless other projects. The new V4 has officially been released earlier today and the upgrade process went super smoothly. Only had to update 2 lines of code inside 1 single file and that was it. Stoked about that.
Next up, as mentioned in a previous post, Craig Mod has a new book out and copies are moving FAST. Signed copies have sold out in I think 24 hours and unsigned copies are also selling quickly. So if you want one, I suggest you act now and don't wait too long.
Carl is running a campaign on Product Hunt to spread the word about his 099. The project itself is neat and Carl has put a lot of effort into it so if you happen to be a PH user, just give it an upvote.
Lastly, an update from me: I'm busy as hell, working on way too many things at once but also excited because it's nice to have things to do, plus Christmas is approaching fast and that puts me in a good mood 🎄
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2023-11-27 07:00:00
In a recent post I mentioned that I am a sucker for signed books and limited editions. The reason for that has nothing to do with the uniqueness of a signed object or its potential extra monetary value. Those are all aspects that have no meaning to me. The reason why I love signed books it’s the same reason why I love handmade objects: the human connection. Knowing that someone picked up that book and took a second to open it up and sign it adds that extra something that makes my brain happy.
And in a world that’s more and more digital and artificial, I think these small human touches are going to become increasingly more valuable.
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2023-11-24 07:00:00
This is the 13th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Robin Rendle and his blog, robinrendle.com.
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I’m Robin, a writer and designer from San Francisco and I’ve been running robinrendle.com since 2014. That’s where I write about typography, web design, and embarrassing personal drama. Often this looks like a blog post in /notes but about once a year I write a big essay like Newsletters.
I think of my website as a live journal if you will, a me-space, a geo—okay this joke must end. I humbly apologize.
I discovered blogs and web design as I was studying English Literature at Plymouth University in the UK—that’s where I grew up, too—and I remember thinking about how liberating it was to own everything; the writing, the design, the domain. You don’t need to ask permission from some big publisher in London or New York to have a cool blog, and I suddenly realized that’s the real magic of it all: the world wide web gives you permission. That’s what makes it more punk rock than print.
So I made a few terrible websites for my band at the time with iWeb and eventually picked up Zeldman’s Designing With Web Standards. Around this time I made the first handmade version of my website when I needed a place to learn CSS and that’s when it clicked for me: you could change everything on a webpage with something as simple as the float property? With this thing I could make a website more beautiful than the New York Times, or faster than Google. Not only that but I realized that the words within a website could be as vital as those in any book—a website could be as thrilling as any novel.
So my blog started there, writing about CSS and design, but I’ve always seen my website as this precious, private thing. It’s not for anyone else really, it’s sort of like a mirror I can poke and prod to figure out who I am and what I want.
I always have a few rough notes for ideas and throughout the day I’ll throw some half-written thoughts into iA Writer. Here’s an example of one sitting around right now:
The Hiss
I watched Blackberry by Matt Johnson the other night and it was predictably fantastic. If you haven’t seen Nirvanna The Band The Show then drop what you’re doing and go find it. But in Blackberry
Everything Matt Johnson does is
Surrounded by the hiss.
Bad typography
See how unhinged these notes are? I have hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of notes like that lying around. These bizarre scribbles wouldn’t make sense to anyone else but to me they’re a handy outline. I know I want to write about the movie Blackberry at some point and I want to tie into typography somehow.
So my process looks like that: make a ton of terrible notes and then early one morning I’ll head to a cafe and tidy them all up and fill in all the details later.
I see it as two modes: sketch all the time every day, but then get to the hard part, painting, later.
Yes, but I find it frustrating. I’ve found I’m most alert and awake and open to new things at 7am. I used to be a night creature but when I turned 30 I became a morning-grandad-creature and so now I get all my best work done as soon as I wake up.
Plus, I always find cafés to be the perfect environment for writing or working on my website. If I have to write a big thing then I’ll usually make quick notes in the afternoon then force myself to go to the noisiest café in my neighborhood the following morning to flesh them out. There’s something helpful, I find, about being surrounded by people but working on something so very private.
Once I’ve finished writing a blog post or essay, I copy the text and hit a button on my desktop called Blog—this is a custom shortcut I made via macOS’s somewhat excellent and somewhat frustrating Shortcuts.app. That Blog shortcut of mine just runs through a script of tasks that helps me blog faster.)
My shortcut takes that text in my clipboard, makes a file in a folder on my computer, creates the file name, and adds a bunch of metadata like the date and location and what not. It then opens that file in my browser, like localhost:8080/notes/the-best-css-trick. My shortcut will also open up that file in VS Code so I can fix any bugs or do any last minute copy fixes.
In the background I’ve always got a local version of my website running with Eleventy, an excellent static site generator by Zach Leatherman. Eleventy takes a collection of markdown files in a folder and converts them to HTML. If you want to make a blog and learn more of the technical elements of web design then it’s the best in the biz. Otherwise, if I didn’t have the patience to customize everything, I think I’d go with the ever so excellent blot.im.
I’ll then run any images through Permute manually and only serve up images in the .webp format. In the past I’ve used complicated setups that automate image optimization but that usually ends up breaking and borking my whole site in some mysterious way six months later.
I use the GitHub Desktop app to commit my changes and once I hit push, Netlify automatically takes over and publishes my site. In a few seconds the website is live.
But heed this lesson: your blogging tech stack should not be smart. That’s the most painful thing I’ve learned over the years. We need to take out all the complex build tools and fragile parts that slow us down and prevent us from doing the writing. It doesn’t matter if you’re using the coolest new tech thing, what matters is this: how fast can you write and publish something?
For me, that takes about a minute because over the years I’ve removed everything that isn’t vital.
Three things come to mind.
First, I’d focus on a single topic—CSS or typography or videogames. The easiest way to build an audience is to make a really focused identity and set expectations for everything on your blog. My website is sort of mad and mysterious: one post could be about the risks of staying put in a toxic job or a light-hearted post about this one weird CSS thing. It could be about a great book I just finished about super intelligent sea creatures or it could be a long essay about shadows. I think this is fine since I want my website to reflect all the many strange and conflicting interests I have.
But in terms of building an audience? Bad idea.
Second: I love how websites in the early 2000s had a pseudonym like ilovetypography.com, subtraction.com, or daringfireball.com. That’s one of the best things about the early web 2.0 days, like how you think of people in real life by their social media handles—@fonts for example.
Third: let folks subscribe to your work via email! All the social networks will bubble and boil over—you will eventually lose every footing you have there—but you can’t lose a list of emails. I’ve only recently fixed this, allowing folks to subscribe to my newsletter but I should’ve been on that from the start. And don’t be shy about self publicity because no one will do it for you.
Oh boy, I have a lot of annoying opinions here.
Money and blogging are two words that don’t really fit together in the same sentence (most of the time). To be up front: I pay $9 a month for Netlify, $29 a month for the excellent Buttondown email service, and ~$40 a year for my domain. But then what about the hundreds of hours a year I spend building, writing, and maintaining things? If time is money then my website is a terrible financial decision.
Income is a strange way to measure the success of a blog though. For example, I make $0 a year. There’s no ads or merch on my website. But then again my website has given me opportunities that even a huge paycheck never could. My blog has connected me with friends, future employers, and nifty freelance gigs. My blog has led to money in my pocket, eventually, through some weird roundabout way. But I fear that if I focused on the money then all those other things would disappear.
I’m not saying that writing on the web should be free—I desperately want writers to make a healthy living—but there is something special about a blog to me. It’s sort of like a hobby. Once you attach money to it, everything changes. That’s not always bad but now you have a schedule. Now you can’t write about this or that topic. Now you have customers instead of fans. The relationship between you and your website changes completely and at least right now I want to preserve what I have. I don’t want my website to feel like a factory.
My blog is free of all these pressures, refusing to eek out every last penny.
There are so many!
I’d really like you to interview brr. I have no idea who they are or what they even do but their blog is one of the best things on the web right now. The writing is focused and sometimes technical, but never obtuse and boring. Whoever they are, they write about doing somewhat mundane things in the least mundane place on earth. Each post is fascinating.
I’m kicking it around on Mastadon right now: @fonts and you can subscribe to my newsletter to keep in touch!
This was the 13th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Robin. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and top supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can:
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my awesome supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
2023-11-22 07:00:00
As humans, we're surrounded by objects. We pay very little attention to the vast majority of them but they're there, they're all around us. Dieter Rams famously said that "Good design is as little design as possible" and he's not wrong. Good design is design that does its job without getting in your way. But good design can—and sometimes should—also stand out because good design is the embodiment of passion, of caring for a craft, of loving the process.
And that's precisely why I love everything Craig Mod does. I think I first stumbled on his work almost a decade ago at this point and what really caught my attention was the love for the process. From the newsletters to the essays to the books, everything is deliberate and you can just see that he just cares. The feeling I get is that there's almost a sense of responsibility when putting something out into the world and that's something I can relate to.
Back in late 2016 I backed the Koya Bound on Kickstarter and got my signed and numbered (513) copy.
I loved it. I still love it. I have to admit that what Craig makes lives at the intersection of way too many things I personally love and am passionate about: photography, nature, Japan and its culture, and walks. I'm also a sucker for signed books and limited editions which is why in 2020 I got my copy—number 429—of Kissa by Kissa.
Kissa is, by far, one of my favorite books. And when I say book I mean both in terms of content and in terms of the actual book. The cover, the materials, the print, the typeface, the size, the layout. I love everything about the book and I am so happy I got my first edition.
Those two books, and everything else Craig does, are the reasons why it took me literally 1 minute from receiving the email to hitting the buy button and get a signed copy of his new book, Things Become Other Things.
In Craig's words:
“Things Become Other Things (TBOT)” is a book chronicling a decade of walking central Japan's Kii Peninsula and its Kumano Kodō paths. I’ve walked thousands of kilometers and talked with hundreds of people. This is a book about farmers and fishermen and kissa owners and adopted inn proprietors, about okonomiyaki ladies, whispering priests, and foul-mouthed little kids. It's about the loss of industry — lumber, fishing — and what it does to a place. It's about depopulation and aging populations. It's a reflection on why I emigrated to Japan some 23 years ago. And it's a remembrance of the life of one lost friend.
Mostly, it's a book celebrating grace, and documents my searching for archetypes in landscapes and people — archetypes for how grace can and should infuse everything, even things coming to an end. Even things becoming other things.
I'm aware it's probably silly, but I want more beautiful objects in this world. Objects made with love, with care. So thank you Craig for making these books and for caring so much about what you do.
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2023-11-20 07:00:00
Every time I stumble on a discussion about blocking ads on the web I ask myself if there even is a compelling argument against it. I block ads on the web. Safari is set to prevent cross-site tracking and to hide my IP, I have 1Blocker running on both my Mac and my iPhone and I also have NextDNS enabled. If I can prevent ads and tracking from showing up on my device, I'm gonna do it. Why? Because ads provide literally no value to my life.
But that's the easy part. Things become a lot more complex when you start dealing with all the other factors that are attached to the ads world. For example, you can find this kind of argument:
People who don't pay and block ads are scamming YouTube, or scamming advertisers.
Or even this kind of argument:
And more importantly, they are scamming the content creators. They are not usually a massive company, but working alone, with YouTube revenue as their main income.
Am I scamming YouTube because I block their awful ads? Would I be scamming YouTube if I muted the video and looked at something else while ads were playing? What's the scam here? Who is getting scammed?
One might even argue that I'm doing YouTube a favor and saving them bandwidth by not allowing pointless ads to be served to me. Also, scamming the content creators? If I pay for YouTube Premium I'd still be served in video ads by the creators themselves. Should I be complaining? Am I getting scammed then? I'm paying for no ads after all.
No matter the case, ads on the web will always be tricky and live in this bizarre gray area. And until someone comes up with a really compelling argument for allowing ads I'll keep running ad-blockers because I just can't stand ads.
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2023-11-17 07:00:00
This is the 12th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Chris Coyier and his blog, chriscoyier.net.
As many many others I got to knew Chris thanks to his CSS-Tricks and I'm very happy to see that he's not done blogging! Chris is also co-founder of CodePen and co-host of the ShopTalk podcast.
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I’m Chris Coyier. Professionally, I’m the co-founder of CodePen, along with Alex Vazquez. We’re over 10 years on that project and are hard at work still today, evolving it. With my friend Dave Rupert, I co-host a podcast called ShopTalk Show which is all about web design & development. I also used to run a blog called CSS-Tricks for 15 years, which I sold a little over a year ago. So my professional life has been very focused on the web. Outside of work, I hang out with my family in Bend, Oregon. My main hobby is playing old-time music with local friends.
I think I originally bought ChrisCoyier.net just out of the general obviousness that people should have a personal website (I think most people should). A lot of my early website-building experience involved WordPress, so I chucked that up on it. WordPress is pretty capable for a variety of types of websites, but I do still think the design of it encourages use as a blog. Blogging kinda clicked with me anyway, so that was always a part of it. There is something intoxicating about writing and publishing something anyone in the world can see and read.
I have no idea how many times it’s been redesigned over the years! It’s my 8th design since I’ve been properly versioning my WordPress theme, but surely a few before that. And honestly: not enough. Redesigning your personal website is one of life’s great pleasures.
Ideally, I’m asking myself: what is interesting about this? Is there a hook to this that makes this worthwhile? What can I say about this that might make it click for someone? Can I share how it clicked for me? Can I be helpful in some other way?
But sometimes I just don’t care. I remember one time a very popular blogger posting to say that it was his wife’s birthday, and noting that it was a good reminder that blogs are never that serious and you should be able to post whatever you want whenever you want to. That’s what makes a good blog, I think. That is to say, usually, I try to make things interesting for everyone, but it’s good enough if it's interesting just to me.
My writing process has always been rather hot’n’fast. I might make a few passes during writing to rejigger things, but usually, I get done with things same-day and just hit the publish button. Back in the CSS-Tricks days, I had a great editor in Geoff Graham, so I probably seemed a little more polished than usual, but even then, it’s not like either of us were super professional editors and spent weeks on things. I think that might take the fun out of writing for me.
Tools-wise, I think the most important thing for me is saving links and then being able to look over them and think about them and see if any thoughts have formulated about them since saving/reading them.
Nah, not really. What I do think is helpful is scenery changes. I’ve got a great desk and I can do the majority of my work there, but sometimes I like to take a laptop over to a coffee shop just to switch it up a bit and usually combine that with changing gears with what I’m working on.
But I’ve blogged just fine in my parent’s unfinished basement, in a tiny room with a tilted floor and unreliable internet in a house of questionably employed late twenty somethings, from a pool bar at a resort in Costa Rica, in lonely second story flat with a creaky floor, from the sunroom of a house in Florida that was a little too big for just one dude and a puppy, from a coffeeshop I’d never find again in Kraków, from a ferry on the inside passages of Southeast Alaska, and from a glass-walled office with my hand-picked inspirational art surrounding me. You just need a laptop, an idea, and a little desire to press publish.
GoDaddy gets a lot of flack for an ex-CEO and a story involving killing an elephant and a purportedly objectifying advertising campaign. I think those things are more complicated than they seem on the surface, and never convinced me the company as a whole was evil. I find GoDaddy to be a pretty good domain registrant product, actually. I think the UI is fairly sensible, the pricing acceptable, and, well, it just works well. I used MediaTemple hosting for a long time, and I even thought they did pretty well running that post-acquisition for quite a while. Most importantly to me, though, as a loyal guy, GoDaddy once went to bat for me when, through a complex social engineering attack, I had a website stolen from me. It was no small effort for them to get it back, they did, and protected the heck out of it for all the years after. Anyway: my domains are there.
As I mentioned, I like WordPress, and I’m using Flywheel hosting for that at the moment. I find the hosting and the support pretty good. But my favorite feature is that they make this product Local for great local development.
I think the most important thing anyone can do when setting up a blogging tech stack is to make sure it’s very easy to write and publish. For a lot of techy folks, that’s Markdown and committing a file, and that’s great. I’m a big fan of the static-site-generator approach to site building, as there is just tons of advantages there to being low cost, secure, easy to move around, lots of control, etc.
But me, I’m still a big fan of WordPress. I just have so much muscle memory for how it works. Now that the Block Editor is a thing in WordPress, I’m an even bigger fan. It allows you to do just enough customization inside of a blog post that makes it feel right. Too much customization would make redesigns obnoxious. Too little feels stifling and would lead to too much one-off fighting against it. The Block Editor allows you to, for example, set up some side-by-side columns, or drop in a photo gallery, or adjust some one-off colors just for one part.
Everybody’s gotta do what works for them, though. Building your own stack of tech and learning it deeply is part of the journey. You’ll never love every single aspect of it, so be ready to evolve.
I would say: be liberal in how you syndicate. Your blog on the web can be home base, but meet any reader where they are. Push that content to anywhere that will take it.
I don’t monetize my personal blog at the moment aside from putting a big obvious “Go PRO on CodePen” link in various spots. I don’t, like, pay myself directly for that placement or even track its effectiveness, but it’s an ad, and as a co-owner of CodePen, I profit from that.
I don’t mind what people choose to monetize, go nuts. I’ve always thought it can be done tastefully and be the best monetization option for tons of sites. The fact that it craps up a ton of websites is unfortunate, so, don’t do that. I do think people, generally, will have a hard time making meaningful money from a personal website. The scale is generally just a little too small to make it work, and the fact that it’s just some-persons-name.com might just be a bit too niche and weird for a many direct advertisers to bother. I’m sure there are counter-examples, like people that do self-help stuff and monetize with memberships or downloads or something. CSS-Tricks did OK with advertising revenue, but it was a real grind getting enough content produced on a daily basis to keep traffic up to the point of supporting just an editor and a few writers.
If you need a zero-dollar option, WordPress.com has a free plan that’s easy to grow out of (I swear WordPress doesn’t pay me, uhm, anymore). But also picking a static site generator and using Netlify’s free plan is totally an option. If you have any budget at all, buy a domain and keep it up over the years. I’m very sure you’ll never regret that.
I have a bit of a dump of blogs I follow here in case anyone wants a head start getting into RSS. But here’s a few hand-picked ones (that are mostly pretty web-tech-y because that’s what I like!)
Keep an eye on CodePen. Little biased, but it’s already this incredible hive of creative web designers and developers, and we’re hard at work making it even more useful for everyone.
This was the 12th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Chris. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and top supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can:
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my awesome supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
2023-11-15 07:00:00
Years ago I wanted to do a deep dive on Japanese aesthetics and I needed a list of good books to read on the subject. Rather than googling for books, I sent an email to a fellow human being and asked for recommendations.
I had to wait a few days but what I got in return was something that I could have never google myself and more importantly a new human connection was born, one I still treasure today.
It's 2023 and I could probably ask the same question to some AI-chat-thingy and it would probably spit out a very comprehensive list of books—that may or may not exist—in 20 seconds. That's fine but it's also a conversation ender.
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2023-11-11 07:00:00
I discovered this "app defaults" initiative via Andrea's blog (who's also the 6th P&B guest) and thought it was a fun idea so here's my entry:
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2023-11-10 07:00:00
This is the 11th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Piper Haywood and her blog, piperhaywood.com.
Piper is a software engineer, previously at SuperHi and currently looking for her next professional adventure.
To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
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I’m Piper Haywood, and I’m a design-adjacent software engineer based in Brooklyn. I came to my profession in a roundabout way, studied fine art at a liberal arts school in central Maine and took one CS course that I really liked. I had to make my own portfolio site in order to apply for a postgrad in fine art at Central Saint Martins, which led to building other people’s sites, and it sort of snowballed from there.
I met my husband Sam Baldwin when I was studying briefly at Glasgow School of Art, and then we re-met when I was in London for CSM. We ended up running a studio together for six years which was such a fundamental part of my growth as an engineer and professional. But it eventually came time to either really push it, to consider hiring people and that sort of thing, or to fold it and go our separate ways professionally. We decided on the latter, and though we’re still working on some fun stuff together, we’re enjoying working on larger, separate teams at the moment.
I just finished up a stint at SuperHi where I managed the engineers and worked on the next iteration of the platform, and am now looking for new contracting or FTE opportunities. In the meantime, I’m really enjoying poking around with a few side projects including a really exciting one I’m working on with Sam (!), and a whole ton of blog maintenance I’ve been itching to complete. In my free time, I’m usually chasing my toddler around all of the playgrounds in a three mile radius, cooking, recording memories on my blog, or singing in groups (previously with Musarc in London, now with the Brooklyn Conservatory Chorale).
My blog started in 2014 when Sam and I decided to make a Tumblr theme that we felt should exist. We needed some test content to work with, so I started keeping track of thoughts and things. That theme project took a back seat, but I found I enjoyed recording things so I just kept going.
I eventually felt a bit penned-in by Tumblr and migrated it over to WordPress. I’ve been tempted to move it off WordPress here and there, I particularly love the ergonomics of a lightweight Eleventy setup. But as a writer, I rely on so many WordPress features that it would be silly to move, really. Also, I know of enough people that use my theme for their own sites that I’d like to keep supporting it by dogfooding it, if I can.
When I first started my blog, I kept it on a subdomain and didn’t really share it much. It helped keeping it less visible, it’s less pressure. I did eventually move it on to my main domain. Looking back through the Wayback Machine, it’s interesting looking at the old versions of my homepage. It doesn’t really feel like “me” until it’s a blog.
My first priority when I started messing around with the design of my blog, and something that remains a priority for me, is deemphasizing the title when appropriate. I think this might be something that I loved from Tumblr, though I didn’t love everything about how they implemented it. The thing is, a lot of stuff that I want to note or record just doesn’t need an obvious title. In fact, an obvious title would make it something other than what it is, something more official or something. If every short little thing I wanted to note required a super visible title, I don’t think I’d ever publish much of anything.
Besides that, I guess you might say that I have a bit of a propensity for white space. Some people might call it “minimal”, though I didn’t really purposefully seek out that vibe. Initially, I experimented with varying opacities for the tags. See an example in the Wayback Machine. So the darker the tag background, the more content associated with it. I liked the effect, but it was almost impossible to do it and keep it appropriately accessible. I fell out of love with writing on my blog for a bit around late 2017, but got back in to the swing of things by revisiting the design and making the blog my entire site in early 2018.
For the new design, I moved towards something more colorful. I was interested in having the color reflect the time of year, so I added a bar down the left-hand side that changed hue depending upon how far through the year the post was added. See this example in the Wayback Machine. It’s sort of hard to get a feel for the color change in that bar since those posts are relatively close together, but you can get a better picture of it if you look at the Browse page. I liked that it made the passage of time, the distance between posts, more obvious. Like that lull in 2017 becomes marked. As well as introducing the color, I started using monospace for all of the text. I wanted to move away from the prior typeface since, though lovely, it just felt a little precious to me. And I used it the same everywhere, always the same weight and size. IIRC it was somewhat inspired by this fantastic community cookbook that my grandma had, where it had clearly been typeset on a typewriter. But it was also a result of myself being extremely unfamiliar with good typography, so it just felt easier to use spacing to differentiate things. I did get frequent reminders that the hierarchy wasn’t great though, lol. In early 2019, I dropped the left color bar and instead gave the dates a color background so that you could differentiate the posts more easily when scrolling (see example). That was a useful suggestion from Sam.
Around the start of the pandemic, my friend Bec Worth and I got talking about my blog and how she found it similar to a commonplace book. I hadn’t encountered that idea before, but it immediately struck me as appropriate once I started reading up about it. She was interested in using my WordPress theme to keep track of her own thoughts, so we collaborated on a new theme that would be more appropriate for both of us and hopefully for others and inspired by the concept of a commonplace book for the web. (By the way, I would share her blog but I don’t really know if she wants it to be public TBH!) We ended up using a serif for the main body copy partly because we just like reading serif text. Also IIRC, it’s sort of a “screw you” to an old boss of Bec’s who said that using a serif, any serif, for some project she was working on would be too “girly”. The idea that an entire typeface category would be gendered, I mean come on! So the serif stuck.
We have further ideas for the theme. Like introducing other views (thumbnails, list, etc.) that you can set as default on a tag-by-tag basis. But life has gotten in the way for both of us, we both have had babies since we started looking at the theme together. I’m hoping to finally introduce some of the new features soon though. On a technical level, I’d like to make much wider use of CSS variables so that the theme is much more easily child-theme-able, for those that want to use it but would want to set up their own typographic system.
Oh and one other thing: analytics. I had Google Analytics on my site for a while, mostly because I found it interesting which posts people identified most with. I then moved to Matomo because I wanted to avoid sharing data unnecessarily. But when numbers started to climb up, I started to get more self-conscious about posting anything. And that’s the opposite of the point for me, it’s nice if I can pretend that no one reads it. So I got rid of analytics entirely in September 2020 and haven’t looked back.
I’m coming up on the 10th anniversary of my blog next year and have been tempted to do some sort of print-on-demand thing to get a hard-copy version of the entire thing, including all of the private posts that I keep for myself. But the index is such an important part of my blog, to me. And I’d want to get that right in a printed version, which would be tricky. I’m thinking of commissioning another engineer for it actually, if anyone knows of someone that would be interested and/or a good fit, let me know!
Oh gosh… it’s not a very formal process! I do have a folder in Apple Notes of things I think are interesting or want to remember, those are usually dashed off in a spare minute for revisiting later. Then when I have a second (which feels rare at the moment!), I’ll draft something up in WordPress. Some things languish in drafts forever. Other things get published privately (especially a lot of stuff relating to my son). And other things get a proper public post. I don’t spend a lot of time re-writing or editing things. That’s partly because most of my posts are fairly short, they don’t really warrant that sort of time.
Longer things like this post about making a Rietveld-esque crate stool or table take days and days. Sometimes I’ll publish it as a password-protected page first so that I can run it past other people for their opinion before making it live. But super long-format stuff is really the exception, not the norm.
I don’t have any objections to editing after the fact, though if it’s a major edit, I do try to note it somewhere on the post. And I don’t have any objections to back-dating content. Sometimes I don’t get round to writing about something until a little while after it happens, but the chronology is important to me.
I’m not sure… I do believe that physical space influences creativity, quite a bit in many cases. And I don’t really listen to music or anything when I’m writing, I get too distracted by the music. The only exceptions to this are wordless albums that I know inside and out, like Vivaldi’s Four Seasons recomposed by Max Richter.
My biggest hurdle right now is time, and giving my blog the priority that it probably deserves. I went from working independently to working in house for the first time back in early 2022 and my publishing took a bit of a hit at that point. It’s interesting, what is the balance? Writing on my site is really part of my practice both as an engineer and as a human being, since it is so essential to my learning and memory. But if I were to publish something “on the clock”, I felt like it could be perceived as me not doing my job properly. Which honestly, would probably never have been a problem at the company I was at. But I imagine some other managers might look at it that way! It’s tricky. At the moment I theoretically have all the time in the world to write, but I struggle to prioritize it since I feel like I should be doing other things, like reaching out to hiring managers, or finishing the side project that Sam and I are working on. I don’t know, it’s just a tricky line to toe when you have a dependent and simply have less time to play with.
So because of that time crunch, I honestly end up writing and publishing from all over the place and on all sorts of devices.
I’ve covered a bit about the CMS above (started on Tumblr, moved to WordPress, am curious about other options but WordPress is just too good a fit for me).
In terms of the hosting, I was with NearlyFreeSpeech for years and years until just a few weeks ago. I was doing a lot less with my site because I was behind on some server admin I needed to do on NFSN, and that made me realize that I just don’t have time for the server admin anymore. It’s something I used to enjoy, but it’s not the reason I have my blog. So I moved to Flywheel on the suggestion of a lovely internet acquaintance and have been extremely impressed with them so far, especially with their support as I’ve tried to get my site set up on Mastodon.
The domain registration is actually owned by Sam! LOL, I need to get that moved to my own account.
I don’t think so? Honestly I think I lucked out in a lot of ways. I lucked out with the whole “keep it private for a while” thing, it wasn’t deliberate but allowed me a lot of flexibility in reflection. And starting with Tumblr allowed me to start small, while WordPress has allowed me to make use of a heck of a lot of great blog-specific functionality.
I think I would have moved to managed WordPress hosting sooner, it has just reduced a lot of stress.
I would have kept child theming in mind from the get go when creating my current theme, since the idea of revising it for better child theming is a little daunting.
And I would never have bothered with analytics. I can see how it’s useful for some people who have a different purpose for their blog maybe, but it usually just introduced stress for me.
And I think I would have started my blog earlier. I didn’t realize just how useful it would be until a little while down the road, but my goodness, it is so great having a little slice of the web to yourself.
I have zero problem with people monetizing their personal blogs, go wild! Whatever you’ve got to do.
For myself, I haven’t been tempted because it hasn’t cost me very much historically. I think it was less than $1.50 per month at NearlyFreeSpeech, and the domain registration was around $13 yearly.
It definitely costs me more now with managed hosting, but I don’t have to spend as much time maintaining it so it seems worth it. I’m on the Starter plan with Flywheel which is around $30/ mo. If I have to bump up a level… I might consider monetizing in some way. But I don’t know, it just changes the priorities a bit. I’ll have to weight it up if/when the time comes.
I do financially support a few other bloggers, but only via Substack at the moment. I would LOVE to both learn more about the web monetization API and support people through it though. If anyone wants to talk about this, please hit me up!
For sure!
Any of those people would be great interviewees, would love to know more about their relationships to their blogs.
And honestly I’m sure there are others… But my RSS reader is such a mess at the moment, it’s hard for me to find the ppl I most enjoy following. Yet another thing I need to tidy up!
I guess maybe just watch this space? I’m really excited about the project Sam and I are working on but am wary of sharing more just yet since it’s still in its infancy. But I’ll share on my site as soon as we can.
And since I’m no longer at SuperHi, I’m looking for opportunities to contribute to a like-minded team either as a contractor or in FTE. If you know of anything that might be a good fit, give me a buzz. There’s more about me and what I’m looking for on my site of course, but feel free to reach out to chat if you’d like to hear it from the horse’s mouth. I love talking to people.
Oh and maybe one final thing. My good friend Gemma Copeland introduced me to Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” ages ago, and hardly a week goes by that I don’t refer to or mention it. It feels like an antidote, a salve, for some of the crappiest mindsets that consistently underpin the less savory things happening in the world. I’m so thankful that Gem introduced me to it, and though I feel like some sort of Evangelist with how often I mention it, I do feel like it’s essential reading for anyone living through the past two decades. You can read it in her excellent collection Dancing at the Edge of the World, or get it from Ignota Books in a lovely, slim, pocket-sized edition of just that essay.
Thanks for the opportunity to answer your questions (and for persevering with my extremely tardy reply!). It was fun reflecting. ♥️
This was the 11th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Piper. Make sure to follow her blog (RSS) and get in touch with her if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and top supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
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2023-11-05 07:00:00
Owning and using broken things can be both incredibly beautiful and extremely liberating. And I'm not talking about the Japanese concept of Wabi-sabi. What I'm referring to is the mental state I get in when I use something that's broken. This happens quite often with clothes. Most of my clothes are broken. They have holes, they have stains, my jacket is kept together with electrical tape, and my shoes are worn down. And that's fine. It's also liberating. Something broken can't change state anymore since that's a one-way transformation. Things start in perfect condition and can only deteriorate and break down. Sure, you can repair them, but that's not the same thing. In order to keep something in perfect condition you have to put in some effort but once something's broken that's it, the transformation is complete. When that happens, I just stop worrying about it and it's incredibly liberating.
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2023-11-03 07:00:00
This is the 10th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Jamie Crisman and his blog, longest.voyage.
Jamie is an American software developer currently living in Japan. I first stumbled on his site thanks to the Marginalia Similar Website Finder and followed his blog ever since.
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I am Jamie. I am from the US, but moved to Tokyo at the beginning of 2020. I've been enjoying the adventure despite the questionable timing of that move. I have a small website called longest.voyage that I use to blog, keep notes, and post pictures of my life in another country. I have too many hobbies that I am bad at and like to talk about them on my site. I cycle through art, photography, programming, and studying Japanese. For work, I try to move data from one computer to another with code.
For a long time I've maintained a personal site in some form. When I wanted to learn a new programming skill, I would often (re)make a CMS/blog to learn it. Write the site with a new programming language, or use a new technology. I would go through an iteration or two almost every year doing this.
When I moved abroad I gained more purpose for the site. It was a way to communicate back home that I am okay. Which was especially important when I first moved. I decided before I left that social media sites were not a good place for that due to a variety of reasons. Using my own site seemed like a good idea.
It is significantly easier to write a blog if you're already writing. I do this through journaling. Journaling is way for me to reflect on things. When I journal I naturally go through a ton of random thoughts or ideas. Sometimes I'll copy-paste something directly into a blog post. Other times the idea is simply sparked in the journal and I expand on it by writing for the blog. However, most writing stays in the journal. I used 750words for a long time and highly recommend it. Lately, I am trying out a physical notebook with a fountain pen.
Since starting the blog, I've learned a lot about how real writers approach crafting their stories. "Writing is rewriting" is shouted from the rooftops. I don't necessarily rewrite, but I try not be attached to what I have written. You gain a lot to not overly value your own words. I usually review everything the next day with fresh eyes. Fix any mistakes and toss out any redundant repeating unnecessary frivolous words. iA Writer has a neat feature to try and highlight these for you, but I am cautious of such tools because I feel you can lose your voice in it.
Depending on what I'm writing about, I may do a "Saunders Pass". Based on what I've read of how George Saunders writes. In his early drafts he says he's inclined to be initially sarcastic and throughout his editing process he tries to be more specific and less boring. George noticed for his writing this has a tendency towards love and compassion. I want to emulate that as much as possible even though I am not writing fiction like George. I can be sarcastic myself, so I try to be eager to give grace to anything I'm writing about. I am not perfect at this. It takes practice and iterations (rewriting!). The "slow" speed of making a blog post gives more space for this. And social medias have a strong tendency away from that compassion. This is why it's important to not overly value my previously written words. I want to be ready to toss out everything when I realize I am not hitting the mark.
I've written a lot of words from an uncomfortable share-house bed. Depending on what I want to do, I may have a low bar on the physical space aspect. Though I enjoy my big desk now. My ideal environment would provide positive feedback loops or removes distractions. Part of that can be deciding on restrictions for myself. For example, use existing tools and stop making things from scratch. I'd spend more time trying to make "Japanese learning" tools than actually trying to learn. I enjoy the feedback loops that I get through (online or local) communities and having a few people to collaborate or share ideas with.
All those handmade iterations of my site? Gone. Too much of a distraction for what I want to do. My site is a static site built with Hugo. I don't run any server myself. I use Github pages and it auto deploys when I push updates using Github actions. I set up Cloudflare a long time ago to get https (though I think Github is able to provide this now). I could probably remove that, but I've been lazy. This has been my set up for ~5+ years with very little maintenance. The site does not have comments. I pretty much only use javascript to provide simple search. Cloudflare can do basic "analytics", but I don't use it.
Owning my domain name I think I got right. You can point it to where you want. It doesn't matter as much if you're using Wordpress, Medium, Github Pages, etc, because you can switch later if you want. However, when picking a domain name, do not forget to look at the renewal fees as well as registration fees. They're not always the same. The other problem I ran into with my "non-standard" domain name is when websites don't recognize the cool new TLDs that exist now. Several sites have decided my .voyage email is not valid. I really enjoy my domain name, but if I had known at the time I might have chosen something else.
The second thing would be focusing on writing and reducing anything that adds friction to that. I avoid spending time on the software (no matter how tempted I am to make it myself). Use an existing solution like Hugo or Wordpress. Don't bother with analytics. Find a good enough theme to get started. The blog software/design/creation/customization process is fun, but it distracts from the writing itself. Make it as easy as possible to consistently write and publish. Do that for a while. After that I can give myself permission to customize.)
The domain name is a bit expensive. Looking at Namecheap, if I were to try and add another year it's $45 USD right now. I also have a paid Github account ($4 a month), but I think technically you can use Github pages for free as long the repository is public (mine is not). It's possible to reduce these costs, but that's what it is for now.
I make no money from my site. It's all for fun. When I hear monetization I think of ads and sponsorship posts. For that, do what you want or need to, but I likely will not want to read your blog. Another option is the Patreon/Substack/membership model, but I don't know if anyone is doing that for a personal blog. Membership has a better mutual understanding of the transaction. You pay money to support them, they write regularly (I'd hope) about what ever they write about. The membership model feels more "pure" to me, but it becomes a proper job to make content. That seems hard to keep as a "personal blog".
Oh, I am subscribed to so many people on my rss reader.
I think these three may have interesting and varied responses to these questions.
There are people still doing web rings! There's various ones out there already. I am a part of the Merveilles web ring. I recommend trying to join one or make one with your friends.
This was the 10th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Jamie. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and top supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
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Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2023-11-01 07:00:00
More than three years ago I wrote a post about subscriptions and not a lot has changed since then. Subscriptions are still here, more present than ever. And they're getting a lot more expensive. I was chatting with Carl just the other day because I was curious to know his take on the current streaming landscape where everything is getting more fragmented but also a lot more expensive.
The issue with streaming platforms—but also with subscriptions in general—is that there's a finite amount of people who are going to subscribe to a specific service. Which is fine if the goal is to run a sustainable business. As long as you're pulling in more money that you're spending, you're good to go.
But running a sustainable business is not the goal. Growth is the goal. And you can't grow endlessly. And so what do you do when you're not growing enough? You either start branching out in weird ways or you increase prices. Or both.
There's also another option, and it's the one we're seeing slowly creeping in at the moment: subscriptions plus advertising. Because you know what's better than getting your money? Getting your money AND advertisers' money at the same time.
And that's inevitable. If the goal is to make money, money-making people will just use any tool at their disposal to get there. And that's just depressing.
In my chat with Carl, I mentioned that one can easily rack up hundreds of dollars a month just for entertainment services and he said I should calculate how much I'm spending on subscriptions. I thought it was a good idea so here's a breakdown of my subscriptions:
On the entertainment side, I'm not paying all that much considering I only have a Spotify family plan and I'm not subscribed to a single streaming service. The only other entertainment-related subscription I have going is Apple Arcade but that's just because I'm currently playing Japanese Rural Life Adventure. I'll cancel the sub as soon as I'm done with it. I also have a 1$/month contribution to the Sam Harris podcast that's been there for I don't even know how many years and I recently picked up another yearly sub to Craig Mod's Special Projects because he has a new book coming out and I want to support that since the work he does is amazing. So on the entertainment side of things we're looking at around 33$/month.
Then we have all the tech subscriptions. I don't have anything that's exclusively for work since most of the services I use are both for work and for my various side projects. We have domains, a couple of VPS, newsletter tools, and a few other things. We're talking around 70$/month. Which is honestly not too bad.
I'm ignoring a few things like my mobile phone plan and a couple of car-related stuff but if I were to include those I'd be in the 100$/month range which is honestly not bad at all. But I'd bet I'm the minority here because I consume very little entertainment. I'd be curious to see other people's breakdowns so if you do end up writing about your situation let me know.
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2023-10-28 06:00:00
In a world where artificially generated content is gonna be more and more present, our analog self will grow more and more important. The more you share about yourself, the easier is gonna be to artificially replace you. This is why I'll never do podcasts, and also why I'll never do videos. It is also why there are very few pictures of myself on my site or online in general and why I'm using the same profile picture that's almost 10 years old. You can't train an AI model to sound like me because there's no me out there to be used for the training. And I want things to stay that way for as long as possible.
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2023-10-27 06:00:00
This is the 9th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Ray Thomas and his blog, brisray.com
Ray is a British expat to the US and a former web designer and developer, now retired. He's also the owner of a 20+ years old personal website and that's amazing. Some people refer to him as the master of the webrings because of his incredible work on the subject.
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My name is Ray. I am British from Bristol, but now live in Indiana. I didn’t do that well in my final years of secondary education (high school) but around 1974 a teacher started a class about programming using Fortran. The school didn’t have a single computer, not even for admin, so we would write the programs, then go to a local university to see them put onto punch cards (do not fold, spindle or mutilate) which would be run the next week, and pick up the previous week’s programs. I didn’t do much with it, but never forgot the experience.
I didn’t get my own computer until 1985, an Amstrad 1640. No hard drive, but twin 5.25” floppy disk drives. Later I added a 32Mb Winchester drive to it and the world was mine!
With no qualifications I ended up in some dead-end jobs but realized I could do much more. I wrote a bunch of CDs of things I had written and sent them off to about 40 companies. One of them, the now long-gone Mail Marketing International took a chance, took me on and I became a database engineer. Within a couple of years, I was their head programmer.
In the mid-1990s I was chatting to some American woman in one of the old BBSs. We hit it off and began visiting each other. In 2001, I picked up sticks and moved to the US. We have been happily married ever since.
I had to start all over again and became a freelance web developer. In 2008, a university wanted me to redesign and rewrite some of their websites. That was a multi-year contract and at the end of it they wanted me to work for them full-time and I was there until I retired in 2023.
My dad was a sailor and for years he was in the Royal Navy and those were probably the best years of his life. He kept photo albums of everywhere he visited and as kids we would love to look through them. He died in 1994 and I scanned all the photos but didn’t know what to do with them.
In 1998, Patty, my now wife, wanted to know more about Bristol, my home city. At the time there were not many websites around, about 2 million compared to today’s 2 billion, and none about Bristol. I’ve always been interested in local history and had taken hundreds of photos over the years, so I decided to write one.
I used the free Lycos Tripod to host that first site. Not only did I write pages about Bristol but my dad’s scanned photos also found a home there. A while later I added pages about other things and the site has been expanding ever since.
I was a bit overwhelmed with the reception the site got. A local newspaper found it and I got an article in that. BBC local radio also found it and I did some radio broadcasts for them as well.
The site has had three redesigns since I started it, but the content has never changed. Some of the older pages are still there even though the site is fast approaching its 25th anniversary.
I don’t have much of a creative process. I get thoughts about what I would like to write about and make notes for myself in a Word document. That document is now over 140 pages long so it might be a while before I run out of ideas.
I get obsessed with whatever I am interested in and I am interested in so much! Most of what I write is either historical or technical and those pages take a lot of research to make accurate. Back in Bristol, I spent many weekends in the basement of Bristol Central Library going though old documents.
I write whenever I get the time and the urge. Some months I will write hardly anything, others I’ll write or edit a dozen or so pages. The pages are published as soon as I bash them into some sort of shape to be readable. I can always add to them later.
Now and then people will suggest subjects for me to look into, and if I get interested in them, I’ll write as much as I can find. Other than those pieces, the site is pretty much a one man show.
No to the above questions. So long as I have had a couple of coffees, the environment doesn’t matter much to me. My work spaces when I was working were always very spartan. A chair, a desk, and the computers were all I have ever needed. Whatever creativity or technical skill I have is mostly in my head, which is cluttered enough, and the scraps of paper I have scattered about and that’s really all I need.
I suppose I’m a bit of a Luddite, I don’t need the latest and greatest or shiniest. At the university, over the years we used a variety of CMSs. We had just started moving to Drupal 10 when I retired.
My own first pages were written using Microsoft’s FrontPage Express, then I moved on to their SharePoint Designer. One of the few pieces of software I paid for was Adobe Creative Suite before it became a subscription service. I had access to the full Creative Cloud for work and as I often worked from home I usually edited the site in Dreamweaver. Image creation and tidying up has nearly always been done in Photoshop.
As I use my own designs for my own sites which are fairly simple and written from scratch, I simply write a template page and use that for all the pages.
Over the years the site grew so big I had to spread it out over several other free hosts such as Freeserve, Bravenet and others. Around the time I moved to the US in 2001, I was using about half a dozen hosts.
In 2004, I decided to simplify it all and created my own home web server using an MMX Pentium machine that I got from a local community college for $25. The computer has changed several times but the site has been self-hosted since then. I must have spent a small fortune in electricity over the years keeping “The Server in the Cellar” running 24/7 for almost 20 years, rather than find a good, cheapish host, but it’s mine and I enjoy the challenge.
Oh my, no. I’ve been doing this so long I’m used to the way I work and would probably feel uncomfortable if I changed anything. Brisray is a mix of my own name and where I’m from, that isn’t likely to change.
There’s two pieces of software I would purchase for myself, Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite. I haven’t had to that for years as the people who employed me provided them. Other than those I have relied on the generosity and expertise of people who create and distribute free software, whether FOSS or closed source. I really am in awe of them and what they provide to cheapskates like me.
The only things my site has ever cost me is a lot of time and the electricity needed to keep the server running over the last couple of decades. I write because I want to and I am not particularly interested in making money of off it, not even to cover the running costs.
When I started the sites, brisray.com, hmsgambia.org and ihor4x4.com I was a bit surprised any of them got any visitors at all. Knowing they do and at least some of them keep coming back is reward enough for me. I’m also pretty proud that everything from start to finish and even hosting them is all my own work – apart from standing on the shoulders of some very clever, generous people of course.
I like the idea of the web revival. The personal web never really totally went away but once the giants of the free servers such as Lycos, Tripod, Yahoo, Freeserve, Bravenet, Geocities and the others disappeared it was in the doldrums for years.
Places like Neocities are introducing a whole new generation of writers and designers to the joys and tribulations of writing websites. Some of them are making the same mistakes we were making a quarter of a century ago, but at least they are giving the personal web a new lease of life.
A poke through the Neocities’ directories and web revival forums such as Melonland can be very refreshing.
The internet is such an interesting place and having your own little corner of it can be so easy.
This was the 9th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Ray. Make sure to follow his blog and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and top supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
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2023-10-25 06:00:00
I worked as a dev for more than 4000 days of my life and experience countless silly software bugs. But this is the first time I'm experiencing an actual bug!
In case you didn't know, we need to thank Grace Hopper for "coining" the term bug and that's because back in the 40s her Harvard Mark II was not behaving correctly due to a moth trapped in a relay.
Bugs were proper bugs before being software bugs. All this to say that I have goddamn dead bug stuck inside my montior and I need to disassamble it in order to remove it.
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2023-10-20 06:00:00
This is the 8th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Jim Nielsen and his—verified!—blog, blog.jim-nielsen.com
Jim is a designer, front-end developer, and writer with more than 20 years of experience in the industry.
To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
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My name is Jim Nielsen (not to be confused with Jim Nielsen, the California state senator, who still outranks me on Google).
Professionally, I love working at the intersection of design and code on the web. I think that makes me a [gulps] “unicorn”, but when I started we just called it a “webmaster”.
Personally, I’m happily married to my lovely wife of 11 years, Charlene. We have three boys and one cat whose name is Fluffy (I am allergic to cats — oh, the things you do for your kids).
I think my first blog was on Blogger, but it has since been lost to history (probably for the best). It mainly consisted of me posting pictures of ridiculous stuff I’d made in Photoshop — what we might call “memes” and “shitposting” now.
The current incarnation of my blog has posts dating back to 2012 (probably don’t read them, I don’t stand by many things I said older than about six months ha). It has gone through many iterations through the years, some of which I’ve documented with the hashtag #myBlog.
My blogging doesn’t feel “original” or “creative” to me. I blog because I read other people’s blogs and I want to internalize what they said by restating it myself.
When I read, watch, or listen to something from someone else that piques my interest, I write it down then add my proverbial two cents.
Sometimes my two cents is short, so the text ends up in my notes. But sometimes I end up having a lot to say and it grows into a blog post.
In short, I take notes like a college student. Then I publish them.
I’m conflicted on this topic.
Do I think certain environments are more conducive to the kind of mindfulness that leads to creative thinking? Absolutely.
Do I also think my environment doesn’t matter that much (beyond a reasonable point)? Yes.
For me, a creative environment is a balanced state of mind and body inside of me rather than a furnished physical space around me.
To this point, I really like what Stephen King said, which I blogged about, and will summarize as: your life doesn’t revolve around your creative environment, it’s the other way around.
My blog lives at a subdomain of my personal site, blog.jim-nielsen.com, and is hosted by Netlify.
It is a custom setup on top of my favorite SSG: Metalsmith.
Posts are authored as plain-text Markdown files in iA Writer (with no front-matter, mind you). Templating is a custom, zero dependency solution similar to JSX that uses tagged template literals.
Lastly, to plug a personal but possibly unpopular opinion, I don’t create social share imagery for my posts. I find them to be more cruft than substance as well as an impediment to publishing.
(Reminder: I metablog the technical details of my blog under the tag #myBlog.)
Probably not. Here’s why:
The current state of my blog is a result of me experiencing the difficulties of where it was previously. What works now works because of who I am right now, and it’s no guarantee of what will work in the future.
If Jim five years from now gave me advice about blogging, I’d be taking advice on problems I hadn’t yet experienced and it would seem alien, like “Oh interesting…why would he recommend I do that differently?”
The best part of blogging is what you discover and learn experientially along the way. I wouldn’t want to rob myself of that.
It costs me $0 to run my blog (thank you Netlify).
I’d be lying if I said I haven’t considered trying to monetize my blog. But I’ve come to the conclusion that I have a good day job and don’t need or want the extra effort for extra dough.
That said, I grew up in an era when people blogged about web stuff for free and I benefited immensely from their work so I feel a kind of obligation to pay it forward. Thank you blogger peeps from days of yore.
(a:
Gosh, I have so many more! I’ll have to write more on my own blog…
I attempted to impose a 500 character limit on myself for each of these answers (I did pretty good) hoping some constraint would breed a little creativity, but also to make your life, dear reader, a little easier.
If you want suggestions from me, follow my blog or my notes because that’s where I link to things I like and talk about things I’m working on.
I still have a few characters left here in my allotment of 500 for this answer, perhaps I should spend time promoting myself more…
Nah. Never was much good at that.
This was the 8th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Jim. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and top supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can:
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2023-10-15 06:00:00
I hate shoes. Not as objects, I don't have anything against shoes. I hate them because they're disposable garments. At least that's what sneakers are. As soon as the sole is consumed you have to throw them away, even if the rest of the shoe is still in perfect condition. And that's a bummer. This is why months ago I started to look into resoleable shoes and boy did I fall into a rabbit hole and got lost in there. So lost in fact that I decided to write this post and ask for help because maybe someone out there has some wisdom they want to share with me.
So, here's the situation. As I mentioned, I have worn sneakers pretty much my entire life but I've been thinking about getting a pair of resoleable boots lately and I'm looking for something that has 3 characteristics:
Why those three things you might be wondering. The first one is pretty obvious. The second one is because I plan to use these both when I'm out in nature but also in more casual settings (dining out, client meetings, that kind of stuff) and the third one is because I live in a place where it rains a lot. I know that shoes aren't really waterproof, they're water-resistant at best. I'm not planning to wade a river with these, but I'd love to find something that can resist some rain and wet grass.
The closest thing I found in terms of overall style are the boots made by Thursday Boot Co. but it's my understanding that these don't play well with water so they're off my list. If anyone out there has thoughts on the subject, please get in touch because searching for a pair of shoes is driving me insane.
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2023-10-13 06:00:00
This is the 7th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Ana Rodrigues and her blog, ohhelloana.blog.
Ana is a Portuguese front-end developer living and working in London.
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My name is Ana, and I work as a front-end developer. I've been living in London for nearly a decade, and I am originally from Portugal, from a small town near Porto city.
I've been building websites ever since I was a teenager. I got access to the internet through my school's computers when I was 10 years old. It's ridiculous, but at the time, my friends and I would spend a lot of time looking for ghost pictures, scary stories and fan sites of the things we loved. I didn't have internet at home (it was expensive then), but I did have a computer. One day, after playing games and poking Microsoft Paint, I went through all the other "boring" software programs installed by default. And that's how I stumbled upon Microsoft FrontPage. I remember the excitement I felt when I read the description saying I could build a website. I was hooked! Many of those websites never went online, but the thrill of building and seeing what you're doing being output in the browser was incredible.
It became my hobby and basically the only skill I ever developed. I've been doing this professionally since I was 21 years old.
Only in recent years have I decided to find new hobbies. I felt extremely burned out and needed to stop using my computer after work. Nowadays, I spend a lot of free time tending to my plants, looking up sewing patterns, watching TV shows and films, listening to music and audiobooks and doing DIY projects around the house. I also am the mother to a toddler, so my hobbies have been neglected for a bit.
I started my current blog nearly ten years ago. It was initially a blog to capture my travels and events I attended, but slowly, it morphed into a mixture of personal and tech. Initially, the domain for it was my first and last name, but I had some upsetting experiences in real life, and as a way to cope, I shifted my online presence to something that wouldn't use my last name. I obviously regret it now. I didn't know what to rename it, but if I remember correctly, I saw an image on Pinterest of something DIY-related saying, "Oh, hello!" and settled on that. I created it one year before moving to the UK, and it was a small and simple WordPress website.
At the time, I was disheartened by the tech industry and terrified of doing a tech post. I thought those things were for everyone else but me.
Only at the end of 2017 did something shift inside me, thanks to Jeremy Keith's talk at the ViewSource conference. I discovered the IndieWeb community, and with that came the reassurance that my "nicheless" blog was absolutely okay.
Thanks to that feeling of acceptance, from 2018 onwards, my confidence really picked up, and I was blogging frequently, including web development things!
It's hard to define what versions it had. I change and experiment with layouts on the go and don't launch a "version". However, it had its defining moments for me. I visualise my blog timelines as pre-2018, pre-COVID, COVID and after my daughter's birth. When looking at the posts, their frequency, their themes, etc., I see different eras of me and current events.
In the background, it has used different technologies, has scraps and leftover code from different "layout versions", and can be a bit unorganised but has a vision and lots of love.
I really wish I could say that I am one of those people who gets up in the morning, pour a cup of coffee, look out the window and begin their day by journaling. But I am not. Most of my post ideas came from the most mundane thoughts that popped into my head while doing the most uninspiring things. They usually come by when I am doing the dishes or folding clothes. That's when I am alone with my thoughts.
Sometimes, they happen because I saw something on TV or social media, and my brain wouldn't let go of it.
That's when I scribble something down on my phone notes. If it still lingers, I move on to a Word doc and start typing away. I try to sleep on it, but if I am excited, I ask my husband to proofread it and immediately publish it.
I delete drafts quite often. In fact, drafts are something that I want to start publishing. Sometimes, I have a thought that is only one sentence long, and I need more energy to work on it. A lot of people use notes for this. But to me, a note feels finished. There's something inside me that thinks a draft is more appropriate. I spend a lot of time thinking about where my unfinished thoughts live instead of just publishing them, which is frustrating.
No. Not to me, at least. If I went to the perfect cabin by a lake to find the ideal environment to write down something, I would spend the whole time outside looking at nature instead of actually writing.
It's no coincidence that I consider my "peak" years of writing the ones just before COVID. To me, my creativity comes when I am in a place where I am safe, rested, accepted and loved. Everything else follows.
My blog is currently built with 11ty and hosted for free on Netlify. My domain was bought on 1-2-3-reg because it was the cheapest place at the time to get a .blog domain. I was using Netlify CMS, but something happened, and it stopped working, and I just never bothered to look up how to fix it. One day, I will get to it! Since it is also on GitHub and connected to Netlify, whenever I push things, it automatically deploys.
I am content with creating my .md files manually. So yeah, it isn't a super sophisticated process, but I will change it once and if it bothers me. Life's too short.
I would 100% choose a completely different name. I have considered doing that and changing my handles on social media everywhere. The issue is that my name is very, very common. I would never be able to have a username that says "ana rodrigues" and I am out of ideas right now.
I would have done my media and assets folder organisation differently and added tags and more metadata to all the posts. These are just improvements that can be done another time.
Technically, I only have to pay for my domain, which is close to £25 a year if I remember correctly. My blog doesn't generate revenue unless you count on the opportunities it has brought me, thanks to its existence.
I have yet to come across a personal blog with a loud and annoying way of monetising. I've seen people having small ads on the side, and I think that's fair game (assuming these aren't awful trackers).
Many people, especially freelancers, need to put in a lot of work to show their knowledge, so it is understandable that extra income, especially nowadays, is appreciated.
I have bought "coffees" here and there. I wish I could do it more, but it is hard to afford it sometimes. If I can afford it, I support their projects.
This is the hardest question because I know I will miss someone. Recently, I've been in awe of Phil's project, ooh directory and his blog is such a joy. I also find James's energy and enthusiasm incredibly inspiring, and I love his personal website so much.
Besides Jeremy's talk, the other person who I stumbled upon around that time was Georgie. Their call to be unapologetic yourself was precisely what I needed to hear at the time. Also, I've been interacting with Sara Joy's and Rach Smith's posts recently because I related to them a lot. Especially now that I have to juggle participating in this online community while having less time due to being a mum.
In the past, I gave a talk where I tried to encourage people to have their own blog, but I always tried to underline that this encouragement is for people who already want to do it but need an extra push.
Our industry is already quite stressful, and if having a blog isn't your cup of tea, don't force it. It's okay!
I want to share this podcast that really changed me. It is called Hurry Slowly. Some years ago, I listened to an episode that asked, "Who are you without the doing?".
I still haven't been able to answer that question, but I recently stopped saying, "Hi, I'm Ana, and I'm a front-end developer" and started saying, "Hi, I'm Ana, and I work as a front-end developer". I don't know where this is going, but the vibe I want to go with my blog is that it is a place on the internet where I just am. Where I am for myself and not to serve others.
This was the 7th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with And. Make sure to follow her blog (RSS) and get in touch with her if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and top supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can:
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my awesome supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
2023-10-12 06:00:00
I'm gonna channel the owl drawing energy and I'm gonna teach you how to make a blog. You start by drawing some lines and some rectangles on a white piece of paper…
…and then you just design and code the rest of the fucking blog.
I coded Carl's new blog not long ago, and today the one for my friend Mike went live. I also wrote a quick guest post on his blog to inaugurate the new website.
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2023-10-07 06:00:00
I was in the car an hour ago, listening to an episode of the Vergecast, and I had a sudden realization: I am a cultural outsider. An internet culture outsider to be more precise. Which is weird considering my job is to make things that live on the Internet.
I can't remember at which point exactly but growing up there was a moment where TV was no longer a thing at my house. We just stopped watching TV programs and that was it. For years the TV was not plugged into cable, satellite, or an antenna. It was a screen, connected to consoles and a Blu-ray or DVD player. But during that process, I slowly fell out of "mainstream" culture. I remember hearing people chatting about popular TV shows and having no clue about what they were talking about. To this day, I still don't know and am not familiar with the vast majority of TV celebrities. Because TV is not a thing in my life.
But the internet, it was different. I'm spending hours upon hours of my life on the internet. I work on the internet. I create content for the internet. I became an adult with the internet. And I was sure that the internet was part of "my" culture. But guess what? I was wrong.
Listening to the podcast I couldn't stop myself from thinking "What are these people even talking about?". They were talking about trends on social platforms and TV series on streaming services, and I had no idea what was going on. But now I do know. The mainstream culture moved over to the internet and I am, again, falling out of it. And I'm fine with that.
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2023-10-06 06:00:00
This is the 6th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Andrea Contino and his blog, gwtf.it.
Andrea is currently working as Head of Communications at Red Bull Italy but he's about to move west and work as Senior Communications Manager at Red Bull North America.
To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
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While I'm writing this I'm the Head of Comms in Red Bull Italy. But soon Sr. Comms Manager Gaming in Red Bull North America! I've a humanistic background since I've studied foreign languages at the high school and I've a degree in Communications Sciences. I ended up doing this job most likely having a blog and living the early 2000's online communities. No jokes.
I was writing for an online Italian video games newsite while finishing my University studies and I ended up talking about the interactions within those online forum communities in my final degree dissertation. From there I've started to build up my network, It was 2006 and blogs were at their peak, who had one was a so-called influencer. I opened mine in 2007, we were the forerunners of what people do on Instagram and TikTok nowadays, luckily without any dancing, but with sometimes raw content and transparency at its best.
I got in touch with many people and companies which through my blog got to know me better and better and at the same time I started working for Microsoft so my personal and professional life started to collide, exploding then in the marvellous adventure I'm living nowadays.
I've opened my blog, as said, in 2007. The occasion was a press trip to Canada for EA Sports. I needed to cover the new FIFA game and I was thinking it would have been a nice starting point. I'm not a developer, I've no programming background, therefore I've picked an unknown platform at that time: SquareSpace.
My blog was called Fluxes and I came up with this name after days of thinking about what could have possibly been the best name for a blog. I ended up with fluxes as a stream of consciousness and thoughts. But I was never satisfied with my blog, never. So I kept changing over the years. First I've moved to the contino.com domain, and renamed my blog to AC. Then I bought the domain andrea.co and redirected the blog there. I finally moved it to the actual domain, gwtf.it and renamed it Go With The Flow, which is my life philosophy and more coherent to what I am. Unfortunately I tried WordPress for a little while in 2021 just to find out that it wasn't the platform for me and wasting a lot of money to keep it alive (300$ per year), I was back to SquareSpace from 2022 onward. Tried Medium for a little while, but back home to SquareSpace definitively.
Downside of that? I've lost a lot of readership. Honestly I don't care. But if there is a learning behind those movements, I can suggest anyone who has a blog not to change platforms after some years if not really necessary. I tend to agree with Matt here.
Usually inspiration comes from both online and offline. Online I stick to my feed reader, feedly, where I find some good pieces of writing to start thinking on. From what I found super stimulating I start thinking what kind of thoughts I can add to other's. I open my draft and start to write without overthinking too much about form or grammar. After finishing my post, I go through it and adjust what needs to be adjusted. Hit publish and never look back.
For what is coming from offline I usually like to speak about 3 things: food, travelling, personal experiences. It's an absolute pleasure to put down your thoughts and save publicly somewhere. They could help somebody else one day. I'll never know.
Usually sitting at my desk in my home office. It's where I think I've the right environment and quietness to express at my best. But I've written some of my best posts while on the metro train or sitting under the shades at the beach. Another thing not to underestimate for me is those minutes before I fall asleep. Usually for me is a time to think and where many blog post ideas came from. That's why I've a cheap old android phone with just wifi enabled standing at my bedside table, always ready to receive my inputs.
I tried all the possible combinations here. Hosted, 3rd party platform, different CMSs. Now I'm using Squarespace as a 3rd party platform which hosts my blog. My domain gwtf.itis actually registered with Google Domains (only because Porkbun is not able to register .it domains, otherwise I firmly suggest them) which funny enough will end up to be acquired by SquareSpace in the near future LOL.
Yes. I would start with WordPress and not SquareSpace. I mean if it was 2007 again. Otherwise nowadays I would rather go with Ghost or a static blog, like Jekyll or something like that. Because WordPress has become a pain in the ass when it comes to plug-ins or this or that feature. All they want is for you to pay more, hiding behind the free software flag. I've always loved SquareSpace, but it became a Marketing platform lately. They completely left behind their blogging promise and I found several bugs in the mobile app, but support is great and they fix things quickly. The other thing I would do differently is to study a little bit better the HTML and CSS foundations in order to be able to develop my blog all by myself.
But, I've seen a lot of new platforms flourish lately and I've tried to collect some of those for the younger generations here)
My blog costs me nothing. I won a contest several years ago with Squarespace. So I don’t pay a penny to have it hosted there. I just pay 12€ yearly for the domain. Not that bad!
Generally I've always avoided having ads on my blog, I don't like it and I never want them to be on my site. I've monetised my blog in the past through product testing, mostly food, but I've always refused to write sponsored posts. I generally hate those important bloggers that do that. I personally think it's disrespectful for their readers community.
That said I totally empathize with those fellow bloggers who succeeded in blogging for a living. I totally respect them in any shape or form, but I'd rather prefer they ask for support and tips for what they create. Well if you want to leave me a tip, it's really appreciated :) PayPal.Me
I'm a techie and a geek. So my RSS Feed is full of those kinds of blogs. Here is my top 3 suggestions:
I really think Matt would be a great one to have as a next interviewer.
Well some cool stuff I've collected here and there during my life:
Lately I'm re-discovery one of my biggest passions, cool football shirts and using this website as a bible footballshirtculture.com
This was the 6th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Andrea. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and top supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can:
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my awesome supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
2023-10-04 06:00:00
I started following the NBA around the year 2000. I remember watching games from the Lakers vs. Pacers finals taped on VHS. The NBA was different back then. A lot. It was the post-Michael Jordan NBA and the pre-analytics NBA. It was also the pre-social media NBA. The league was different because society was different. There wasn't an endless stream of news, tweets, shorts, and podcasts on any NBA event. Sure, there were columns in newspapers and blogs, some radio and programs but that was about it. Games were the most important part.
I don't have data to support what I'm about to claim but I suspect that the majority of the people who follow the NBA don't even watch games. Maybe some highlights here and there. The majority of fans are fans of the NBA circus, of the constant media drama. But the constant drama, the constant media presence, it's a fundamental aspect of today's NBA.
The NBA is a private entity. It's a business and it's run as a business. Basketball is a sport, sure, but the business is not selling a sport. What the NBA is selling is an entertainment product and the goal is not for a team to win a title. The goal is to make money. And that is my fundamental issue with today's NBA.
At its core, the NBA is not different from Netflix or Spotify. They have a product they need to sell and they need to incentivize people to buy said product. The problem is that there's a finite amount of potential customers but stopping the growth is not an option. Not in today's society. And so what do you do? You increase prices, you include ads in places where previously there were none, and you make the core of your product worse because you need to do whatever you can to earn more.
If you compare a FIBA game with an NBA one, the difference is stark. Everything, in an NBA game, is sponsored. From the pre-game stats, to the jump ball, to the replays, to the halftime break. Everything is an opportunity to make more money. Hell the game itself has to stop fairly frequently for a few minutes to allow TVs to play ads.
At the same time though, players are resting more and more. They're making more money than ever, a lot more, by playing fewer games. The reasoning is that they want to preserve their bodies and be ready for the games that matter late in the season. They also want to prolong their careers. Do we really need players to have 25-year-long careers? I say no but the fuck do I know. But what's weird about this arrangement is the conflict between the sport and the entertainment. People pay money to watch players play. But players want to play less and rest more. And everyone seems to be okay with this reasoning because the goal is to win a title after all. Is it though? I'm not so sure anymore.
Following the NBA has turned from fun to incredibly annoying. At least for me.
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2023-09-29 06:00:00
This is the 5th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Toby Shorin and his blog, subpixel.space
Toby is a writer, researcher, technologist, and co-founder of Other Internet, an applied research organization whose goal is to study and build social technology.
To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
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Hi, I'm Toby. I'm a blogger, a researcher, and depending on the day a designer and a consultant. I am also a lover, a reader, and many times a fool. My friends would call me an artist-founder. I co-founded an organization called Other Internet where I do much of my research and writing these days. I live in Brooklyn, NY.
When I started my blog in 2015, I was working as a UX designer at my first tech startup job. I was very critical of the digital design field at the time, and I wanted to write in a way that would deepen design discourse. That gave me the name of the blog. Sub-pixels are a concept in image rendering, virtually calculated fractional pixel locations that can improve resolution and object tracking. I was referencing this to mean "there are sub-pixel 'values,' i.e. human values that are below the pixels that we should care about." My first posts were all along those lines, critiquing various products or design paradigms. Most designers were not particularly interested or receptive to my ideas, and the first posts weren't that good anyway. Eventually I met some people my age who were thinking about the same ideas as me. Many of them were centered around the Are.na community in NYC. At that time, I started thinking about more abstract topics, such as questions of culture and religion and meaning. I wrote a long post about astrology inspired by my new friends' astrology Slack channel, and more longform cultural analysis about aesthetics and major cultural trends. This is when I started to develop real techniques and ideas as a thinker, and set the foundation for my later work.
When I first started I got most of my ideas just from walking around downtown New York. The visual culture here is so intense that one can get an education by simply walking around and looking at what people are wearing, at what advertisements are depicting. When I started off, it was enough to simply ask questions about what I was looking at and then try to explain it from first principles. That method required collecting hundreds of contemporary culture references, which I could collect by simply being on the ground and noticing lots of things. You see the outcome of this in in essays like After Authenticity and Haute Baroque Capitalism. The more theoretical essays also required plenty of background research of course, but in the beginning I was inventing my own frameworks a lot of the time.
As time has gone on, I've asked larger questions with more historical roots. I've turned more to older reading material, especially from the history of philosophy and ideas. I've found that if I'm ever stuck and don't have good ideas, I usually just need to read more. I usually start having good ideas after I've read two or three new things, as long as they are strong pieces of work. As I've engaged more with older ideas, I realized that the most important theorists of culture, historically speaking, have been comparative literature scholars and philologists. McLuhan, Raymond Williams, Susan Sontag, Jung in the 20th century; before them, Nietzsche, Herder. At some point I realized that I am a kind of philologist like these thinkers, but the "texts" I am reading from include the ephemera of consumer advertising and snapshots of online discourses.
I share a studio with some of those friends I mentioned, but do most of my writing at home. I circulate between 3 locations in my house: my desk, my kitchen table, and a comfortable chair in my living room. I am a fidgeter and a pacer. I stand up and sit down and walk around a lot when I'm working on a complicated idea. A whiteboard is also indispensable. Although I now live in a quiet part of Brooklyn instead of downtown Manhattan, I still find that aimless walks outside are productive for thinking. For digital tooling, I use Simplenote to capture ideas on my walks, typically document my research collateral in Notion, and use the mindmapping tool Simplemind when I want to arrange ideas. I also have a Remarkable tablet which has really brought new life to my physical note-taking habits. My newest tool is a digital voice recorder which I bought to record interviews. I should emphasize however that the most important thing in my creative environment is my books. I take notes in the margins of my books and that's part of the reason reading is so generative for me. Recently I read an interview with Randall Collins, a sociologist who has produced a number of pathbreaking and fascinating works, in which he stated that he believes it's important to own your own books for this reason.
Subpixel Space is a Jekyll blog. I use Siteleaf CMS for front-end workflows. The blog is hosted on Mediatemple, which recently got acquired by GoDaddy (RIP). I've been paying them too much money for years, but I don't have the time to do a refactor and switch to hosting on Netlify, which is where my personal site and the Other Internet site are hosted. I ought to do that soon...
The name Subpixel Space feels kind of juvenile to me now, and because Space is '.space'— the TLD—people often assume it is just called "Subpixel." I actually made this mistake twice now. Other Internet uses the domain otherinter.net, and people often call it "Other Inter." This always annoys me. I also made a lot of bad design decisions when I started the blog, so there's a ton of technical debt involved with cleaning up the codebase. I've become much better as a web developer (not that I do much of it these days) and have shipped more complicated projects with much less code.
That's all it costs, but damn that Mediatemple bill grinds my gears. If you're wondering, you can deduct all this on your personal taxes if you have enough expenses to warrant an itemized deduction.
I think monetizing personal blogs is fine, I just don't generate enough content to do it. The common way to monetize writing now is a Substack newsletter, which I don't have for my own blog (we do have a company Substack). This isn't quite the same as blogging, in my opinion. Blogging is when you write on your personal site. To your question on what I might do differently if I started now: I might just have started a Substack. There are many advantages to doing so, and I don't blame any bloggers starting out who do it today. But I still encourage everyone to build their own personal site from scratch, by hand. It's cool to know how to build a website. It's cool to know a bit about how the web works. A hand-made website can be a better surface for experimenting with self-presentation than the opportunities we have in daily life. And if you blog on your website, all the better. There is nothing better than mindlessly wandering across the web and landing on someone's cool blog.
I'll point to 3 blogs. Earlier I mentioned Randall Collins. His blog, the Sociological Eye, is one I just discovered this year, and it's really good. Collins is getting up there in years, so make sure to give this one a read and archive it while it's still around.
My friend Chia Amisola is a prolific blogger and web artist. They write very intelligent and deeply heartfelt essays about a lot of things, like the internet and love and religion and games, but always structured by really incisive introspection and personal experience. Chia's blog made me cry more than once. They would be a good person to interview.
Lastly, the blog Carcinisation is a special one. The person who writes it has had a big influence on me as a writer and independent thinker, and in recent years they have dedicated themselves to analyzing the shell game of social & behavioral psychology. Those fields, along with behavioral economics, are the ones having a big replication crisis. Their approach to taking the fields apart is carried with such seriousness and such mirth at once you can't help but love it.
I just finished up a project and have a little bit of free space, and I'm thinking of building a library page. I've always admired people who keep a running list of books on their personal site. Boris Anthony and Christoph Labacher have really gorgeous sites for their collections. I've had a channel on Are.na for this for years, but I'd like to build one to go on my own website. I've never really built something very complicated using an API, so it's also an exercise in learning a new web development skill for me. I think it'll be a chance for me to give ChatGPT's coding assistance a try too.
Thanks for the interview Manuel!
This was the 5th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Toby. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and top supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
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2023-09-27 06:00:00
It's been 7 days since I updated my robots.txt and the results are in. Has anything changed? Has my site tanked? Time to find out. To make sure the logs were comparable I grabbed 6 full days' worth of data. I wrote the previous post on the 20th and so I grabbed data from September 14th to 19th—I'll refer to this as "before"—and I compared it against data from the 21st to 26th range, the "after". As mentioned in the previous post, I'm using Goaccess to parse the data and I ran it twice for each set of logs: one with the ignore-crawlers option turned on and one with the option turned off. Ok, enough words, here's the data:
First thing first, a note on total requests: Goaccess will count all requests no matter what the ignore-crawlers says which is why the number is identical with that turned on and off. Now, for the interesting parts. Overall hits on the server look about the same. There's a ~4500 requests difference over 6 days which is ~4% of the total ~117000 original server requests. The interesting part for me are the "Not Found" that have gone down by a significant %. The panel dedicated to the 404s shows 4525 total hits that went down to 3590 after the change. Not really all that important but still interesting to see.
For Goaccess, a "Unique Visitor" is a hit coming on the same date, from the same combination of IP and User Agent. And according to that metric, I lost ~8% of visitors unique visitors. Don't ask me how accurate that estimate is because I have no idea. That 8% might be bots that were escaping my ignore-crawlers filter list and now got blocked by the robots.txt rule.
Goaccess also has a dedicated "Browsers" panel that shows which browsers are used when accessing my site and also very conveniently bundles all the crawlers together under the "Crawlers" label. Before, Crawlers were 54.6% of the total traffic. After the change? 54.06%. So that tells me that the vast majority of automated tools out there just don't give a fuck about what you put in your robots.txt.
As for the "Referring Sites" panel, the only thing I checked is how much traffic came from Google and that changed a bit: 900 hits before, and 376 after.
So, what's the takeaway here? I guess that the vast majority of crawlers don't give a shit about your robots.txt. As for me and this site, I think I'm gonna revert back and allow bots to just do whatever the hell they want. This seems a worthless battle to fight for no real benefit to my general mission which is to connect with other human beings.
If you have questions about this experiment let me know. I'm happy to poke around the results some more if there's anything you're interested in.
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2023-09-22 06:00:00
This is the 4th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Brian Koberlein and his blog, briankoberlein.com.
Brian is a Ph.D. in theoretical physics and Senior Science Writer for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.
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I'm a child of Midwest American farmers, and I'm the first in my family to attend college. I earned a Ph.D. in theoretical physics researching black holes in the early universe and followed the traditional academic/professor path for years. Over the past decade, I migrated from academia to science writing, and I'm now Senior Science Writer for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO).
I've had personal web pages since the early days. Academic websites for students, archives for research, the occasional essay, and the like. All of these were hosted by my university at the time, so other than a few scraps on the Wayback Machine they have been lost to entropy.
I never planned to start a blog.
Back in 2012, I was writing a textbook on computational astrophysics for Cambridge University Press. It was almost like writing a second dissertation, and it meant spending tedious hours focusing on the minutia of equations, citations, and accuracy. After a couple of hours of that, your brain starts to crave distractions. That turned out to be blogging.
A friend of mine had given me an early invite to Google+, so I started playing around with it. Between teaching and grading, I'd work on the textbook for a couple of hours, then log into Google+ just to flatline a bit. I started making posts like "I've just spent the past two hours computing how the radius of a white dwarf varies with mass. Let me tell you about it." The posts got attention because space stuff is cool, then Google started promoting my posts and my follower count went through the roof. By mid-2013 I was the second most popular science blogger on the platform. By the end of 2013, I had 25 million views. Thanks to Google's promotion of my work I had a real audience, and I started to take it seriously.
I started my current website because I wanted a repository of all these Google+ posts I was doing. A backup I could control just in case Google decided to kill its platform, gods forbid. The posts section of my site is that repository. At first, I was "blogging" on Google+ and publishing copies to the website. As the platform started to lose its shine, I switched to publishing directly on my site, then posting links on Google+
By 2015 my blog was popular enough I started getting asked to write posts for various websites. Science writing started as a side job, but it was certainly less stressful than academia, so when NRAO asked me to work for them, I took it. My current job is a direct result of my blog.
My website continues to be a repository of things I write online. Unless it's paid work where an institution gets exclusive rights to the work, I post a copy on my site. It's also more than just science writing. I also post essays, general thoughts, and even short fiction.
For science posts, inspiration usually comes from either a specific research paper or questions from readers. If it's a topic I'm really familiar with, then I generally bang it out, proof it, then publish within a couple of hours. If it is a more complex or subtle topic, then it usually takes me a day or two of off-and-on work. If the article is for NRAO, Scientific American, or the like, then there is an editorial process that happens over weeks.
When I write fiction the process is very different. For that, I have a few close friends that read drafts and give feedback. A few things end up being posted on the site. A lot of fiction I write goes into a folder, and may or may not get posted down the line. I'm still figuring out the fiction side of things.
I work from home, so I have a home office with a little table for my laptop in one corner and a big rolltop desk in the other. All the general work of emails, Zoom, and administration I do at the laptop table. Writing is done at the rolltop desk.
For me, physical space and process are central to how I work. It's to the point that the type of writing I'm doing determines the process. If I'm writing a blog post, something intended to be immediate and online, then I type it. Fiction seems more thoughtful to me, and I do all of that with a fountain pen and paper. The tools I use set the mindset for me, and the way I've oriented the rolltop desk creates a small quiet space where I don't have any distractions. I think I enjoy the physical process of writing as much as I enjoy creating written work.
My website is static and generated through Hugo. I enter posts in Markdown using Sublime Text and push them to a Git repository on GitLab. Then Netlify is flagged and generates and publishes the site. My domain is registered through Hover.
I'm a big believer in having separate tools for separate jobs. So domain registration, composition, and hosting are all separate services. That way I'm never dependent on a single platform for everything. Before I switched to a static site, it was generated through WordPress and hosted on a VPS.
The first incarnation of my website was in WordPress using a template. WordPress is easy, but it tends to lock you in. If I were to start again, I would start with a text-driven site with almost no formatting. Because a website is public, and the internet remembers, it's difficult to think of your website as a work in progress. But that's the real power of creation. I had a huge advantage with Google+ in that I was forced to focus just on the writing, and the layout was not up to me. By the time I started creating my website, I had a good idea of what I was trying to create and say. Websites can evolve. They aren't forever printed and bound like books.)
When the site was hugely popular and running on WordPress, costs were around $200-$300 a month. That was one of the big motivators to switch to a static format. Now costs are pretty minimal. Annual domain registration for briankoberlein.com (and similar domains I don't want poached) runs about $90 a year. With images my site is about 4 Gb, so GitLab storage runs $65 a year. Netlify is $20/month. So in total things cost a few hundred a year, which I can cover out of pocket.
I like when people create honest and interesting content, and if monetization allows them to create, then I support it 100%. Most "quiet web" sites are created by people with a certain financial privilege. It limits the range of voices we hear, which is a terrible loss. Paying for creative work is how we show its value to the world. And until we live in a socialist Star Trek utopia, it takes money to have the time and space to do creative work.
Personally, I'm not a fan of generic ads and ad networks, though I understand why some people use them. I like tossing coin to sites I find interesting, particularly if they don't seem popular. So things like LibrePay, Ko-fi, whatever. I also really like it when there is something I can buy from you. If I love your blog and you put out an ebook or album, I'm likely to buy it.
The only other thing I will add is that I don't think anyone needs to justify asking for support through "hosting costs money" or the like. Art is worth supporting, so even if the money I send goes to paying for your truffle brownie habit, you do you.
A couple that people might not have come across:
I suppose this is primarily directed at younger or newer creatives, regarding “the algorithm” of search engines and social media. I think for most creatives there is a drive to get your work seen. Online that means figuring out a way to go viral, get likes, or rise in the search engine rankings. That’s a perfectly fine goal, but you should know that if the algorithm chooses you it has nothing to do with the quality or value of your work. And I mean literally nothing. The algorithm is nothing more than a capitalist predator, seeking to consume what it can, monetize it quickly, then toss aside. If you make the algorithm your audience, you get very good at creating for an audience of machines rather than humans. Creating for humans is harder, it may get you ignored by the algorithm, but your work will be better for it, and it will find an audience in time.
This was the 4th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Brian. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and top supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can:
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my awesome supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
2023-09-20 06:00:00
If you've ever looked at a log file on a server, you know that a lot of the traffic is not generated by humans. Depending on who you ask, anything from 40% to 64% of total traffic is generated by machines. And lately, I've been thinking more and more if I should just try to block the traffic coming from all those spiders and crawlers. Just to see what happens.
So here's the plan. I downloaded my access.log from the server and created two reports using goaccess. One is a report with all the data. The other is a report with the ignore-crawlers option turned off. I'll now update my robots.txt and disallow all bots for the next 7 days to see what happens. In a week I'll download the log again and we can compare and see if something has changed.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2023-09-19 06:00:00
A couple of things in no particular order:
First, HN made me discover the Homebrew Website Club which looks like an AWESOME initiative. I doubt I'll attend one because I'm not a meetup kind of person but maybe some of you out there might be interested so it was worth sharing here;
Second, if you're on the hunt for new blogs to follow you might give ooh.directory a spin. Really love what Phil is doing with this project;
Third, this is a very good article if you're looking for something to read today
And lastly, the fourth edition of People and Blogs is coming out in a few days. I'd love to know what you think of the series so send me an email if you have thoughts or comments.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2023-09-18 06:00:00
The web loves data. Data about you. Data about who you are, about what you do, what you love doing, what you love eating. Data about where you go and who you talk to, data about what you watch, data about what you play. Google, Facebook, and Amazon, they're all god-tier level creeps. If they could know how many times you go pee they'd gladly collect that piece of information.
I, on the other end, couldn't care less about your data. I don't run analytics on this website. I don't care which articles you read, I don't care if you read them. I don't care about which post is the most read or the most clicked. I don't A/B test, I don't try to overthink my content. I just don't care.
My People and Blogs newsletter, my From the Summit newsletter, and my "posts via email" thingy, all run on Buttondown. Buttondown has analytics turned off by default and I made sure to keep it that way because I don't care about knowing if you click on my emails. You signed up and so I assume you want to receive them and that's all I care about. And if you unsubscribe I make sure to delete your address from my list and not just leave it there marked as "unsubscribed". You unsubscribed, so your data should be gone. That's because I don't want your data.
I hate what data is doing to the web. I hate that some people get obsessed with data. I hate that the entire advertising and marketing world has evolved to only care about data. But I realize that this will not change. Still, I like to do my part which is why I try hard to not collect and keep any data about you.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2023-09-15 06:00:00
This is the 3rd edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Kev Quirk and his blog, kevquirk.com.
Kev is currently Senior Vice President in Bank of America’s Information Security team and also runs one the largest tech focused Mastodon instances: Fosstodon. He's also on a mission to not be a fat boy at 40 (rooting for you Kev).
To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
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Sure. My name is Kev Quirk (yes, that’s my real name unfortunately), I’m in my late 30’s and I live in North Wales on a beautiful 2.5 acre smallholding with my wife, 2 sons, 2 dogs, cat, many fish and chickens. I’m originally from a fairly large town just outside of Liverpool, called The Wirral.
Professionally I’m a Senior Vice President in Bank of America’s Information Security team, where I lead a global team in the phishing/social engineering space. Before working at the bank, I worked for Hewlett Packard Enterprise on their InfoSec team, and before that I was in the British Army, where I served for 5 years, all over the world, including Iraq and Afghanistan.
I actually dropped out of university after my first semester as I knew I’d end up with a very poor result, a lot of debt and an even bigger hangover. I did study IT in college though, so when I went to sign up for the Army and they learned I had IT qualifications, they snapped me up. I didn’t even know you could do IT in the Army, so it was a win for me.
I originally joined as a Radio Operator, where we would manage the encrypted radios, however, when I got back from Iraq, I decided to re-train to the computing side of things. I was a SysAdmin with some networking thrown in. After getting out, I went into networking with HP, then transitioned over to InfoSec while there. The rest is history. :)
Outside of work, I spend a lot of my spare time with the family and our animals, just looking after our little patch of land. I also love motorbikes; both riding them and restoring them, as well as watch collecting. I currently have around 50 watches in my collection (yes, I’m a huge nerd). Then there’s the normal stuff - reading, writing (on my blog, obviously) etc.
I’ve never really been one for social media, which is ironic considering I co-run one of the largest technology focussed Mastodon instances on the fediverse, Fosstodon. Anyway, “hot takes” have never really interested me. I’ve always preferred longer-form writing, so a little over 10 years ago, I spun up a Blogger site, which then evolved through multiple iterations to the blog I have today.
I actually started a more commercial blog first, it was called Refugeeks (a refuge for geeks), which I sold after a few years. While I was running Refugeeks, I also started my personal blog, which was (and still is) kevquirk.com (having a weird name has some advantages, I suppose). You can read more about the evolution of my blog here.
When it comes to inspiration, I don’t think I was ever inspired by anything or anyone in particular. I’ve always enjoyed learning new things and playing around, and blogging was no different. It started with my motivations to learn some basic web design skills, and it went from there really.
It’s almost a meme at this point as to how many iterations my site’s been though, both in terms of design and platform. I’ve tried Blogger, WordPress, Ghost, Grav, Blot, Jekyll, and many more. I’m a sucker for the new shiny - I’m always changing something.
My creative process is very simple. I’m lazy, so it has to be, because I know if there are too many barriers, I just won’t write. I keep a list of drafts in Apple Notes; they’re just a rough title and a few bullets that cover the high level points I want to the post to cover. Ideas can come from a number of places, it could be something I’ve read on another blog or on Mastodon, it could be something I see on TV or hear on the radio. It could be a book I’ve read, or anything in between.
There’s also a lot ideas that just come to me like a bolt out of the blue. Usually when I’m doing something completely unrelated, like walking the dogs. That’s why the drafts list is on Apple Notes - so I can jot them down on my phone whenever they come to me.
When I sit down to write a post, it’s either an idea I’ve had that I want to write about immediately, a meta post about something to do with the site, or if I find myself with an hour to spare, I’ll consult my list and pluck something from there.
I tend to write a single draft, give it one proof read, then publish it. I don’t dwell on making the message perfect - I prefer to get my words out there instead. That probably makes me a pretty crappy writer, but I think it’s fine for a personal blog to be a little rough around the edges. It adds personality and character.
Depending on the topic, I will do research if needed. A lot of my posts are opinion pieces, with it being a personal blog, so they obviously don’t require a lot of research. Usually it’s just fact checking. My more technical posts (which have been lacking lately because I’m enjoying the opinion stuff more) tend to require far more research so I can ensure what I’m sharing is technically accurate.
I really don’t. Most of my writing (including what I’m writing now) is done at home, in my study. Having lots of animals and a couple of kids, the house is generally quite busy and loud, so I just have to make the most of what I can get. I know some people really need a zen space that they can use for creative endeavours, but I just get on with it and write wherever. If it’s not in my study, it could just as easily be in the lounge, or in the garden with a beer in my hand. I’m not fussy.
Again, a lack of creative environment probably makes me a worse writer, but I don’t really mind. My motivations to write are because I enjoy it, and I enjoy the discourse I have with my readers. I’m not in it to be as popular as possible, so producing “the perfect post” isn’t important to me.
I do like to have background music when I’m writing (I’m currently listening to She Moves In Her Own Way by The Kooks if anyone is interested), oh and everything is written on my M1 MacBook Air.
Now we’re talking! Like I said before, everything I write is done on my M1 MacBook Air. For writing I use Typora, because it’s brilliant and distraction free.
My domain is registered with Namecheap and DNS is provided by ClouDNS, who are also brilliant. The blog itself is currently hosted with Blot, which I’m really enjoying as I just write, save the file and Blot does the rest. There are a couple of issues with it though - for example, the on-site search feature is atrociously bad. So bad, in fact, that I’m thinking about a switch back to Jekyll (or maybe Kirby) because of it.
I don’t use a CMS at the moment, but I’ve used many of them in the past. The problem I have with many of the CMS’s I’ve used, is that they try to do too much. All I want is somewhere to create/edit pages, write posts and manage metadata. Anything else is just noise and should be abstracted from the writing workflow IMO. That’s why I really like Blot.
I have a “newsletter” (it literally just regurgitates my posts verbatim to an email) that’s handled by Buttondown. It slurps up my RSS feed and sends it out as an email, so I don’t have to do anything.
Social sharing is also automated. I have a custom RSS feed for social sharing, which includes the post description and a link to the post, nothing else. This is slurped up by Micro.blog and automatically re-posted to my social accounts.
With all this in place, I don’t need to do anything when I publish a post. It’s automatically distributed around the places on the web that I frequent, so all I need to do is keep an eye on my notifications and enjoy any conversations that come as a result of my post.
YES! I made tonnes of mistakes. The most egregious of which, I think, was chasing numbers. When I first started Refugeeks, my plan was to be the next Verge or Techcrunch. Sounds ridiculous now, looking back, but I was young and naive. I’d meticulously read all the ProBlogger crap - pick a niche, track all the things, CONVERT, become an affiliate marketer. All the horrible shit that ruins the internet. I did it all.
If I had my time again, I’d have started a personal blog, not tracked anyone or anything, and just wrote for the love of writing and sharing my opinions. That’s what I do now and I thoroughly enjoy it.
I’d also keep away from analytics from the very start. It’s something I’ve struggled with a lot in the past and since removing them, I’ve been far happier with how my blog is performing, mainly because I have no clue how it’s performance. Ignorance is bliss, and all that. :-).
I wouldn’t change the flip-flopping between platforms and design though. I’ve really enjoyed exploring different designs and what features different platforms offer. Because of all the changes, I think I have a much better idea of what I want and need from the platform I base my blog off.
My blog doesn’t generate any revenue, and I don’t intend for it to do so. I have a Ko-Fi page that’s linked at the bottom of all my posts, so people can buy me a coffee if they’ve found my content useful, but apart from that there’s nothing. I make my money with my day job - the blog is a hobby.
I think it’s relatively cheap to run my blog. Blot costs $4/month, Micro.blog is $5/month and Buttondown is $9/month (note: there is a free version of Buttondown that I could use, but I believe in paying for the products/services we use). So it’s $18/month - let’s say $19/month if we include the cost of the domain too. So pretty cheap, I think.
I think if people want to monetise their personal blogs, it’s fine. It’s their blog after all. As long as it’s done in a manner that respects the reader’s privacy, I’m fine with it. No paywalls though - I hate those things. I don’t actually know of any bloggers that monetise their blogs, so I don’t support any. However, if any of the bloggers I read on regular basis decided they were going to make a living out of it, I’d throw them a couple quid a month to help.
I’d actually love to read the answers to all these questions from you, Manu. With regards to other recommendations, there’s so many, but here’s some of the bloggers I really enjoy reading, whom I’d really enjoy reading a similar interview about (in alphabetical order):
The only thing I’d really like to add here is a piece of advice - if you’re thinking about starting a blog, but are on the fence for whatever reason. Maybe you think no one will read your content, or find it interesting. Maybe you’re overwhelmed by how to start it technically. Just. Do. It. Sign up for a wordpress.com account, or a BearBlog and start writing. Get your words out there.
Oh, and if you do, please email me as I WILL read your stuff.
Finally, thanks to your Manu, for putting this together. I think this is a great idea and can’t wait to read the interviews from other bloggers. I hope I haven’t bored you readers too much!
This was the 3rd edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Kev. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and top supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
A couple of new people to highlight this week:
If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can:
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2023-09-11 06:00:00
Sometimes a place is beautiful because of the view. Other times it's beautiful because of the history attached to it. But it can also be beautiful because of the memories, and the people you were with when you first visited it. I visited many places that check one of those boxes but only a few check all of them. This is one of those places.
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2023-09-08 06:00:00
This is the 2nd edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Rachel J. Kwon and her blog, kwon.nyc.
Rachel is currently Director of Clinical Product Strategy at Ro and was previously a doctor, a career transition I find incredibly interesting.
To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
If you're enjoying the People and Blogs series and you want to see it grow, consider supporting on Ko-Fi.
Hello, my name is Rachel. I live in Brooklyn, New York, with my partner, and I've worked for digital health startups for the past 7 years. Before that I was training to be a surgeon but I quit before my final year of residency because I realized I was super unhappy and didn't want to spend the rest of my life as a surgeon. I was born and raised in the American Midwest to Korean immigrant parents and I've lived in New York City for 13 years.
I love riding my bike, taking nature walks, doing challenging but achievable work, my partner, my family including my 4 year old niece, the internet, tinkering with stuff in the physical and digital world, and lots of other things.
The current iteration of my personal website has been around since 2021. I started blogging in earnest as a teenager sometime in the early 2000s, at various domains, the URLs of which I won't share because they're all dead and a lot of the content is very cringe (I was 17, lol), and blogged regularly for years until around 2010 when I moved to New York and started my surgery training.
I bought my current domain in 2016 but sat on it for a long time perseverating over what to do with it—professional site? Personal site? A playground for tech projects? None or all of the above? I really wanted to capture the pureness of what we were doing in those early days (connecting with people all over the world without any agenda other than curiosity and wanting to build and design cool stuff on the web and write about whatever was occupying our thoughts and life at the time) and also reflect my grown up self, but without fully being a totally buttoned-up professional website with no personality or real content.
Part of the fun of having a personal site is that it can be whatever I want it to be, and also, it's constantly evolving and never finished.
Tactically speaking, I have a Markdown file called "incomplete thoughts" where I compile stubs of thoughts that come to me that might be worth digging into. If I'm not at my computer, I use Apple Notes to jot down thoughts or ideas that might be good for a blog entry and then add it to the Markdown file. I also sometimes just open up a blank text file and start writing. These days the stuff I write about mostly leans towards "slice of life" posts (those are also my favorite types of posts by others to read). I have a spreadsheet with a lot of line items for more structured and expository essay ideas that I plan to write someday but would require more thought and editing and also don't seem to quite fit the slice of life / lightly edited notes that I currently publish.
I do a lot of creative thinking in the mornings, ideally in a quiet setting with natural light, fresh air, and a cup of coffee. Most of the time this is in my apartment—the back of the building faces south into a common space where the neighbors have planted a lot of trees, so it's quiet, it has great morning light, and if I open the windows I can usually catch a nice breeze. (A lot of people would assume this type of setup is impossible in New York City, and it is somewhat unusual, so I fully realize how lucky I am.)
I do think that physical space influences creativity, maybe for some more than others. If, on a scale of 1-10, 1 represents being able to do creative work ANYWHERE and 10 represents needing to have PERFECTLY PERFECT conditions for creativity, I'm somewhere around a 7 these days. With the setup above, I find that I can get in the zone really quickly, whether it's journaling, tinkering with my website for fun, or (very rarely but sometimes if things are particularly busy at work) my day job. At some point, however, optimizing for the best environment to be creative in becomes an exercise in procrastination, and you just have to get it done :)
I have a pretty basic setup: I use Hugo to manage content and generate the static site, Git and Github, DeployHQ to deploy, and locally I use Sublime Text as my text editor. I occasionally use Figma to mock up parts of designs but mostly design in browser. I tend to learn just enough tech.
If I truly had no previous web experience, I would probably start with some kind of lightweight and ideally independent platform like micro.blog or bearblog.dev, in order to get started. In terms of the overall structure, I think the actual blog content would always be the core of it, but I would also want to build additional evergreen sections that reflect who I am.
I have some random content that isn't notes that I have not yet permanently hooked into the actual site navigation/information architecture (for example, I love riding my bike; I built the bike that I ride and also created a graphic of the bike parts and tossed it up at /bike as an embedded Figma file thinking I'd expand on it at some point) that I would want to to have more of to reflect the things that bring me joy and energy in my life. (Maybe this response is less about what I'd do differently if I started a blog today and more about what I want to do with my existing blog!)
Across hosting, domain registration, analytics, and other services, the total monthly cost of running my website is about USD$30, or about USD$360 per year. I don't make any money off of it and I don't think I would ever try. For me, having a website is a fun hobby and I'm happy to pay for certain services that support this hobby, either out of necessity or to support the creators of those services in the spirit of the independent web.
I don't have a problem with people monetizing their personal blogs, but I think there are better ways than others to do so, for example, doing so to cover operating costs and not necessarily to turn a massive profit, being clear with readers about how you're making money off their readership (e.g. ads, subscription-based), and never ever doing anything shady like tracking visitors in order to make more money off of them. I also think there's probably a certain threshold of profit above which your personal blog is not purely a personal blog anymore (legally and philosophically), it's a business, and it shouldn't be classified as a personal blog.
Oy, so many good blogs are out there and it's hard to pick. I'll cheat and just say that one of my favorite ways to discover new blogs is through directories like theforest.link, indieblog.page, gossipsweb.net, and others.
I really just love all these little worlds we have built for ourselves on the internet and it gives me hope for the future of the web :)
This was the 2nd edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Rachel. Make sure to follow her blog (RSS) and get in touch with her if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and top supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can:
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my awesome supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
2023-09-07 06:00:00
Please, for the love of all things web-related, if you decide to do anything online, get yourself a domain name. Don't rely on the 3rd party domain provided by services like Blogger, Substack, Tumblr, whatever. Yes, it's an extra cost but owning your URLs is important. If Substack dies tomorrow, all your fancy-cool-name.substack.com URLs are gone. And all the links scattered across the web that were pointing to them are now broken. So, again, please, get yourself a domain name when you create content for the web. And don't forget that "Cool URIs don't change".
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2023-09-06 06:00:00
I think there are many types of "content" that we default to posting on centralized silos, whether that's Goodreads, Instagram, Foursquare, or Reddit. But all of that becomes much more interesting when it's just as easy to post to our blogs.
I was thinking about what Manton said in his P&B interview and he's right. That's one of the main advantages of owning your place on the web: you can bend it and shape it to do exactly what you need it to do.
And coincidentally it's also one of the reasons why I love to run my sites on Kirby. I just love how easy it is to customize it and make it do different things. For example, I wanted the P&B posts to look a bit different but I didn't want to make the rest of the sites heavier with extra CSS.
The obvious solution is to conditionally load those extra resources only on specific posts and there are a bunch of different ways for me to do that in Kirby. I could create a new post type, call it pb.txt, and then check if the page uses said template. Alternatively, I could add a toggle inside my regular template to mark a specific post as a P&B post but that would store extra information in every single post on the site.
What I ended up doing was checking if the title starts with P&B because I already decided that I wanted the posts to have a prefix to make it easier to spot in the archive. And now I have a global variable I can check anywhere on the site and add my customizations.
Another example of what Manton was mentioning is my Moments posts which are essentially Instagram posts. I used to have a dedicated Moments In Time website but I retired it and moved everything back to my blog. For these posts, I built a dedicated RSS feed this way if someone is only interested in my pictures they can subscribe to that feed and have an Instagram-like experience without the ads and tracking nonsense.
These are the things that make having a custom website so much better than relying on social media.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2023-09-02 06:00:00
I was walking the dog this morning and I was reflecting on how the things we build on the digital world seem to mirror what we build on the physical one. Big social media platforms are the metropolis: dense, busy, chaotic. They’re the place that never sleeps and there’s always something new going on. Something new to see, something new to do. You’ll never be able to catch up with everything and everyone in such a place. There will always be a new YouTube video, a new Tik (?) on TikTok, a new reel on Instagram, and a new tweet on what was once Twitter. Huge cities welcome everyone but they are not for everyone.
There was a time when forums were the cities of the web but now are more like small towns. They’re the place where people congregate around shared interests. Spend enough time on one and you’ll get to know its citizens. New threads are infrequent, discussions are slow and can develop over months and years and it’s the refuge for those who are tired of the busyness of the big cities but still want some sense of belonging to a community.
And then there’re personal sites, the house in the forest. It’s the place people escape to when they’re tired of the noise. However personal sites are not isolated islands. They interact and stay connected, using links, mentions, emails, and RSS. It’s a part of the web that moves at a slower pace and that’s a feature, not a bug.
For some reason, my journey through the web mirrored the one in the real world. I grew up in a city. Then at some point, we moved to a small town and then moved again, to a tiny village. But the dream was—and still is—the house in the forest. I still descend to town ocasionally only to be remembered why that life is not for me. And the same happens on the web. I don’t miss social media. Not one bit. But I love blogging and blogs in general more and more. I love to see how we all have a slightly different take on the same concept. We all want our sites to do different things but we’re all driven by the same desire: to have a place where we feel at home.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2023-09-01 06:00:00
This is the 1st edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Manton Reece and his blog, manton.org.
Manton is the creator of the micro.blog platform and JSON Feed, an alternative format to the more traditional RSS and Atom.
To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
If you're enjoying the People and Blogs series and you want to see it grow, consider supporting on Ko-Fi.
I'm a web developer from Austin, Texas. I started as a Mac developer in the 1990s, working for a small Mac software company, then later a web development shop and a larger company before founding my own business. I created the Tweet Marker timeline sync API before becoming disillusioned with big centralized platforms like Twitter.
In 2017, I launched a Kickstarter campaign for Micro.blog and my book Indie Microblogging. My career is now dedicated to building tools for people to blog. For Micro.blog we believe the web is better if it's more distributed, with microblogging on your own site that you control, and communities built on top of microblogging and smaller social networks.
When I'm not coding and running Micro.blog, I love to read books, travel, and spend time with family.
I started my personal blog in 2002 while at SXSW. There was an excitement at the conference around blogging, and at the time I thought I was kind of late to blogging. I've stuck with it through the years and still have a complete archive of all my posts, now going on 20+ years, at the same domain name.
These days I blog a lot about Micro.blog, but I've never had a specific theme for the blog. Sometimes I write about books, movies, art, technology, or other topics. I blog mostly for myself, and love looking back on old posts years later.
Most of my posts are short microblog posts. Just things I'm working on or thinking about. For longer posts, I usually jot down some notes and then later pull them together into a full post. Much more rarely do I put together longer posts that require research. Some of my essays about microblogging ended up forming the basis for my book Indie Microblogging.
I've been working at home nearly forever and find it very helpful to change locations. I love working at coffee shops... In fact I'm typing this right now from a coffee shop! New environments feel like "going to work" and help me focus without as many distractions. It's also sometimes nice to be surrounded by people, even strangers.
Several years ago I switched away from using larger external monitors and just use my MacBook Pro regardless of where I am. I like that it's the same everywhere I go, so I don't feel like I'm any less productive when away from my home office.
I also enjoy traveling and working from the road. Last year I rented a camper van and lived and worked while driving down the west coast from Portland to San Francisco for a couple weeks. Seeing new places also feeds back into my blog where I post photos of wherever I'm going.
My blog is powered by Micro.blog now. The first version used Radio Userland, then I moved to Movable Type, and then to WordPress. I've moved my posts along each time I've migrated to a new system, and the design has changed a bunch of times.
I write most of my posts directly in Micro.blog. Longer posts usually start in Ulysses or MarsEdit. I also often use the Mac app Acorn for resizing or cropping screenshots.
I'm biased because I now run Micro.blog and love using it for my blog. When we first released Micro.blog, I was still using WordPress, and I found it was helpful to move to Micro.blog so I could experience exactly what my own customers were going through. Because I plan to blog and run Micro.blog for the rest of my life, I don't expect to need to switch platforms again, and many of Micro.blog's features were inspired by what I wanted in my own blog.
For my blog name, I've always just used my own name. I feel like that keeps it personal and I probably wouldn't come up with a more clever name if I was starting over. But I also enjoy reading other blogs that have a specific name and theme to what they write about.
I use the $10/month hosting plan on Micro.blog, but luckily because I own the company I don't have to pay myself for hosting. 🙂 My blog has never generated money directly, except a tiny amount years ago when I was using Amazon referral links. The blog has been invaluable as a way to connect to people or promote my work, though. Indirectly my blog has definitely helped my earlier apps and now my business with Micro.blog become more successful.
I still develop Mac and iOS apps and like to stay connected with the Apple ecosystem, so some of my favorite tech blogs include Daring Fireball, 512 Pixels, Stratechery, Six Colors, and Pixel Envy. On the IndieWeb side, I'd love to hear more about the unique blogging setups from Tantek Çelik, Aaron Parecki, and Ryan Barrett
During the COVID pandemic, I got back into reading novels, especially epic fantasy books. I like blogging about a book when I finish reading it, posting photos of nice hardcover books, and collecting "year in books" posts that I can post to my own site. I think there are many types of "content" that we default to posting on centralized silos, whether that's Goodreads, Instagram, Foursquare, or Reddit. But all of that becomes much more interesting when it's just as easy to post to our own blogs. I'm always inspired when I see bloggers doing interesting things with new post types on their own site.
This was the 1st edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Manton. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and top supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter. And I'm so happy that the inaugural edition already has a top supporter and he has a blog:
If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can:
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my awesome supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
2023-08-25 06:00:00
Just a quick update on a couple of things. I updated the /blogs page and added a bunch of new links. It's now more than just blogs so I should probably rename it at some point. I also updated my /about page and published the first version of the /uses page. I'm planning to make it a lot more comprehensive over time, this is just a quick version because I needed to start somewhere. Today's Friday and that means we're precisely 1 week away from the first P&B interview. The inaugural guest has been decided and I can't wait to post the first interview. If you're a newsletter person make sure to sign up before next Friday. Also, do yourself a favor and go listen to this amazing podcast episode. Housekeeping concluded, enjoy the weekend!
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2023-08-17 06:00:00
TL;DR: I'm starting a new weekly series called "People and Blogs" where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. You can subscribe to the newsletter or follow it here on the blog and via RSS. The first interview will go up on September 1st and I'll post a new one each Friday.
Over the years, I started a lot of side projects: a web inspiration gallery, a list of all the things I owned, a directory of space related Twitter accounts to follow, and many, many others. All of them were interesting, but none of them produced the level of excitement I'm feeling right now for my upcoming People and Blogs.
The idea for this series/side project popped into my head a few weeks ago while I was reading about the concept of Ikigai. I realised that what I really love to do is to write, to read what other people write, and to interact with people online. And the tools I use to achieve all this are emails and blogs. I write on mine, I read what others write on theirs, and I get to interact with them and with the people who read my content via email. So why not combine everything I love into a simple and fun project? That is how People and Blogs came to be.
What really excites me about this project is that it only has upsides. I get the chance to interact with people via email which is something I always enjoy doing. They get an opportunity to talk about things they care about, promote their sites, and share anything else they have going on in their lives. You will discover new and interesting people to follow. And finally, over time, we'll all get an amazing directory of personal blogs. I'm genuinely very excited about all this.
The goal for this project is to keep up the pace for at least a year. 52 weeks, 52 people, 52 blogs. Should be doable but only time will tell.
Like any other project on the web there are costs attached and ways to monetise it. As you probably know, I don't monetise my blog. I don't have ads, don't have affiliate links. My blog doesn't cost much to run so I can just pay for it. But running this newsletter series might add a few costs because sending emails can become expensive depending on how many people sign up. The plan is to rely on donations. I'm not going to include affiliate links on the interviews, I'm not going to run analytics anywhere. I care about your privacy and also I care about business models that are honest and upfront. So it's gonna be donations as the first option and potentially sponsors as a backup plan. But we'll see how it goes. Maybe none of you care about this series and I'll just shut it down in 12 months.
As I wrote before, my dream is to be able to spend my time helping people going online with their blogs and discover that there are better ways to inhabit the web, and so it would honestly be amazing if this series helped me get there.
To recap: People and Blogs, 1st interview is coming out on September 1st. Sign up for the newsletter (powered by Buttondown) or add the RSS feed to your reader. If you want to support this endeavour, you can do it here.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2023-08-15 06:00:00
In the background, Lagh Magior, Italy's 2nd biggest lake. In the foreground, that weird dog of mine, trying to blend with the environment.
Spent a few relaxing days immersed in nature while contemplating some incredible views of the lakes and the surrounding mountains (iCloud album if you want to see more).
I'm now back at home with recharged batteries and a renewed love for the Dutch.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2023-08-05 06:00:00
Why is everyone on the web obsessed with self-promotion? Every week or so I spend some time curating the submissions I get for the forest and 90% of them are either product sites for web services—I already detest AI—or developers/designers submitting their portfolios. I get it, we're all trying to earn a living here but come on. It's also completely pointless because everything is manually curated so it's not like you're getting some extra traffic out of it. You'll get precisely 1 extra click: mine. That's it.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2023-08-02 06:00:00
Recently "Google" announced the Web Environment Integrity API (WEI) and things escalated quickly. I'm not going to spend time discussing what WEI is, how it works, and what it means for the web since there's a plethora of articles out there. What I'm more interested in addressing is who is to be blamed. I'm talking in general, not in this specific case.
When something bad happens on the web the blame is quickly assigned to the big names like Google, Facebook, or Amazon. But a corporation doesn't have the power to do anything. Google doesn't do anything. The people working at Google do. I wrote "Google" at the beginning of this post because the proposal has been written by 4 developers—all Google employees—not by Google the business entity. Behind every piece of technology, there're actual human beings who are happily getting paid to develop tools that will make the overall experience worse for everyone.
Someone is coding those anti-ad-blockers. Someone is coding tracking technology. Someone is coding ways to fingerprint the hell out of your devices. We all share part of the blame as developers. For years I was blissfully adding Google Analytics to all my sites and client sites because I didn't know any better. I convinced countless people to switch to Chrome because it was the better browser. I told people to use Gmail since it was great. If we're now in this situation where Google can attempt to DRM the entire web, it's also in a super duper small way my fault too, because I did my part. And the blame is shared among countless other developers like myself.
That said, a bigger part of the blame falls on the people working at those companies that for their own self-interests, for their career advancements, for their financial gains, are happily working and coding these tools. And the blame also falls on people who are happily investing money in those companies.
It's very easy to say "big company bad". It's a bit harder to say "maybe I also fucked up".
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2023-08-01 06:00:00
I love the process of making websites. I hate the business of making websites. I love to help people when I can, but I can't spend the majority of my time volunteering otherwise I won't earn enough to sustain myself. And that's the sad reality of most business ideas. The vast majority are not scalable. I'd love to dedicate myself and my time helping people to go online with personal sites, detaching themselves from social media, rediscovering RSS feeds, and more healthy ways to have a digital presence, but regrettably I can't, because I'd never earn enough.
How many custom websites could I realistically build in a year? 15? 20? Let's say 20. There are around 250 working days in a year so it means I could spend around 12 days on each site which is not a lot if you want to design and code something from scratch. As for money, I should earn roughly 35 to 40k before taxes which means I should charge around 2k for each site. That is way too much if the goal is to help people go online. It's probably an order of magnitude too much.
Some people told me the solution is to work on a SASS product since that's a lot more scalable but I don't find that idea compelling because the result is not what I want. If you build your site using something like Squarespace you don't really own your site in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, it's better than nothing but it's not what I want. I think people should own their space, not rent it from a SASS.
My dream would be to crowdfund this but I know it's entirely unrealistic. Having to earn money sucks.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2023-07-31 06:00:00
When it comes to online interactions I try to always follow a set of simple rules that have served me incredibly well over the years:
Those are the rules. Actually, those are my rules. You might have a different set of rules and in that case, I'd love to hear from you.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2023-07-25 06:00:00
The web I want is powered by passion, not money. The web I want doesn't need to ask for permission to track me because they know that tracking me is not the right thing to do. The web I want doesn't make me waste bandwidth by loading pointless video autoplaying in the background. The web I want doesn't try to suck me into an endless, mindless scrolling. The web I want doesn't need to resort to clickbait headlines. The web I want doesn't care about useless metrics like clicks or views. The web I want cares about human flourishing. The web I want is inspiring. The web I want still exists. The web I want is still out there to be found. The web I want is made by people, by great people, by creative people, by interesting people. People like you.
If you prefer to read this post in Spanish, Adrián Perales has a translation up on his site
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2023-07-23 06:00:00
I made my own blog. I designed it and coded it. I didn't make the CMS, since it runs on Kirby but I did everything else. I love making blogs. I love making sites for people that will care about said sites and will actually use them. Which is why I was super happy to help Carl with his new blog. He's a designer but knows his way around code. He could have coded the site himself but he doesn't use Kirby daily like I do and since I know he's a very busy guy between running Mimo, taking care of the cats, climbing, and running all the other projects I volunteered to code it for him. And since I couldn't resist the temptation I ended up changing his design because that's how I roll. He sketched out the design for the new site in Figma and that is exactly what I coded at first.
But as I was coding it I couldn't stop thinking that this wasn't minimal enough and so I "designed" a new version. And when I say designed what I mean is this:
That is it. That is the entire design for the new site and with that incredibly detailed guideline, I coded the rest of the site which, if you ask me, looks amazing. I'm very happy with the final result because it's minimal but has character.
Make sure to give Carl's blog a follow and let me know if you want me to make you a blog.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2023-07-19 06:00:00
I noticed that some people are discussing and taking steps towards removing their websites from the Google index. I also discussed the topic via email over the past few weeks with a couple of people. The main concern is obviously AI and the idea of not wanting your content to be used as part of the training data for LLMs. This is something that bothers me as well and I even considered the possibility of adding a license to my site to make it clear that my content is intended for humans to be consumed, not bots. But the more I think about this issue, the more I'm convinced this is a losing battle. I write for humans. My content is here because it's useful for myself and hopefully for others. I don't care about LLMs, I care about humans. And no matter what I do with this site, if someone wants to "steal" my content and use it as training data, they will be able to do so. Every minute spent fighting this battle is a minute not spent focusing on what really matters: writing and connecting with other humans.
I won't bother removing my site from Google the same way I didn't bother adding all the fancy meta tags to help search engines discover my site in the first place. But hey, that's me. Maybe you have a different take on this whole issue and if that's the case I'd love to hear from you.
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2023-07-14 06:00:00
Quick short post because I wanted to share 3 things and since I don't have social media this is the only place where I can do it:
I also restructured my blogs page.
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2023-07-09 06:00:00
Over the past 2380 days, I wrote 321 blog posts on this site, including this one. That doesn't make me a writer. The act of writing itself doesn't make someone a writer. And you don't have to be a writer in order to write on a personal site. People often tell me they don't have a personal blog because they don't know how to write. That is clearly not true. What they're really saying is that they don't consider themselves writers. Because a writer is someone who writes in a certain way, is someone who considers writing a skill to perfect and to master. Writers love the act of writing. That is not me. And that also doesn't have to be you. I am not a speaker and chances are you're not one either. And yet you're probably speaking with other people constantly in your life without giving it a second thought.
I am not a writer and I don't plan to become one. And that's ok. What matters here is not the writing, is the communication. Is the exchange of ideas, and the sharing of experiences. That's why more people should have personal sites and why more people should write. Because those ideas matter, those experiences matter and are worth sharing.
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2023-07-08 06:00:00
I took a quick break from the summer schedule to celebrate my 34th birthday and went see some proper mountains. I also took a break from the summer heat because it was chilling on the Rolle Pass. As per tradition I uploaded an album with some pictures if you want to see more from the short trip.
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2023-07-02 06:00:00
It's almost 10 pm on a Sunday, I just finished working on a client project while listening to a podcast where among the many things discussed there was the apparently impending implosion of the web because people are using AI to generate an inordinate amount of valueless content and putting out there for reasons unknown.
Actually, the reasons are known and it's to capture traffic, slap ads everywhere, and generate money. A tale as old as the web itself.
The web is going through a weird phase. Twitter is allegedly DDoS-ing itself. Reddit is at war with its users and destroying communities in the process. Google search is spiraling down with results that are more and more useless. Amazon is a landfill full of crappy counterfeit products.
To make things worse, it looks like money is no longer growing on trees and many, many companies are now facing the wild reality that if you run a business, you should, hopefully, at some point, make more money than you're spending to run your business. Crazy stuff, I know. Who would have thought.
And so now we're seeing services turning to aggressive monetization because it turns out that we can't just have an entire world of sites and services all available for free with just a few ads slapped on top of them.
I don't know what's going to come out of this moment but I do hope more people realize that human connections are still available out there. You can still set up your tiny quiet corner on the web, do your own things, and connect slowly with other people. You can still set up a forum dedicated to something you're passionate about and create a community with 50 other people, even if Reddit turns to shit. Things can live on the web simply because enough people care about them and pour time and love into them. And that is what makes the web special.
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2023-06-30 06:00:00
Doesn't happen often but sometimes life is kind enough to screw with your plans and then reward you with something even better than what you had planned for.
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2023-06-28 06:00:00
If you're in the market for something, you have a budget. Unless you're in the top 0.0000001% of the human population by net worth and money is absolutely meaningless to you, you have a budget. It doesn't matter what you're buying. If you want to go out for dinner you know how much you're willing to spend. Sure there's some wiggle room but you have a ballpark figure. And that is why, after more than 10 years of working solo, it still infuriates me when clients answer "I don't know" to the budget question. Because you do know. If I quote you 50k for your goddamn website you will say it's too much. And it's too much because you know how much you're willing to spend. Because you have a fucking budget. So when someone asks you what's your budget, just tell them what it is and stop with the nonsense.
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2023-06-16 06:00:00
AI will not replace who you are. It will not replace what you mean for the people around you. It will not replace your importance for the people you love and those who love you. It will not replace your empathy, it will not replace your kindness. This is not something that should be said but it's probably worth saying anyway. You matter. You have value. AI won't make that go away. Not now. Not in the future.
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2023-06-13 06:00:00
For some inexplicable reason I find looking at cloudy skies therapeutic. I don't know why though. Maybe it's the constantly changing nature of clouds that's comforting.
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2023-06-01 06:00:00
This post was written for the fourth issue of the Ctrl-ZINE.
The web is pretty big. Putting a precise number on how big it is is probably impossible, but we can safely assume there are more than 1 billion websites out there. The world population is around 8 billion and close to 5 have an internet connection. That's a lot of people.
How many friends do you have? How many relatives? How many acquaintances? I'd hazard a guess and say that fewer than 100 people are actually part of your life in a meaningful way.
Let's say you'll live 80 years and let's also say that adult life starts at 18 years old. That leaves us with 62 years or 543120 hours. Some studies estimated that it takes between 40 to 60 hours to form a casual friendship with someone. 543120 hours divided by 60 is just a bit more than 9000. That is 9000 people you could potentially form casual relationships with in your adult life. Now, that number assumes you spend 100% of your time doing nothing but relationship building which is problematic to say the least, because there are other things you might want to do such as, I don't know, eating, drinking, and sleeping just to name a few. So let's just cut that number in half.
4500 people are a lot. But also, not really. In the digital world, 4500 followers are nothing. With 4500 followers on Instagram, you're a nobody, 4500 visitors on your site are really not that impressive. And yet, if you were to take the time to actually know those people it would probably take all your life.
The web loves big numbers. Marketers use those numbers to impress, to validate. But when it comes to communities, to human beings, bigger is not always better. In fact, the opposite is often true. It's in small groups that we have chances to discuss things that are important to us. It's in small groups that we have time and space to debate and grow. Deeper conversations can only occur in the right context and big communities don't allow for that. Because big communities move fast. And individuals become less and less important the bigger a community grows.
We should treasure small online communities because small communities are the best communities. Blogs with a handful of dedicated readers, forums with fewer than fifty users, group chats with a dozen participants. Those are success stories. Not becoming huge can and should be seen as a good thing.
We don't need a million followers. And maybe we don't need a thousand true fans. But we probably could use ten good internet friends to make our digital life better.
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2023-05-28 06:00:00
This is the view I had in front of me earlier today while I was writing my latest entry for my quirky newsletter.
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2023-05-26 06:00:00
Google has been around for almost 25 years. That is an eternity when it comes to the digital world. And Google was not the first engine to go online: from AltaVista to Yahoo! to Lycos we had our fair share of search engines available to search the web. Right now, the search engine world is going through a weird phase. And that's because AI has descended upon us. Bing with GPT, Google with Bart, it seems like the AI revolution of search engines is inevitable.
But I'm wondering, at what point a search engine stops being that and becomes something else? If search engines become answering machines, what are we losing in the process? If sources are no longer relevant, if we no longer need to visit websites, what's gonna happen to the web? And what's gonna happen to us as web users?
Following a link on your search results page is an act of discovery. You'll land on a site you might have never seen before. You might discover and connect with other human beings and you might learn about things you never even knew existed before clicking on that link. But if you get your answer from an answering machine, your journey ends there. It's convenient, sure, but we might be losing something important in the process.
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2023-05-22 06:00:00
…for the next couple of days. I've been involved with Minimalissimo for a few years at this point but I was never involved with the curation aspect. I'm happy to let Carl take care of the content since he's incredibly good at that. But since he's gonna be busy for the next week or so I decided I'm gonna take over and curate some content. It's gonna be fun.
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2023-05-18 06:00:00
Spotify is a premium service. Spotify also has an AD-supported plan. I hate advertising. I'm happy to pay for Spotify Premium. Spotify allows you to stream podcasts. Podcasts have ads. I don't mind having to skip ad reads. Hell, I don't mind listening to some ad reads because some podcasters are hilarious and they are very creative with their ads. What I do mind is being served, by Spotify, trash ads even though I'm a premium subscriber. Their justification? That you pay to get music ad-free and podcasts aren't music. GTFO. The other justification is that it's up to the content creators to turn on ads. Again, GTFO. I'm so bothered by this that I'm genuinely considering stopping using it altogether.
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2023-05-14 06:00:00
There are many things I suck at. Way more than the things I'm good at. I assume that's normal because there's just so much time in your life you can spend learning and practicing and getting better at something. Being able to focus, is an invaluable skill. That is not only true for individuals but also for companies.
I hate the idea of endless growth. Not just because it's a stupid, unsustainable concept, but also because it forces companies to lose focus.
The current buzzword is Enshittification, this idea that companies turn to shit in the pursuit of financial growth. I personally think it's just a combination of short-sightedness and loss of focus. And as a phenomenon, it's ubiquitous. If you start paying attention, you'll see it's everywhere. Companies branching into a million different directions, creators spreading too thin across multiple mediums and platforms. Everyone is chasing growth in one way or another and as a result, in most cases, the overall quality of the end product suffers.
Unfortunately, I think this is a byproduct of the age we live in and there's no solution. The only solution would be a cultural shift but that's not going to happen. I'm just glad there are still people and companies out there who are dedicated to their craft and they still manage to remain focused.
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2023-05-10 06:00:00
Every now and again I download and poke around my server logs to see if there's anything interesting in there. Usually what I'm interested in is if there are new apps or services that are crawling my site and also if there's any IP address that is doing bulk downloads of my content. Since I'm doing it right now, I'm gonna share some data. Maybe you're also running a blog and having more data points is always fun.
[30/Apr/2023:23:55:10] to [10/May/2023:15:38:06] and contains 127790 lines. Those requests are generated by 8536 distinct IP addresses so the requests to IP ratio is in the order of 15:1.127790 in roughly 10 days means 12779 req/day, 532 req/hour and 9 req/minute93552 are requests to one of my RSS feeds. That is almost 75% of all requests which is wild to me.1182 are requests coming from a Mastodon instance and I can see 714 unique ones in here. I have no idea why these requests are in here but it's interesting to see. I might start collecting all these URLs. Could be fun. There seem to be A LOT of Mastodon servers out there. Kinda cool.11261, so around 9%, are requests containing keywords such as bot, spider, or crawler.Next day edit: since I did a bit more digging promped by an email exchange, I'm gonna share some extra data related to the RSS requests.
4376 unique IPs have requested my RSS feed1790 have only made 1 request. That's 40% of the total unique IPs related to the RSS feed.4172 have made 100 or fewer requests. 100 might seem a lot but if you have an app set up to do a fetch every couple of hours you can easily generate 100 requests in 10 days.9 IPs are in the 4 digits territory. 2 of them are related to NNW, 2 more are tied to Miniflux and 1 is apparently a SimplePie installation.16431 which is 17% of the RSS requests and almost 13% of the total requests.What is a resonable number of requests coming from an RSS reader app or service? Reeder for Mac, which is the one I use, can be configured to sync your feed every 5 minutes. 10 days is 14400 minutes so a request every 5 minutes means you can generate 2880 individual requests if you leave your app open asking for new content all day long. Quite a waste IMO.
Are these numbers meaningful in any particular way? I doubt. Still, it's fun to poke around and see what's happening at the server level. If there's anything specific you want to know about my logs let me know.
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2023-05-09 06:00:00
If you run a website and you ask for financial support from users justified by having costs to cover, you should have a public breakdown of what those costs are. Are.na does this quite well and more websites should do it. And, if the reason why you're asking money is to cover expenses, you should stop asking once you're bringing in enough money to cover those expenses.
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2023-05-06 06:00:00
Social media is in a weird evolutionary phase. There are all these odd quirky experiments coming online all trying to reinvent socials in a decentralised way. You have traditional social platforms getting involved and who knows what the landscape will look like in a year or two. I'm sitting here, observing all this happening, and asking myself what should I do for myself and this blog. POSSE is one of the mantras of the independent web movement and I see the reasoning behind it. But what am I trying to accomplish here? Should I care about distributing my content on all these platforms? In the past, I would have said yes. But now, I don't think it's worth it. I don't want to spend my time tracking which platforms are worth being on. I don't want to spend my time setting up auto-posting from my site to every new website that comes online. More importantly, I don't want to add more burden on my already fragile mind. That is why I removed web mentions from my site and deleted my micro.blog account that was nothing more than a mirror of my RSS feed. The best solution is to embrace simplicity, delete everything that is not under my direct control and focus on content. Is it also the best solution from a reach/marketing/growth standpoint? I sincerely hope not.
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2023-05-05 06:00:00
I have an online presence. That is just a fancy way to say that I own a domain name, I have a personal site and I have a couple of accounts on various other external platforms. The line between having an online presence and a social presence is a blurry one because what even is a social media platform anymore. That said, I find this current trend of chasing an official verification status on various platforms quite bizarre. Don't get me wrong, I get why it's happening, but still, it's baffling.
Since blue checkmarks are, for the most part, completely pointless, let me use this post to "verify" myself. I'm gonna list down here all the various places where I'm active in one way or another. Order is mostly random but I'll start with the most obvious one:
And I think that's about it. I'd say that > 90% of my online output happens on this site. Maybe even > 95%. The Kirby forum and read.cv are primarily work/tech related, HN is an odd in-between. But honestly, I could just keep my blog and be perfectly happy.
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2023-04-28 06:00:00
One day I'll write a long, rambly blog post about my story with this crazy first dog of mine. But that day is not today. It will probably happen in a few years and on that occasion, I will tell you about my story with this insane creature. But not today. Not today.
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2023-04-26 06:00:00
Carl sent me this article earlier today. We're both enjoying following the chaos that is Twitter under Elon. Because it's a mix of good ideas, wild experiments on a large scale, and a complete shit-show. As a person who couldn't care less about Twitter and as someone who enjoys seeing complete chaos I have a proposal for Elon: username roulette. Gold checkmarks, gray checkmarks, you two are safe. Everybody else, every 3 months, we grab all the usernames, we give them a nice shake and we distribute them at random. That is gonna fix the impersonation issue very quickly considering no one will know who's who anymore. Problem solved.
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2023-04-21 06:00:00
Politics, in general, are not my thing. I don't like to follow politics and I'm not actively involved in it. That said, I do enjoy reading news and discussions when politics and technology are both involved. I especially enjoy reading people's perspectives on these topics. One thing I'm noticing more and more though, is that most people are quick to point out what's wrong about something, but almost never offer solutions or alternatives.
And that is because complaining or pointing fingers is the easy part. Figuring out alternatives is hard and it's especially hard because it forces me into the uncomfortable position of getting criticised by others. If I just complain, it's easier for me to find a consensus.
It's also very easy to find consensus when I ignore the details. And details, are tricky. Especially in politics. Want an example? Let's pick a topic that is not controversial at all: abortion.
Most debates around the subject usually try to divide people into two camps: pro-life or pro-choice. That is technically fine, but is also completely pointless because those two camps leave out all the important details.
And here there are A LOT of details that need to be discussed. Pro-life? Cool. Are there any acceptable exceptions? Who takes care of the baby if it's an unwanted pregnancy? What do we do if the life of the mother is in danger? What do we do if there are medical complications to the foetus? Pro-choice? Again, are there acceptable exceptions? Is there a point during the pregnancy when it's no longer acceptable to abort? Are all reasons considered valid?
And the list goes on and on and on. And if we have to legislate a topic like this, those questions need to be answered. And the same is true for any other topic. There's this bizarre case related to copyright and AI at the moment that is genuinely fascinating. And it's gonna be fun to see how laws will evolve and try to adapt to a fast-evolving landscape.
That said, I still find it useful to ask myself a lot of questions when I see something that looks "wrong" at first glance. Because maybe it is wrong, but it's also possible that there is no right either.
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2023-04-19 06:00:00
Clicking on a link on a web page can take you to one of two places:
In my ideal world, 95% or more of the links on a webpage should be of the second type. If you write on the web about anything, please, give me links. I want to be able to click them and discover new websites and keep my web journey going. You should only use the first type when strictly necessary. That is my ideal world.
Unfortunately, I don't live in that world. I would love to. But I don't. I live in the world of marketing, search engine optimisations, and analytics. The world where people want to keep page views high and bounce rate low. And in order to do that they fill their websites with internal links. Which is just the worst.
If you write content for the web, please, link to other websites as much as you can because that's the best way to help other people discover great content.
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2023-04-13 06:00:00
Rob shared a video with me the other day, The Copy and Paste Culture of YouTube, that was also linked in his newsletter which you should check out if you're interested in web design and adjacent topics.
The video itself is quite interesting, it's an exploration of the topic of plagiarism which is apparently rampant and also quite blatant to the point where people are ripping off each other's content word by word. Is that surprising? No. It isn't because, on a platform like YouTube, the users are split into probably two major camps. There's the camp of people who just love the creation process and they make videos to express their creativity and they don't care about the platform itself. Those are the people who'd make videos even if YouTube wasn't a thing. And then there's the camp of people who see YouTube as a career or a business opportunity. They're in the game to make money and if a path to that is to just copy other people's content and thumbnails so be it.
This to me isn't at all surprising. You see it everywhere. As soon as you add weird incentives—can be money, followers, likes, fame, whatever—people will inevitably spilt. Some will not care one bit about those incentives because they're driven by the creation process. They'll not stop doing what they do because they simply enjoy the process of creation. Those are the people who I personally like to follow because are the ones that usually make great and interesting content. Other people will just follow the trends. They'll make vlogs when vlogs are popular, they'll pivot to reaction content when reaction content becomes the new meta on the platform and they'll pivot again when a new trend comes up. To me, that is terribly uninspiring but to each their own.
Also, can we really blame people for stealing each other's content and chasing fame and money on YouTube? The internet is obsessed with money. Success stories are measured in dollars. We celebrate people who make fortunes. So why are we surprised if these people are ripping each other off in order to make money fast? They're just playing the game.
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2023-04-12 06:00:00
If you're into writing online you probably heard about Substack. It's a company founded 6 years ago with a focus on newsletters. Their entire business plan was centred around premium newsletters with direct support for the authors and the founders are very bullish on their mission to the point of arguing they're changing the internet.
Just the other day they launched a new feature called Notes which is just another spin on the Twitter concept. I'm not here to discuss the pros and cons of Notes vs Twitter because frankly speaking, I couldn't care less about those two but I am fascinated by what the founders said in a recent post:
Very soon, we’ll launch Notes, a large investment in providing writers with an alternative for growth outside of traditional social networks.
What does "traditional social networks" mean at this point? At what point does Substack also become a "traditional" social network? They started with a newsletters-first model. Most people don't even realise that anymore and think Substack is a blogging platform. Now there's a Notes feature which is essentially Twitter and Substack is pushing people to use their native app. How's that different from a "traditional" social platform? Is the difference that Substack doesn't advertise and instead takes a cut of the premium subscriptions? Will that be sustainable in the long run? I'm skeptical. But it's certainly a fascinating time for the online publishing world.
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2023-04-10 06:00:00
Bit of a weird meta post. Stumbled on this post by Kev that then lead me to this other post of his, then to this other one and I then finally landed on this post by Ru. I find this entire discussion around blogs and blog tools both interesting and incredibly confusing. Confusing because I'm not entirely sure I see all this complexity around the concept of running a blog. Everything seems incredibly easy from my point of view.
This is how it works for me. I write my post on iA Writer, either on my Mac or on my phone. Depending on the mood I'm in, I might run the draft through Carl first which means copy-pasting the content in a shared Dropbox Paper doc. Sometimes I don't feel like bothering him and I skip this step. Which is what's gonna happen for this specific post for example.
When the content is ready, I log into the admin of my site that runs on Kirby, create a new post, pick a title mostly at random, copy-paste the markdown into the backend, and hit publish. Post goes live, RSS feed is updated.
A bunch of people follow my blog via email. I use Buttondown for that. There's no automation. I log in, click the button to compose a new email, copy the content of my new post from my site with HTML formatting and everything, paste it into Buttondown's admin, and hit send. Takes me maybe a minute max.
Publishing involves no automation, no tooling, and no weird deployment. I don't need to mess with the command line, don't have to be at my desk, and nothing will break unexpectedly. It handles images and videos just fine. It's been like that for 6+ years and the only maintenance I do is updating the CMS.
If you want more info let me know, always happy to discuss web dev stuff.
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2023-04-09 06:00:00
During a lovely email exchange, Fabian mentioned the existence of something incredible: a printed book containing the 10000 best internet URLs in German. I can't stop thinking about that book. The idea that someone created a physical artefact whose content is tied to something so ephemeral as a URL it's honestly amazing. And it got me thinking about my internet usage and browsing habits.
10000 is way too many URLs for me to think about but what if I were to scale it down to 1000 or even 100? If I had to select 100 URLs to represent "the best" of what the web has to offer right now, which URLs would I choose? It's such a hard question.
A few of the entries are pretty straightforward because I'm sure they'll be around for a long time and they're obviously important: Wikipedia and the Internet Archive. I have to admit that picking the Internet Archive feels almost like cheating.
But after that? I honestly wouldn't know where to start. I'd probably not pick any of the social media platforms and I'd mostly go for independently owned websites: blogs, magazines, and personal sites. Those are IMO the most likely websites to survive in the long run.
This is such a fun thought exercise that I think at some point I'll sit down and compile a list of the 100 best websites. Thank you for sending me down this fun rabbit hole Fabian.
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2023-04-06 06:00:00
I stumble on a website. It's great. Great content, amazing layout, incredible typography. I want to let the author know their site is great and send some praise their way. I scroll down in the footer. Only social media icons. I look for a contact page. It's not there. I check the about page. Nothing. There's no email address or contact form I can use. All the magic of this moment is gone. Public, personal blogs are conversation starters. Not having a way to reach out to you directly kills that opportunity.
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2023-04-05 06:00:00
Look, I get it. You want to bring people on your own site where you can control the design, the look and feel and quite possibly try to nudge them towards a book you're selling or a course or whatever. I get it. But the entire point of having an RSS feed is to prevent me from having to actually go to your site to read what you wrote. RSS is not a notification system. It's a distribution system. Distribution of content. I don't want a notification. I want to read your content. Which is why I subscribed to your RSS feed in the first place. So stop with this nonsense of only serving an excerpt in your RSS feed.
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2023-03-28 06:00:00
I am not a server person by any stretch of the imagination. I do work on the web though and I have to deal with server administration for myself, for friends and for clients. It's not something I particularly enjoy doing but I don't hate it either. The fun part is that if I do my job properly, none of you should notice it.
Over the last couple of weeks I set up a new servers for myself and for Carl. This blog, Minimalissimo, its shop, Carl's personal site and mnmll.ist are now all running on new VPS. I moved away from Digital Ocean and I'm now a Hetzner user. 3 reasons for that:
I'm still using Runcloud to handle all my servers and I genuinely love the service. If like me you have to handle servers but don't like to deal with them, definitely give it a try.
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2023-03-24 07:00:00
There's no blue checkmark to prove it but I am, a human. Shocking, I know. It sounds rather bizarre to even think about, but with all the advancements in machine learning, large language models and AIs, it won't be long before the internet is filled with "non-humans". The web is already filled with content, created by humans and designed to be consumed by robots. Everything these days seems to be tailored to make our robot overlords happy. From YouTube videos designed to please the algorithm, released at a pace that is optimised for engagement on the platform, to blog posts written with perfect SEO in mind. The justification is usually that this is what we have to do in order to help people discover our content. But soon it's not even gonna be our content. Humans will ask AIs to create content to make other AIs happy. I'm sure I'll get to a point where I'll start second guessing each post in front of me: has this been written by a human? Is there an actual human being I can connect with on the other side of this? At least when it comes to me, to this space I carved out for myself, I can guarantee you that the answer is and will always be yes. Yes, there is an actual human being on the other side of these words you're reading right now. One you can connect with at any time, if you so desire.
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2023-03-22 07:00:00
I often receive emails from people telling me they like the tone of my writing, my "writing voice". As much as I appreciate the compliment, it always left me a bit perplexed because to me, my blog doesn't have a specific voice. I never cared about the way I write or even considered the possibility of writing with a specific tone of voice in mind. This is probably the result of me applying an involuntary beginner’s mind to my writing. I write the way I think because that's all I know. I don't know how to write in any other way and this voice, this tone, is just the result of that. I consider these posts part of a conversation and when I talk to people, I don't overthink the way I speak. I just speak. And when I write, I just write.
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2023-03-20 07:00:00
A few days ago I ranted against web font licenses. Nothing changed since then other than the fact that I feel less lonely because apparently quite a few people out there also think the entire licensing world around web fonts is idiotic.
In his post, Brad has taken the topic one step further and questioned the utility of custom fonts on the web in general. He makes solid points and you should go read his post if you're interested. What I want to do here, to add to the conversation, is perform some calculations.
I checked the server logs and as of today, I see around 12,500 hits on my rant post. My entire site is just 1 http request—2 if you include the favicon—and the weight of the page varies depending on the length of the post. In this case, we're looking at ~10.5KB of compressed data according to Firefox dev tools. That is ~130MB of bandwidth used to serve those 12,500 requests. My site doesn't use web fonts but what if it did? I'd need at least 3 font files from the Iowan Old Style family, a regular, an italic and a bold. I just checked and that's around 80KB. 8x the size of the entire post, just for a custom font that adds nothing to the actual experience of consuming the content of my site. It would have added a solid Gigabyte of extra bandwidth consumed. And if I did what most people with blogs do and included a completely pointless image from Unsplash I would have increased the page weight by another 150KB easily, and that would have resulted in almost 2 extra Gigabytes of bandwidth consumed. 130MB vs ~3GB. To me, that's a no brainer.
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2023-03-18 07:00:00
Earlier today Rachel posted a note on her lovely personal site.
what i meant to say is that something about replacing words and thoughts or basically perpetually publicly editing personal thoughts and feelings doesn’t feel like what i want this space to be.
I dislike the concept of editing old content on personal sites. And the motivation is related to my love for simple, straight to the point, chronologically organised personal blogs. I believe a personal blog can and should be a representation of who you are at different points in time. We change, we grow and our thoughts and ideas grow and change with us. And it's important to have testament of that. If I change my mind on something and I go back end edit my post from 4 years ago, there's no way for you to see and be aware of that change. And that's a shame. Now, obviously some people don't want to have their past self to be available online and that's fine. It's understandable. I'm not claiming everyone should do what I say. I'm a nobody in this world and you should just do what you think is right for you.
one way i’ve tried to accomplish that here is by calling these posts “notes” versus something like “posts” or “essays” which to me feel more serious.
For a very similar reason, mine are not called posts, or notes, but thoughts. My thoughts are messy, unstructured, and ever evolving. And that's fine. And it's fine if my content has typos. It's fine if my English is not perfect. It's fine if I didn't express what I have in mind clearly at my first try. I'm not going to edit it. I'm gonna write a follow up post. Because that is what happens in real life when I talk with people. I don't stop and go back to edit what I said. That is not an option I have and I love that my site works the same way.
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2023-03-17 07:00:00
Not a custom, special one at least. I have a very modest and humble take for you: my blog is perfect. Now, I'm not saying it's perfect from a technical stand point. Or even from a design stand point. Or even from a content perspective. It's far from perfect in that sense and it will most likely always be. I'm saying it's the perfect personal blog in terms of structure.
The homepage is the most recent post which means you don't have to figure out if I posted something new since the last time you visited and I truly believe that is how a personal blog is supposed to be. I also believe a personal site shouldn't have categories or tags but just content listed chronologically.
Your most recent post, an archive and one or two static pages for bio, contacts and that kind of stuff. That's all a personal blog really needs.
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2023-03-10 07:00:00
I make websites for a living. If you make websites for a living, sooner or later, you'll have to deal with web fonts. Yes, you can technically avoid them by going down the system fonts route, but designers love their fancy typefaces. And I don't blame them. Some of them are great, even though a part of me is happy that I can just default on Inter every time I need a sans. But I digress, this is not a discussion about typefaces, it's a discussion about web font licenses.
I paid for typefaces in the past. I used Maison Neue on an old version of this website. Lovely typeface. Would I ever consider using it again? Hell no. Why? Money. How much would it cost to bring back the lovely Maison Neue? Let's see… I'd need at least 3 separate fonts—a regular, a bold, and an italic—plus a monospaced version since I do have bits of code here and there. That would cost me 400€. And to be fair to Milieu Grotesque, at least it’s a one time purchase. So if I buy it now, at least I own the font and I can use it for other projects right? Nope. The font is tied to the domain name and I can only use it on this one domain. Oh and I can only use it if my site does less than 250,000 page views. Why? Is there some technical limitation? Nope. No good reason. Typefaces are, to the best of my knowledge, the only digital product that try to fuck you over with bullshit licenses.
I've seen all possible permutations. Licenses where you buy a fixed number of page views and once those are "used" (whatever the fuck that means) you have to buy some more. Licenses that require you to include a tracking script but then make you host the files. Licenses that are tied to domain names. The award for the most idiotic goes to the Akzidenz-Grotesk that as far as I can tell, is only purchasable as a complete family, starts at 10,000 page views a month which is nothing, and you have to renew the license each year. Oh and it's 1,200€. So many times I was willing to pay for a font only to walk away when presented with an idiotic license. And I just don't get it. Now, not all of them are like that. There are good people out there that simply make you pay a regular license and you're good to go. Most of them sadly use that idiotic pricing scheme that uses page views to determine the price which is just so stupid because either 1) you can't track my page views and so I can just lie or 2) you ask me to include some sort of tracking on my site for a goddamn font. It makes me so mad frankly. It's a digital product. It doesn't require maintenance. It doesn't require updates. Make it available at a price you think is fair and let's be done with it.
Rob suggested to include links to good resources and he's right so here we go. If you have more to suggest get in touch:
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2023-03-09 07:00:00
In the product development world there's a term called MVP that stands for minimum viable product. An MVP is the most bare-bones version of a product that you can realistically put out in the world for people to use. I love blogs. Both as a source of content to consume as well as tech objects themselves. Coding and designing blogs is fun. If I could spend my days coding blogs for people I'd die a happy person. And you know what else is fun? Coming up with what I will jokingly refer to as the MVB, the minimum viable blog. Before I start with this project, let's first get a baseline definition of what a blog is according to Wikipedia:
A blog is an informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page.
Pretty straightforward. Has to be available on the WWW which means you have to be able to access it through a browser somehow. Has to contain text entries and those text entries are usually displayed in chronological order. So, let's figure out how simple a blog can get.
I'm gonna make a few assumptions here and I’m absolutely sure that some of you out there with a lot more tech skills than me will yell at the screen saying that you can absolutely code a blog without what I'm about to mention, and you're probably right to. But you have to remember something: I am, fundamentally, an idiot and not some super tech guru and so my knowledge only goes as far. But if you can improve on my idea, be my guest. So, the assumptions:
Without those two things it's kinda hard to have a website. The domain is the boring part and there's not much to be said here. It's a domain. You buy it, you make it point to your server and that's about it. But since the goal is to make an MVB let's figure out how minimal we can make that domain. According to this document there are currently 1480 TLDs. Shortest we can go is two letters and out of all the two letters TLDs, the absolute shortest ones are, visually and graphically, .li and .il both of which have to be discarded. .il mandates an attached second level such as .com.il while .li doesn't allow for single letter domain name and minimum length is three. So both those options are out. We want a TLD that is short and allows for a single letter domain name. This is obviously just a thought exercise because all the one letter domains are either in use or parked but, if I had to pick a winner I'd vote for t.tt. Four total characters. As for the actual domain configuration, I believe the only thing you really need is a single A record pointing towards a server.
Speaking about the server, we could discuss the simplest possible web server out there. We could, but we won't. Why? Because I know shit about web servers. Maybe something like Caddy is a good candidate but again, I'm sure some of you tech wizards out there can create a web server with just a single config file of some sort. So, we have a server, we have our fancy t.tt domain name and it's now time to make a "website".
Before we can figure out the simplest possible blog, since a blog is a website, we need to have a definition of what a website is. Since I can't be a blogger in 2023 without using ChatGPT at least once, I'm gonna ask it for a definition. Hey cGPT, what is a website?
A website is a collection of interconnected web pages or documents that are typically accessed through a browser. These web pages are typically written in HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia elements. Websites are hosted on servers and can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection.
So, in order to make a blog, which is a type of website, we need pages. Not a page but pages. This rules out my first idea of just dumping some text inside an index file in the root of our server and call it a day.
Clearly we need something extra. What if, instead of dumping all content inside a single text file, we make separate text files and we let the server do the rest?
Is this a blog? I mean, it's multiple pages. There are links. And it’s available on the web. You can browse them. I'd say yes. If what you care about is just serving text and nothing more, this might be a solution. And some people are doing exactly this which is awesome! A blog like this could run forever with close to no maintenance. When you want to push a new post live you just connect to the server via sftp, upload your new txt file and you're done.
You mean you want to upload images? I guess that's a reasonable request in 2023. Is there a way to have images in a plain text file? Unless you want to convert everything into ASCII art I think the answer is no. An option could be to convert our blog posts into folders, store images and text together and then simply reference the images inside the text. This could technically work but it looks like a terrible system.
I think it's unavoidable at this point. We have to deal with some basic HTML. If we don't care about semantics, proper validation and all that we could get away with just <a> and <img> but once we switch from .txt to .html for our files we also lose text formatting and everything is one long line of text. Is this an acceptable trade-off? You decide. Maybe there is a way to preserve formatting without using <pre> tags that I'm not aware of. If there is, let me know.
So we need HTML but writing it by hand is a pain in the ass. Easiest solution is to use your text editor to do it for you. Majority of writing apps have a "save as HTML" or "export as HTML" somewhere. For example, I'm using iA Writer to write this post and in here I can do File -> Export -> Export To: HTML and what I get is a lovely, basic HTML file ready for me to upload on my server.
Is this the MVB I'm looking for? Maybe. Or maybe not. Still, with something like this, a person with close to no technical knowledge could maintain a blog without ever needing to update anything probably ever. A setup this simple will hardly be targeted by hackers and requires very little maintenance. Would this be the most visually beautiful blog? Probably not. The most functional and feature rich? Definitely no. But it is a blog and it can be used to share content with the world and that's more than enough in my view.
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2023-03-07 07:00:00
The monetisation of online content in the context of side projects is something I discussed way too many times with both Rob and Carl. I started working on the web more than 10 years ago and I worked on side projects since the very beginning. And when you run a side project, the topic of monetisation inevitably comes up. And it's not just side projects. The monetisation of online content continues to be a relevant topic. I love to run weird experiments with my projects. Back when I was running The Gallery I tried a few different approaches. One time I emailed all the people who submitted content over the years and asked them to support directly. Another time I displayed a fullscreen overlay to ask for support. These were one-off experiments designed mostly to test what was possible in terms of monetisation. What I learned is that if you want to rely on donations you either have to set your expectations very low or you have to constantly remind people that they can—and should—throw a dollar or two towards projects they care about. But, from my point of view, that's exhausting. Constantly bothering people to ask for support is a pain, which is why I removed the link to my Donorbox from the site. It was pointless to have it there and the vast majority of the people will never consider donating unless presented with an annoying modal or popup.
So, spontaneous donations are definitely not the way to go if you want to earn something from a side project. What's the next best thing then? Subscriptions/Memberships. Those are becoming more and more common thanks in part to things like Patreon and BuyMeACoffee, but also Substack, which is pushing pretty much everyone towards monetising their content. The problem with subscriptions is that you have to provide constant value and also provide something extra to the people who are subscribed. After all, why should someone subscribe if they can access the same content for free? And that creates this weird situation where you have to paywall some content in order to make the subscription worthwhile. Which is absolutely fine; some content is worth paying for. But even on a platform like Substack, money is not distributed evenly. As it's often the case, a small % of the creators make up a huge % of the money. That will always be true and there's no way around this issue.
The only other option left to monetise content is advertising or sponsorships. I personally like sponsorships. They're the least terrible way to monetise content from a commercial stand point. And when done well, they can even provide some value to your audience. Traditional advertising (I'm talking about Google Ads and similar solutions) can be kinda nasty because you have very little control over what's displayed on your site but with sponsorships you are in control of everything. Which is why I pitched the idea to Carl of bringing back sponsors on Minimalissimo. The idea is a bit of a weird one and was very much inspired by the insanity that is the NBA world where they manage to get a sponsor for literally everything. And so rather than doing site wide sponsors, we decided to try something a bit different and come up with category sponsors. The idea is to never have more than one single sponsor visible per page and to make it as pertinent as possible to the content of the page. We’re also not setting a price for sponsors. We’re encouraging brands to pay what they feel is fair.
Will this approach work? Who knows? But it’s a fun experiment.
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2023-03-04 07:00:00
"I don't know what to write about" and "what if no one will read it?". These are the two most common reasons why people don't want to start a personal blog. I already addressed the first one, so let me tackle the second one in the easiest way possible: I'll read it. If you decide to start a blog in either English or Italian, I'll read it. I don't care about the topic. Start a blog, write something, send it to me, and I'll read it. And you'll have your first reader. If you add an RSS feed to your blog, I'll add you to my reading list, and I'll keep reading what you post. As soon as a bunch of you have blogs, I'll compile a list and make it available on this site. Hopefully, more people will read what you write. But I promise you that if you start writing, you'll have a reader.
Chris decided to join me so you have two readers already. If you want to become a reader let me know and I'll include a link to your post here.
The old list has been moved over to my "blogs" page. I have bigger plans for these lists I'm compiling and are related to my People and Blogs project
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2023-03-02 07:00:00
I code websites for a living. I've been doing that for a bit over 10 years. I don't consider myself especially good at it and after 10 years I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of it. I don't just code, I also do a bit of design and I often get labeled as a minimalist. The combination of these three things culminates in my appreciation for simple, well designed websites.
I spent a lot of time coding, designing and improving my personal website—I wrote about it in the past—and websites, especially personal ones, is something I find myself thinking about a lot. Personal websites, for some reason, really resonate with me.
In my spare time I curate a list of sites—mostly quirky personal ones—for The Forest. But every time I go through the list of submitted websites I can't avoid noticing that the vast, vast majority are developers' personal websites and blogs. Blogs where they talk about coding. Which is fine, but it's also a bit depressing. I mean, this is not the early days of the web, where you had to be a bit of a nerd to get online. And yet, even though it should be simple enough to get a website, very few people seem to do it.
Is running a personal website still that complex? I'm genuinely asking because I obviously don't know. It clearly isn't for me to determine. I’m a developer after all.
More than once I considered giving away my personal site to people who want a simple blog for themselves, and a few people are running almost identical copies of my site. But reflecting on it, this site, is still fairly complex for a non tech-savvy user. There's a CMS behind it, you need to use markdown and you have to self host it. Could this same design—or a similar one—be made available in a simpler form? Again, I don't know. I could port it to Hugo or Jekyll but I think the end result would make it harder to use, not simpler. Could I perhaps code a version of this same design for something like Micro.blog? Maybe yes but then you're tied to a platform and it's not really your site anymore.
It's almost as if a website is stuck in this limbo where you'll either have to acquire some tech skills to run it or you'll have to depend on a platform. It's honestly a bit depressing.
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2023-03-01 07:00:00
I've been on more lakes in the past 12 months than in the previous 30 something years of my life. Is my life trying to tell me something? Who knows.
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2023-02-16 07:00:00
For almost 7 years I curated a website gallery. It was fun and rewarding. It was also something useful for me at the time and also useful for countless others. I find curated directories to be of great value, no matter the context. There is value in knowing that there's someone I can trust out there when it comes to something. If you're into minimalism you know you can trust Carl to publish something great on minimalissimo.com. The man is on a mission and trust me when I say that he's very picky when it comes to what goes up on the site. Which is a good thing. You want that level of attention to details in a curated directory. Because as soon as you start compromising on the quality of the content, the value of the directory as a whole goes to shit.
I stopped curating my thegallery.io partly because it was no longer all that useful to me personally, but also because there are plenty of alternatives out there with great curation: minimal.gallery, siteinspire.com, klikkentheke.com to name a few. And that's great because I know I can now trust those galleries and don't worry about collecting the content myself. It also means I have time to curate something else, like the newly relaunched mnmll.ist.
Curation is important and it's gonna be even more important with the rise of AI generated crap content. I want a human in the loop with good taste and good judgment to curate good content for me. A human I can trust.
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2023-02-14 07:00:00
It's a bizarre question, I know, but let me explain. The other day, I was reading a post about capitalism and loneliness—it's an interesting read—and in the discussion that followed the post, someone commented:
If having friends and community is truly valuable to people, then there is a huge business opportunity to provide that value.
My gut reaction was, "Wait, what?" It's obviously provocative, and I can respect that. But I kept thinking about it for some reason. Not because I see a business opportunity—I find the idea appalling—but because it's an interesting thought exercise. And it's especially interesting with the rise of all these chat AIs. It's only a matter of time before someone creates a virtual friend, some sort of Tamagotchi on steroids. Something you can always interact with, that is never asleep, and that is always there for you. Would you pay for something like that? And how much? How much is a friendship worth?
I have had countless interactions with people I've never actually met in person or spoken with. Our interactions only happened via text. What if I were to be replaced by a chatbot? Would they notice the difference? Would you notice a difference? How do you know that this post hasn't been written by ChatGPT? And, conversely, how can I prove that it hasn't been written by ChatGPT? I could snap a picture of myself, sitting here in front of my keyboard, typing these exact words while drinking tea, but come on, I'm sure an AI can generate that picture if prompted.
In a world that will inevitably be dominated by generated content, how much are "real" interactions worth? And what's the actual value here? You can have chats with a bot these days that are probably way more interesting than an email exchange with me. Why should an interaction with me be more valuable then? I have honestly no answers to any of these questions, but I find it extremely fascinating that we've reached the point where asking them is not all that insane.
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2023-02-13 07:00:00
I have relatives who were born just a few short years after WW1 ended and are still alive. My father was born less than 13 years after WW2 ended. We call it history, we learn about it in history books, and at times it feels so distant. But here, and in many other places, you can still walk through that history. Its marks are still there, and that's a good thing.
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2023-02-09 07:00:00
They say "don't let perfect be the enemy of good". When it comes to blogging on a personal site I'd also suggest to embrace the "good enough" mindset. There are situations where you want to spend time fine-tuning your writing, choosing the perfect word, and rewriting the same sentence until it's perfect. I'd argue that a personal blog is not the place for that. Not because it's not worth it but because it's not really necessary. Personal blogs to me are more like conversations. When you talk to someone you don't say the same thing four different times until you find the perfect phrase. You just talk, you communicate and if something is not clear you clarify it.
I see way too many people online saying that they don't write because they don't like their writing and they don't think what they write is good enough. I'll call bullshit on that. Your writing is good enough. If I can have a blog and I can write so can you.
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2023-02-08 07:00:00
Since the post I'm about to answer to was written in Italian I thought it was a good idea to write it in Italian. So, if you don't speak Italian, you can probably skip this one. Or not, maybe you can have fun trying to read it anyway.
Il post al quale voglio andare a rispondere—anche se risposta è una parola grossa—è il seguente: Harry Potter e la pietra dello scandalo. Dico parola grossa perchè non è realmente una risposta la mia, più un commento personale su quello che Lorenzo ha scritto. Inutile dire che sarebbe cosa utile e saggia leggere prima il suo post e magari, già che sei li, puoi pure pensare di iscriverti al suo Substack. La domanda che ha posto ad inizio articolo è interessante:
Come gestiamo la copertura di prodotti che alla base hanno autori e autrici o aziende controverse?
Il contesto è l'uscita del gioco Hogwarts Legacy e il suo ovvio legame con J.K. Rowling, autrice che nel passato più recente ha causato una serie di controversie per quello che ha scritto, per lo più su Twitter (credo, non sono esattamente super aggiornato sulla situazione perchè, francamente, non me ne potrebbe fregare di meno di lei e di cosa succede su Twitter). Il tema è un po' sempre quello e viene fuori periodicamente, ogni volta che un personaggio nel panorama dello spettacolo/arte/intrattenimento è coinvolto in qualche scandalo: come ci si rapporta con l'arte quando l'artista ha visioni discutibili? La metto giù così la domanda giusto per rimanere vago perchè essere più specifici non ha alcuna rilevanza con il tema di questo post.
La domanda extra che pone Lorenzo è come si devono comportare le persone che, come lui, si ritrovano a dover coprire alcuni prodotti da un punto di vista mediatico. Non tenterò di riassumere la sua posizione e il suo post è ad un click di distanza quindi, se ti interessa, vai a leggerlo e salto direttamente alla mia di opinione.
Se il tuo lavoro è, per esempio, fare review di videogiochi e io, da consumatore, vengo da te per una review di un videogioco, quello che mi aspetto è una review di un videogioco. Che sia chiaro: quello che intendo dire non è che non ci deve essere spazio per altre cose, che non sia giusto discutere tematiche più ampie ed importanti. Ma dico che ci sia un tempo e un modo giusto per ogni cosa. E se da una parte è giusto provare un minimo ad influenzare le discussioni e spingere un po' alcune tematiche sociali, dall'altra è importante ricordare anche che non possiamo alienare interi gruppi della popolazione tartassandoli con tematiche "cariche" in continuazione. Questo non perchè non sia importante, ma perchè è controproducente.
Come in tutte le cose, serve trovare il compromesso. Serve pazienza, serve perseveranza. I cambiamenti sociali non avvengono dall'oggi al domani. Richiedono tempo. E come giustamente scrive Lorenzo, serve anche un po' di coraggio da parte di chi i contenuti li crea, serve la volontà di esporsi, di condividere le proprie opinioni personali e di essere disposti ad ingaggiare in discussioni più o meno scomode. Perchè senza dialogo—quello vero, quello costruttivo—non si va da nessuna parte.
Quindi ok il boicotto, ok il post sui social ma non fermiamoci li. Proviamo a parlarne delle cose. Confrontiamoci, scambiamo opinioni, approfondiamo. Solo così le cose possono progredire.
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2023-02-05 07:00:00
I started working as a freelancer in late 2011, on a PC I assembled myself. I knew that was not going to last. In the spring of 2012 I bought my first Mac, a 17" Mac Book Pro. The first thing I did, after initial setup, was to log into the store and buy iA Writer.
iA Writer came out in late 2010 and I remember being so envious of Mac people because they had access to such a great piece of software. I'm not exaggerating in saying that iA Writer was one of the primary reasons why I switched to Mac.
I purchased the—now legacy—first version in April 2012. I then upgraded in 2013 when the new version came out. I bought my first iPhone in December 2014 and guess what's the first app I purchased? Yup, iA Writer for iOS. Still sitting there in my account, at the bottom of the list, December 2nd 2014.
I'm writing this piece on my old 13" MBP, using iA Writer. I write my weird newsletter from the top of a mountain using iA on my phone. I make to do lists with iA Writer. It's been almost 10 years. This seemingly simple piece of software has been with me for a third of my life and almost my entire professional life. Many other apps came and went. This stayed. And will continue to stay with me hopefully forever. Why? Because it never tried to do anything more than what it was supposed to do: help me focus on writing. Each iteration of the app added something new but without sacrificing or compromising what it was at the beginning. It's still a stupidly minimal piece of software, with gorgeous typography and what to me is the best writing experience possible.
So thank you, iA. Thank you for putting all this care and attention on a piece of software. Thank you for not following the stupid trend of trying to make an app do everything. Thank you for not going down the subscription route. I, and I'm sure many others really, REALLY appreciate it.
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2023-01-30 07:00:00
I've never been a sea person and I much prefer to spend my time up in the mountains but I have to admit that walking on the beach in the winter is very enjoyable. Especially when you're in good company.
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2023-01-27 07:00:00
For the longest time, people were responsible for creating content for the web. And, in an ideal world, search engines were the tools to help you discover said content. Then money got involved, people started tweaking their content in order to win the SEO game and rank higher and higher, and quickly the web become the cesspool that it is now. You can't trust the first 10 or 20 results for any given search because you constantly land on some garbage website. This is the state with just people writing content.
But things are about to change—for the worse—and become a lot more messy because finally, FINALLY, we have not only people writing garbage content but also bots. You might have read about or even tried these new fancy AI powered chat bots and discovered what they're capable of. And you can bet that marketing people are salivating at the idea of deploying these tools to pump out even more SEO optimised content, AKA fucking garbage. Good luck finding quality content.
There must be a solution to this problem right? Well, maybe. I'm not so sure. People right now are getting some luck by searching directly on a reduced subset of the web (they search on Reddit) with the assumption (hope?) that at least there the content is authentic and genuinely written by human beings with good intentions. I'm sure that's also going to end real fast.
In my opinion, there are only two solutions to this problem. The first, is to ditch Google and use some other search engine. Brave is apparently building its own index and Kagi is an interesting experiment because they're going down the premium route. Maybe they'll care more about quality content.
The second option is to rely less on search engines and more on human curation and human networks. Rather than searching for a product recommendation, search for people with knowledge and ask for their opinion. Make connections. And also, if you have the tools and the time, try making content worth consuming. Create, curate, share and interact with others. As a human.
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2023-01-23 07:00:00
If I say something about “having a job” a specific set of thoughts will probably come to your mind. It could be your daily commute, dealing with your colleagues, your office, or it could be a myriad of other things. I am turning 34 this year. I never commuted to my job. I never had a salary and never had paid vacation. I am self employed. Always have been and probably always will be. If you and I were to discuss anything job related, without first clarifying what “having a job” means to both of us, our discussion would probably end up being very confused and possibly lead to misunderstandings. That’s because words have meaning but that meaning is often shaped by our life circumstances and experiences.
Now what if instead of talking about jobs we were talking about things that are a lot more blurry such as emotions or feelings or complex ideologies? And what if we did that through 280 character tweets? We would make a mess. We are making a mess. Discussing anything is hard. It’s hard in person, even with people you know well. It’s harder online, with strangers. The solution to this? Kindness and curiosity. Be kind with the person on the other side and try ask as many questions as you can in order to get a sense of what you really share with this other human being. Only at that point you can really try to tackle more complex discussions. Because without a shared understanding of where we are in life and what words mean to us, there's no room for constructive interactions.
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2023-01-17 07:00:00
Earlier this morning while poking around the blogs I have saved in my RSS reader I stumbled upon this post by Matthias (a post I’ve read before). The message of the post regarding publishing is something I agree with:
Here is a thought. Maybe, we are overthinking it. Maybe, the one thing we should care most about is just putting stuff out there. At least, this is the primary reason we have a personal website, right? We have it to document and share random thoughts, things we learned, and nuggets we found. If we don’t put stuff out there, why have a website in the first place?
What's more interesting to me personally, is why people are struggling with blogging in the first place. Matthias lists a few examples at the beginning:
And although those are all reasonable examples, I still find it baffling that people are having such a hard time putting content out in the wild. Especially if we consider that there seems to be no shortage of content posted on social media in the first place.
So here's my advice for you, if you want to start a blog. Firstly, be yourself. You are, by default, interesting. We all live different lives, we all have different interests, we all have different life stories. So be yourself, share what you find interesting to you. And secondly—and this is gonna sound a bit harsh—the vast majority of the people out there won't give a shit about you and your content. And that's OK. It's even comforting. Don't waste time figuring out the perfect way to say something or the perfect topic for your blog. Don't go insane curating your online persona. Be yourself. Be authentic. Talk about what you're passionate about. But also, don't be boring. "But I am boring" you're probably thinking. No, you're not. You‘re only boring if you only talk about one single goddamn thing all day, every day. I have read way too many blogs, by developers, where they only talk about web development. Which is fine, I guess. But like in real life, if you only talk about the same thing over and over and over again, you'll end up alienating the people around you. So mix it up. Post a picture every now and then, talk about a book you read or a movie you watched or a place you visited. Talk about an interesting conversation. And don't be afraid to put things out there and to interact with other people. If you don't know where to start, hit me up via email and I'll be happy to help you out.
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2023-01-14 07:00:00
I must say: Umbria, lovely part of the country. Never been there before, will definitely visit again because it really is a beautiful part of Italy. Since I'm no travel blogger I won't post more than this one picture but there's an iCloud album with a couple of pictures for you to see, if you want to see more.
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2023-01-07 07:00:00
Quentin Tarantino famously said he was only going to make 10 movies. If he will stick to his words or not that remains to be seen, but the idea of having a hard cap to a creative output is something I appreciate more and more. I deeply respect people who have the courage to quit when they feel they have done what they wanted to do, expressed what they wanted to express, created what they wanted to create.
In today's world, and especially in today's creators economy, quitting is rare. When people find something that "works" they usually keep producing content ad nauseam. And then periodically we have this wave of creators feeling burn out (and they usually announce this by creating more content, go figure).
Leaving behind something that worked in order to pursue something new takes courage. We should celebrate more people who do it. It's not even quitting. It's called being done with something. And that's a good thing.
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2023-01-06 07:00:00
More a PSA than an actual blog post but still worth posting. Even though it's written before the archive at the bottom of each article, some of you might have missed the fact that the content of my site is available via RSS. Because having the entire archive available on RSS was a bit too much, the feed only contains the 20 most recent posts, which is plenty enough for my use case considering I don't post all that often. I used to offer the feed in both XML and JSON formats but I realised it was a bit overkill and I now only have the old school RSS+XML available. Also, if you don't care about my ramblings and you're here for the—very sporadic—pretty pictures, I do have an Instagram-like feed with just that content.
And since we're talking feeds, Minimalissimo now has dedicated feeds for each category so if you only care about Carl's selection of bunker inspired homes you now have an even more convenient way to stay up to date with what's new. Your reader should automatically find all the links so I'm not going to list them all here.
And speaking of readers, if you don't have one and you want to get into RSS, I wrote something on the subject months ago.
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2023-01-05 07:00:00
I wrote about my hate for money before. It's not that I hate money as a concept. Conceptually it's fine, it's just that what we built around it, as a society, is becoming increasingly awful. And it's especially awful in the context of the web and it's an unsolvable problem in my opinion. There's two things, when combined, make today's web, for the most part, absolutely atrocious:
There's also this free-for-all mentality where everyone seems to show they care about the integrity of the whole system but in reality they're there for themselves and their priority is, guess what, making money. I'm generalising obviously, not everyone is like that but sadly a good chunk of the web is—or at least feels—like that.
And we won't stop it. There's just no way around it. As long as there's some financial incentive people will keep playing the game. We yell and scream when we hear about big social media companies doing godawful things with our data and attention, yet we have no issues applying the stupidest marketing tricks to sell some service or product.
Things will not slow down. Things will not improve. Just consider the past couple of years. We went through the insanity of the GameStop stock market shenanigans, the crypto and NFT craze and now it's ChatGPT and AI generation era where everyone is trying to sell some AI service that generates something, even if that something has close to zero value. All that while wasting probably a shit ton of resources.
Where's the human value in all this? What the fuck are we doing here?
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2023-01-02 07:00:00
What better way to start the new year on this blog than a picture of a peaceful cat sleeping happily on a meditation cushion? I find watching cats sleeping so relaxing for some odd reason.
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2022-12-26 07:00:00
I have a blog. It is successful. So let me tell you how to start yours by describing exactly how to make a copy of mine. Wouldn't that be an incredibly useful and creative blog post? One minor problem… two actually. First, my blog is definitely not successful (and that's a feature, not a bug) and second, there are many, many good ways to start a blog. So, let me just write down some of the ways you can start a blog—a successful one—in 2023.
If that's you, well, there are good solutions out there. If your budget is 0 you won't really own your place online since you won't own your domain name but if that's okay with you then great. For this particular use case, starting a blog comes down to picking the platform you like, signing up and you're good to go. Some platforms available to you are, in no particular order:
These are some of the options and by no means all the options and all of them have some pros and cons. If it was up to me, if I were to start a successful blog in 2023 I'd pick Substack mainly because it's probably easier to grow out of it and is the more focused.
If you're in this camp, then you have two solutions. You can either pick some of the platforms listed earlier and add a custom domain which would make your place on the web a bit more yours since you'd then own the URLs, or you can use a premium blogging platform. If I had to pay for a platform I'd pay for micro.blog right now. Because it's the one that seems to be run with the most sense and I personally love the approach. But there are other options.
Get yourself an account on ghost.org. It's probably the best premium blogging/publishing platform available. Expensive, sure, but you said you have money so here we are.
You're basically in the camp I'm in. I can't afford to spend a lot running a server for my stuff just for fun but I do have enough skills to make and run my own blog. I'd say your best options are to pick a CMS—I'd go file based if I were you—and then I'd host my site on a relatively cheap VPS. You can keep a personal site up for less than $5/m, domain included which to me sounds like a reasonable price to pay.
Hire a developer and a designer. Done. Have someone else worry about all the sysadmin stuff and enjoy writing.
Okay, now that you have a successful blog online, it's time to create some content. You'd think that would come before becoming successful, but that is so old school. First you start a successful blog—in 2023, come back next year for an updated guide wink wink—and then you start creating content. What should you blog about? Just blog about anything you find interesting and thought-provoking. And use it to reply to people whose content you find interesting. Blogs are more fun when they’re used to have conversations. If you only have a blog to talk about yourself, it's fine but it's also a bit boring.
Questions? Comments? Get in touch via email.
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2022-12-21 07:00:00
2022 is quickly coming to an end. I still have six books on my list I wanted to get through, but unless I decide to do nothing but read for the next 10 days those will stay unread until the new year. I might get through one of those six, maybe two if I decide to dedicate myself. Which is very unlikely because I'm terrible at this sort of thing. But still, even though I'm not a book fiend, 2022 has been a decent year when it comes to book reading and so I wanted to take a moment to recap what I read in the past 300+ days, what I'm reading and what my goals are for the upcoming new year. So, in no particular order:
Does this list tell something about who I am and what I'm interested in? Maybe yes, but you tell me. As for books I'm currently reading we have:
Hopefully none of these are gonna be unread by the time the next year comes to an end, but we'll see how it goes. If you want to keep up with what I'm reading you can follow me on that lovely platform that is Literal.
I asked Carl to publish his list of books because it’s fun to do these things together. You can read his list on his blog. If you decide to publish yours let me know and I’ll make sure to include it down here as well.
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2022-12-19 07:00:00
I had a lovely exchange via email the other day with an American developer where we briefly talked about freedom of speech. It's an intriguing topic for me because it lives at the perfect intersection between technology, ideology and the way human societies actually work. It should be noted—even though it's quite obvious—that I'm not a lawyer and I don't claim to have any particular expertise or profound knowledge on this subject. These are just personal thoughts on the subject from my point of view and I'd be thrilled to discuss it with you if you also have opinions and especially if you're an expert on this topic.
Before I start rambling, I think it's important to have a reference to what the 1st amendment of the United States Constitution actually says since plenty of people—and especially Americans, for obvious reasons—keep referring to it when discussing the topic of online moderation on social media platforms. So, from wiki:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Now, with the reference at hand, I'm gonna say something painfully obvious: social media platforms are not the Congress of the United States and the web is not located in the United States. Shocking, I know. So that alone, makes the argument of "I have freedom of speech!" completely irrelevant and, frankly, quite idiotic. Having said that though, the idea that a platform should "borrow" the 1st as a guiding principle for their moderation policies is certainly intriguing. And I say it while being aware that it's close to impossible to apply it in practice. The beauty of the web, and by extension social media platforms, is its international and borderless nature. I'm writing this blog post in my country and it will live on a server on the other side of the planet, accessed by people from all over the planet. That, is a good thing. We want interactions across the globe to occur. We want open dialogue, we want communication. But while my blog and my digital presence lives in this borderless state, I am very much confined in this lump of meat called a human body that resides in a country with its laws and rules I have to follow. And some of those rules are related to what is and isn't protected in terms of speech. The question now is, if I write something that goes against these rules that exist in my country, should I face the appropriate consequences? What if I write those same things not on my site, but on Twitter? Which set of rules should apply there? Twitter is an American company after all, so should American laws be applied there? Even if "there" means absolutely nothing when it comes to websites that are scattered all over the globe on different servers? Or should Twitter apply Italian laws to me because I am an Italian living in Italy? But how can Twitter even know that I am in fact an Italian living in Italy? I could easily set up an account using a VPN and never reveal my actual location and nationality. Should I then face no consequences? What's confusing to me is this idea that we seem to want absolute freedom of expression AND freedom of any type of consequences. That is precisely NOT how society works.
And I say all this while offering absolutely no alternative solution. Because I genuinely don't know what a good solution to this problem is. It's a complicated issue because humans and society are complicated and it becomes even more complicated when you have millions of people interacting with each other on the same platform. Because there's no shared common ground other than our human nature.
No matter the platform, moderation will always come into play. It's inevitable. It's unavoidable. But how to moderate, and especially how to moderate effectively, is something we can discuss and I think, and hope, that we will collectively come up with a good solution to this problem. Because more communication and more dialogue is always going to be a good thing.
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2022-12-18 07:00:00
I'm obsessed with Marginalia's Similar Website Finder tool. Marginalia itself is already great because it constantly produces quirky and interesting results but the Similar Website Finder is genuinely fun to use. It's such a different way to surf the web. If like me you're interested in weird and niche websites give it a try. And if you find something interesting let me know or submit them to theforest.link. I'm alway looking for new websites to add.
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2022-12-16 07:00:00
If you paid attention to tech/web news lately, you might have noticed the abundance of discussions about the idea of decentralising social media. That is mostly as a result of Twitter's erratic behaviour following Musk's takeover of the platform. I am not going to discuss the details of everything that is getting proposed here and if you want to have that discussion feel free to email me but what I want to say is that I honestly don't get it. The more I look at this "issue" the more I'm convinced the solution is already right there and it's called the web. Want to have an unblockable, unbannable user profile? Buy yourself a domain and get a personal website. Want to have a space where you can say and do whatever the fuck you want? Get a webspace and put up a blog. Do you want to keep up with what other people are doing and saying online? Start using RSS or, and this is gonna sound like a very radical idea, bookmark their websites and every once in a while open them in your browser and see what they're up to. Want to also have discussions? Add comments to your website. Don't care about other people's opinions? Don't add comments to your site. I honestly don't get why people are searching for some new technical solution to a problem that in my opinion doesn't exists. Maybe I'm just too dumb to even realise what the problem is. That's certainly a possibility.
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2022-12-13 07:00:00
Sometimes I write because I'm frustrated by things. Sometimes I write because I have thoughts in my head that I need to elaborate on and writing is my way of doing it. But sometimes I write simply because I want to share something with whoever lands on my site. And what I want to share today is Jatan's blog and in particular his Moon Monday newsletter. Space is not my field but I've always been fascinated by it and I really enjoy learning more about the topic. And who knows, maybe it's something you also enjoy doing in which case give the blog a read. It's really worth it, I promise you.
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2022-12-11 07:00:00
More than 5 years ago (!) I experimented with a year of living without and since 2023 is almost here I think it's time to do it again but with a twist. This time, I plan to actually go an entire year without something. Well, kind of. You see, over the past few months I noticed that my mind is getting increasingly distracted and that has a cascade effect on many other aspects of my life. And what is causing all these problems is the internet. Now, I don't plan to go a year without internet since that's impossible considering the work I do but I do plan to go a year without consuming internet related entertainment. So no mindless browsing out of boredom, no YouTube videos, no random scrolling on Reddit. I also plan to stop listening to all non valuable podcasts. Which to me means no more sport related podcasts. I'll only keep listening to two podcasts and only if the guest is really interesting and the topic is valuable. The only exception to this rule is to consume content that is directly sent to me because if a friend sends me something I don't want to be a jerk and say "sorry I can't watch it because I have this weird self imposed rule". The newly acquired free time is going to be spent either reading books, meditating or working on side projects.
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2022-12-07 07:00:00
I have one. If you have a personal website, you should have one too. It's no mystery that I love emails but I also find it deeply infuriating when someone with a blog has no way to get contacted other than Twitter or now Mastodon. It's frustrating. The only safe assumption when it comes to online people is that we all have at least one email address and that should be the default way to get contacted. And I'm aware of the issue with spam and all that kind of crap. But I tell you, I had a public email online for now close to a decade and my inbox is definitely not filled with spam.
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2022-12-04 07:00:00
This is not a how-to guide. And the reason why it’s not, is because I don't have an answer to provide. This is something I've been pondering and the more I think about it the more I'm confused. It started with a practical question: what's the best way to stay informed. But it quickly evolved into a series of more "higher level" questions:
And on and on and on. Rather than drilling down forever I decided to share where my mind is currently at, and you can tell me what you think about it, if you want.
The how is probably the easiest part to answer. I want to stay away from anything that's considered traditional, mainstream media, and also from anything that's online. Not because I don't trust them, but because the news cycle is now way too fast and as a result there's very few people that have the time to do actual journalism, for the most part. So my current plan is to subscribe to a few magazines that take time to do deep dives into topics that matter. If you have magazines or newspapers worth reading please do let me know.
Now, the other questions are the ones I'm struggling with the most. The why in particular. On the one hand, I don't see real value—personal value—in staying informed with what's happening in the world. On the other, I do think it's important since I’m part of this world after all. And also, reading the news is not just catching up with what's happening on a day-to-day basis in politics and around town. I'm sure there are plenty of inspiring stories out there worth reading about. But maybe I'm wrong and I shouldn’t bother paying attention. Feel free to let me know if I'm wrong.
As for what is worth paying attention to, I'd say the best approach is a mix of international politics, science, some tech and maybe something more related to my corner of the world. Is this a good mix? Who knows? I'm sure I'll struggle to find a good balance, but I’m giving this a try.
So, this is pretty much where I'm at. If you have thoughts on the matter, please do share them with me, I'd really appreciate it.
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2022-12-01 07:00:00
I can barely tollerate that every goddamn thing has to be animated on a website these days and I know why you're doing it but can we please stop with this scrolljacking and new tab fuckery nonsense? Your custom scroll is unbearable. You forcing each link to open on the same tab is actively making my experience worse. Just stop, please.
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2022-11-21 07:00:00
Some say that birds aren't real. I'd say they are definitely right. Birds aren't real. Except when they are. And they're clearly not scared of the fake ones.
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2022-11-08 07:00:00
The discussions around the fediverse, Mastodon, centralisation and internet silos have picked up steam again after one Elon Musk finally took charge of Twitter and started doing… things. I'm not going to comment on the current state of Twitter—mainly because I couldn't care less about the platform—but what I am going to comment on is what I think is the inevitable destiny of all these projects. The more I think and read about it, the more I'm convinced that there's no solution to the centralisation issue we're currently facing. And that's because I think that fundamentally people are, when it comes to the internet, lazy. And gathering where everyone else is definitely seems easier. It's also easier to delegate the job of moderating and policing to someone else and so as a result people will inevitably cluster around a few big websites, no matter what infrastructure we build.
And sure, there is always going to be an independent minority that is going to do things their way but it's just that, a minority. The rest of the internet will move along and aggregate around a few big hubs and the issues are gonna be the same.
And in spite of all that, I am still very interested to see what people are going to build in the future.
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2022-11-04 07:00:00
Sunsets after thunderstorms are always so beautiful and, for some reason, incredibly calming.
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2022-11-01 07:00:00
Back in September of last year I archived my thegallery.io website. If you want to know why, you can read my post titled Six Seven Eight. At that time I decided to keep a hold of the domain name because you never know with these things. The other day though, I received a notification on my phone letting me know that a payment failed on my credit card for some reason. I also got an email from my bank's fraud prevention office. Turned out the transaction got flagged by their system for some obscure reason (I used the same card on the same site for years so who knows why it got flagged this time), and the issue got resolved with a 30 seconds phone call. But I interpreted that as a sign that it was time to let the domain go. And so I did. The domain is going to expire in a week or so and I'm sure some crappy automated tool will register it and park it because that's how the web seemingly works. But at this point, I just don't care.
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2022-10-30 06:00:00
One thing I’ve always been interested in is the thread connecting all the dots of who I am as a person. Maybe for you it’s easy, but for me it’s far from it. If you were to ask me what my interests are I could probably come up with an answer fairly easily, but if you asked my why I’m interested in those things that is something I don’t have an answer to. And I find that endlessly fascinating.
Why is my mind the way it is? Why do I find these particular things interesting? Why do I struggle with other things? Those are all questions I obviously don’t have the answer to. But throughout my relatively short life I think I was always drawn towards these kind of questions. And I still am. And if I look closely I can see the thread running through all my interests: my passion for a certain type of minimalism, my appreciation for silence, my love of nature, my interest in meditation. I realise now that I’m probably looking for an answer to a particular question. What question, though, I don’t really know. And I’m not entirely sure it matters, honestly. My mind is finicky, fragile, and complex, and an endless source of pain and struggle. And that’s OK.
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2022-10-21 06:00:00
My friend Carl wrote a post titled "What is too minimal?" some days ago. It's fairly short and you should go read it. In said post, he asks a series of questions that I'm gonna answer, or at least I'm going to attempt to.
At what point does minimalism become detrimental to a brand or user experience?
This to me has an obvious answer: from a brand perspective it's when you lose your identity and you become just another generic minimal brand. As for user experience, it's when users are starting to get a worse user experience. Sounds obvious but the tricky part is figuring out where that point is.
What is too minimal to succeed?
I think nothing is too minimal to succeed. I was a huge fan of a pizzeria that had no branding, no menus, didn't take reservations and most people didn't even know the name of the place. But the product was good and that was enough. The same is true for most things. If your product is good you can be stupidly minimal in all other departments. You just don't want to try to minimise quality.
Does light-touch minimalism just get lost in the crowd, devoid of personality? Conversely, how can a more extreme minimalism engage without losing character or appearing boring and uninspired? How can extreme minimalism for a brand be consistent across all platforms such as website, newsletter, and social media?
This is the tricky one. I think minimalism when it comes to branding follows a weird curve. If you try to be just a bit minimal then it doesn't work. You’re better off doing something else. If you push forward then you enter proper minimal branding territory that is unfortunately already super crowded. If you keep pushing though, you leave the minimal territory and enter almost the "unbranded" territory, that weird space where branding doesn't even matter or barely plays a role and the only thing that matters is what you're communicating. It's extremely hard to pull off. I'd say there's way too many "minimal" brands these days and it's getting pretty boring. As for being consistent, I think what matters is the message you're communicating. Because once everything else is minimised then the message is everything that's left.
As for this...
How is the right balance struck? Is it even possible? Would you rather play it safe and be guided by metrics? Or would you stick to principles come what may? Or is it better to compromise brand distinctiveness and coherence for the sake of growth and algorithmic obedience?
That is not a question I can answer. I know nothing about all these things and I'm a complete idiot when it comes to figuring these things out so hopefully someone else can attempt to answer this part.
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2022-10-03 06:00:00
Sometimes you have to risk it in order to get your reward. Decided to go for a walk with the dog the other day and got rewarded with this beautiful moment of sunlight shining through the trees. And I got super lucky because it was the only long pause in between rain showers so not only I had the pleasure to enjoy this magical moment but I also managed to go back home dry.
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2022-09-30 06:00:00
I was catching up with some industry news the other day and there was a an interesting discussion going on. The discussion was about granting 3rd party apps access to content on other apps, specifically messages and phone numbers. And that prompted the question that’s also the title of this post. Who owns a conversation? Let’s imagine you and I were friends and let’s also imagine we decided to chat using Apple Messages (or is it still called iMessage?). Since messages are encrypted—in theory—the only people who know the contents of our conversation are you and I. Now, let’s imagine that I wanted to use some app that in order to function needs to have access to my messages. Maybe to scan for dates to update a calendar or some other functionality. That’s not important. What’s important is that I decided I want to use that app and grant the app permission to access my messages. Should I be able to do it? Are my messages in fact mine or are those our messages and I shouldn’t be able to unilaterally decide what to do with them?
Something similar happens with phone numbers. I have a private phone number. I don’t use it for anything internet related. But if I give it to you, you save it in your contacts app and then grant Facebook/Google/Apple/Whoever access to your contacts in order for their app to work, you have effectively given my phone number away without my permission. Unrelated tangent: is it even possible to keep a phone number really private these days? I’d argue, no.
I’m asking these questions because I obviously don’t have an answer to them. I don’t think there even is an answer. You can argue a conversation belongs to you and you’re free to do whatever you want with it, and you can also argue that no, it belongs to us and we should both be involved when it comes to sharing it with a 3rd party entity. In a perfect technological world the solution would be being able to grant access only to my side of the conversation and therefore only provide access to my messages. But the world we live in is far from being even remotely perfect.
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2022-09-14 06:00:00
Maybe it's just me being more aware of it but have people become more selfish lately? I'm not talking about some profound way to live life. I'm talking about the most mundane things in everyday life. People going through life as if they're the only one that matter, as if their time is the only valuable one. It's something that's depressing to watch and experience. It takes so little and requires very minimal effort to make other people's lives better and yet so few actually do it.
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2022-09-12 06:00:00
Social media platforms filled with non-humans. Product review sites that can't be trusted. Articles with titles designed to trick us. Algorithms to sucks us in rather than providing concrete value. The web is failing us. We failed ourselves. I think it's a shared responsibility and even though some entities are easy to blame we're all at fault. We're not going to "tech" our way out of this mess. A new protocol is not going to fix the intrinsic issues the current web carries with it. And no, Web 3.0 is not going to make the situation better. The reality is that the current web, for the most part, sucks. And there's nothing we can really do about it.
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2022-09-11 06:00:00
Life is always unpredictable. You have plans, you have things you want to do, and then you find yourself staring at the same building for hours at end day after day. And there's not much you can do about it other than accept it and do your best with the hand you've bean dealt.
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2022-09-09 06:00:00
Every content creator that resists the urge to follow the next silly trend has my uttermost respect. Why is everyone posting "shorts" these days? We watch our attention span being disintegrated in front of our eyes, we cry about it online and yet we waste no time jumping on board the next damn trend that is doing nothing but exacerbating the problem.
It's so bizarre to observe as a phenomenon. The entire society behaves like a drug addict. We know we have a problem collectively but we do nothing to actually help ourselves.
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2022-09-08 06:00:00
Or User Hostile Experience is what I call the ever growing trend of making websites as annoying as possible for the average user in order to improve some idiotic metric no one cares about. I'm talking about Twitter forcing me to register or log in in order to read tweets. I'm talking about Instagram forcing me to register or log in in order to play a video a second time. I'm talking about websites forcing me to click through endless pages to improve their page views. And the list goes on and on and on. Who do we even blame for the shit show that is the current web? I blame people and money. Which is conveniently the two things you can blame for almost everything that's wrong in this world.
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2022-08-16 06:00:00
I have my issues with the current web. There's something about it that I don't like, but up until now I couldn't quite figure out what that thing was. Yes, we have the constant stream of ads and popups, the ever increasing amount of tracking and the never-ending crap content optimised for search engines. But all that is somewhat manageable. You can install ad blockers, avoid certain sites and learn how to sniff out the SEO nonsense. But what is currently lacking is pure passion projects. The ability to make money on the web is slowly killing the desire to invest time and resources to make sites just for the sake of sharing something you love and enjoy. Because you'd be a fool not to monetise your passion projects right? Well, yes, sort of. I get the overall sentiment but at the same time, I strongly believe people need to get the web back in their hands by making themselves sites to share what they love and enjoy without worrying about money. Running a site is not that expensive. You don't have to have a business plan to run one. Or sell merchandising. Or have a paywall. Make content and publish it on your own site. And also create connections with other people that do the same. Share what you learn, share your successes and your failures. Share your passions, your hobbies. But do it on your own site, with your own voice, at your own pace. Don't let the social media platforms dictate what you should create. Don't let the algorithm tell you you need to make shorts—goddamn I fucking hate shorts. Ignore the numbers; the likes, the views, the engagements, the followers. Share what you love, share what you're passionate about.
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2022-08-13 06:00:00
I don't think I'll ever be able to live in a place that doesn't have mountains nearby. There's something reassuring about their imposing presence. They always manage to bring back a sense of inner calm, even when everything around me seems to be in complete disarray.
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2022-08-09 06:00:00
The world around us is pushing us more and more toward selfishness. Social media itself is—for the most part—a self centered world. How many people have IG profiles filled with selfies? I’d probably say way too many. And I don’t blame people for that. Well, not entirely at least.
Maybe it’s just me noticing this a bit more lately, but it feels as if people are a lot less engaged with the world around them and they don’t really care about their surroundings. And you can see it everywhere when you start paying attention. It’s almost as if everyone lives in their own bubble and everyone and everything outside doesn’t matter to them.
And it’s depressing. At least for me. Because to me, selflessness and respect for others are one of the most important aspects of life. And there’s so much joy to be found in being kind and generous toward other people.
And yet it’s so increasingly rare. People are so surprised when you are kind to them, when you take time out of your life to help them out. Because the expectation is that everyone’s busy and no one has time to help anyone.
But I guess that’s a product of the time we live in. We’re all so hyper-focused on ourselves that we forget we’re sharing the world with others.
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2022-08-08 06:00:00
Twitter is this weird creation where sometimes you open it and you get some amazing insight into someone's mind and sometimes instead you get tweets like this one:
Now, just to be clear, I am no great designer. I don't have an uber portfolio of clients, don't have a carefully curated social presence, don't have a pool to flex or a list of amazing testimonials full of famous people. But despite all that I can safely tell you that that piece of advice is utter bullshit.
Because you don't become a better designer by overanalysing everything. You become a better designer by making content, putting it out there, listening to constructive feedbacks from people and improve over time. You often don't have the tools to realise what is your VERY best. Or you can be an overly critical person by nature and as a result of that terrible piece of advice don't ship a single project in your life. Which is idiotic. So don't listen to that. Instead, do work you're proud of but at the same time be open to constructive criticism from people who have better and/or different experiences and expertise than you.
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2022-08-07 06:00:00
Life, for the most part, is not meant to be lived alone. Almost all of us are surrounded by people with whom we have relationships of all sorts: parents, relatives, siblings, friends, colleagues, spouses, acquaintances. The list is endless. And in today’s digital age we also have online friends and followers and who knows what else. And yet, despite all that, for certain things, we are alone. There’s just no way around it. At a fundamental level, it’s just us and our minds and our inner demons. And yes, we can seek help and find comfort in other people. We can share, we can talk, we can analyze our minds. But at a certain point, it’s just me and you and whatever runs through our minds. And we’re alone in that. There’s no one keeping us company in those moments. There are tools at our disposal to make the process easier or more manageable; we can meditate, we can write, we can use chemicals. But this doesn’t change the fact that in certain moments we’re truly alone.
Now, this might sound depressing, but to me it isn’t. It’s just life. It is what it is, it doesn’t have a connotation. It’s just important for me to have this concept always clear in my head, which is why I’m writing this. It’s mostly a reminder for myself not to forget this fundamental aspect of life.
Sometimes, we are alone, and that’s OK.
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2022-07-28 06:00:00
The other day I wrote about RSS but I took a few things for granted—mainly that people knew about RSS in the first place and that they also knew how to use them and what tools are available.
So what is RSS? The way I can describe it in a non-technical way is that it's a tool websites have at their disposal to offer users a way to consume their content that doesn't rely on them visiting the site through a browser. An RSS feed is not that different in spirit to what you're probably now accustomed to seeing on social media platforms. Instagram, Twitter and others have feeds that, in a perfect world, should be chronological and not compromised. That perfect world still exists—to some extent—if you use RSS. And that's because feeds are kinda dumb in a way. You subscribe to one using an app (more on this later) and they're refreshed at a regular interval. And that's about it. There's generally no curation involved, no custom sorting, no feature overload. It's just content.
Now, in order to consume an RSS feed you need an RSS reader, and those come in a variety of different shapes and sizes. Some are web based, some are native apps, some are free and open source, others are commercial and closed source. Which one works best for you, that's not for me to decide, but I'm gonna leave a list to a few here if you want to poke around and experiment.
If you decide to give RSS a try I have a few suggestions for you. These are all based on my experience but different people might have a different take on how to use RSS, so if you're one of them and have written about it, let me know and I'll be happy to link to your post. So, my advice for you is:
RSS is a bit of a relic of another time, when the internet was slower and things were under your control, and those are all excellent qualities to have in 2022 if you ask me.
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2022-07-27 06:00:00
Life can be quite strange at times. You start with a plan and end up in places and situations that were completely different from what you envisioned. And that's ok. Unexpected events are what makes life fun and worth living. Sometimes it's fun to find yourself in the middle of nowhere, with a glow stick and some good company.
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2022-07-26 06:00:00
I was catching up with some tech/web news earlier today and stumbled on a post about the Instagram redesign (which is apparently now focused on videos). I don't use Instagram or pretty much any other traditional social network, so I don't really know what's going on there. But one thing I am noticing more and more is some sense of tiredness when it comes to algorithmic curation. Maybe it's just my tech bubble that is surfacing this, I’m not too sure. But I am noticing more and more people ranting about how awful all this curation has become recently.
From clouded Google search results, to Instagram not showing the content from people you actually follow and YouTube recommending some godawful video from 8 years ago that has nothing to do with what you're interested in. If that's how you’re experiencing the web I strongly believe the solution is a two step process:
That's it. I'm personally using Reeder on both Mac and iPhone and the two are synced over iCloud but you can use one of the countless other apps or web apps available. What's great about consuming content through RSS is that it's chronological. There's no bullshit algorithm involved, no suggested content, no distraction. It's just the content you want to consume refreshed at your own pace.
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2022-07-24 06:00:00
Roughly two years ago, during peak isolation time, I stumbled on this new YouTube channel called Ghost Town Living. A guy living alone in an abandoned ghost town? Sign me up. Watched a few videos and I was hooked. There was something about the personal struggles and the whole adventure that was very appealing to me. Fast forward a few short years and things have obviously changed quite a lot. The channel has grown substantially, he's no longer just a guy alone in the middle of nowhere and the channel feels a lot more "mainstream" in a way. Which is all fine and more than understandable. There's nothing wrong with a project like that growing at a fast pace. But for me, the increased production values and overall quality has made me lose almost all interest. And this is not just true for this specific example but also for most things I see on the internet. In almost all cases, an increase in production values translates in a decreased level of authenticity.
I wrote about authenticity before and it's something that is bothering me more and more as I grow older. I can't help but feel that the web is becoming more and more "fake" with time. Why that is the case, I don't really know. My best guess is that people are accustomed to consume content that is highly produced and as a result, if and when they decide to become content creators they have a certain standard they have to reach. And maybe that's a good thing overall, I don't know. It's not like I'm asking for a web filled with shitty content.
It just saddens me that there's probably a ton of very interesting content out there that doesn't get published because the author doesn't feel it's good enough.
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2022-06-29 06:00:00
I have a stack of books waiting to be read in my bedroom. They're gathering dust—unfortunately. Not because I don't want to read them. I do. And it's not even a matter of not having the time because I could find it. It's a matter of mental bandwidth.
I consume plenty of content on a daily basis: news, podcasts, videos. But I'm starting to wonder if that's a good thing. Is it really important to stay up to date with everything that's going on in the world? Is it worth consuming hours of podcasts every day? Old me would probably think that yes, it is.
Current me though, is not so sure. I'm starting to think that all this consumption is not good for myself. I can only worry about so many things in my life and I can only tackle a finite amount of problems.
So maybe it's best to scale things back. Maybe it's best to read more books and less news. Maybe it's best to skip the next podcast episode and instead listen to the world around me when I'm out for my walk.
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2022-05-11 06:00:00
I'm gonna break with my usual programming of weird posts to write about a few work related things. This is my personal site after all and I do have a job like most of you out there and so sometimes it just so happens that I have work related things to share.
The first work related news is that I finally have a portfolio… sort of. See, I hate the idea of having a portfolio on my site. I tried and in the past I even wrote a few posts that were essentially project reviews. But honestly, I hate to have projects on this site. I want this blog to remain a simple tool to share random things to the world. Which is why I'm happy to have discovered read.cv. I love how simple the platform is and I'm enjoying adding projects to my page slowly over time. If you like it, feel free to join me there.
Second somewhat work related news is that Carl and I have finally pushed live the new Minimalissimo websites. I really can't believe it took me that long to code those sites but I'm very happy that they are finally out. The design is a bit unique and definitely not trendy but we like to experiment. I had a blast figuring out a way to handle all those borders in a way that was not completely stupid. If you're into minimalism give the new sites a browse and let us know what you think. I'll leave the link to the three sites down here.
And lastly, after having coded three different versions of the site, 2 different versions of the shop and one standalone archive, I finally contributed with a post of my own on Minimalisismo. Carl asked me to curate a mood and so I did. Get in touch if you think there's some other project worth including in the selection.
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2022-05-05 06:00:00
Plenty of people online these days are complaining about the bubble effect and the algorithm. I'm not in the mood to write about my thought on the matter, sorry. What I am in the mood to talk about though, is solutions to the problem.
Solution number one is get yourself a personal site and start sharing content you like and more specifically start linking to sites and content you find interesting. That's what the internet was made for after all. And in that spirit I'm going to link a few things down below:
Solution number two is embrace randomness. As you may or may not know I run a small project called The Forest where you can get random sites suggested to you. But it's far from being the only site of that kind. indieblog.page is another good one. Or if you're in a silly mood give theuselessweb.com a try. Another thing you can consider, if you're after new content to enjoy, is browsing websites directories. And last but not least, you can explore webrings! If you scroll down at the very bottom of this page—down in the footer, after the archive—you'll notice two arrows. Those are links to other sites that are part of the IndieWeb Webring. But the IndieWeb one is just one of the countless webrings available out there. I'll leave you with links to a few of them here but feel free to suggest others.
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2022-05-02 06:00:00
Visiting monuments and historic sites has never been a huge passion of mine—even though I live in the country with the highest number of UNESCO sites—but lately I've been enjoying it a bit more. Getting older is making me more interested in history for some reason.
The Redipuglia War Memorial is an odd place to visit. And visiting it at night doesn't make it any less strange. The place has the austere style that's typical of the fascist era: there's no curves, everything is geometrical and imposing. But that style feels appropriate for some reason. It's a war memorial. Its goal is not to wow you with his style.
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2022-04-27 06:00:00
You probably heard by now that Elon Musk is in the process of buying Twitter. That is obviously an interesting turn of events for the platform and if you have opinions on the matter feel free to write me an email and we can talk about it. That is not what I want to write about though. What's interesting to me is the discussion around the event itself and the broader conversation around freedom of speech and expression in the context of the internet and its impact on online communities.
Twitter is an odd platform. It has gained this reputation of being the de facto public forum but at the same time everyone is apparently either a bot or a crypto scammer. Which is strange to say the least. And yet, even though the platform appears to be riddled with issues of all sorts it's still playing an important role within society.
Whether that's a good thing is up for debate. I do believe we need ways for people to interact with each other at scale and there is a place for a tool like Twitter on today's web. But solving the issue of communicating at scale is not trivial. You've probably experienced this in person. 4 people around a table can easily have a conversation. Put 40 around a table and everything will become a mess unless you have a moderator directing traffic. The same is true for online communities. You can manage a small community relatively easily. This was done routinely in the early days of the web in the context of forums. You lay down a set of rules, you have a certain number of moderators keeping an eye on what's happening and things can run fairly smoothly.
But that's not a scalable solution. It's especially not scalable when your rules are getting mixed up with national and international laws and you're dealing with hundreds of millions of users.
This is the inevitable issue of centralisation. I'm convinced there's no real solution to this problem because it's a human problem, not a technological one.
Now, some people are convinced that the problem is the centralisation itself. To them, the solution is ditching the centralised model and embracing a distributed one. Mastodon is talked about a lot since it's a Twitter-like platform that is open source and decentralised. Anyone can spin up a new instance and people can join it. Which is great! But is that any different from the early days of forums? I say no. It's a different tool, sure, but it will get plagued by the same issues. Communities on Mastodon—or on any other similar platform—are going to be manageable if they stay under a certain scale. But as soon as they grow too much they're going to face the same issues that are affecting Twitter right now.
Moderation is going to be an issue. There's just no way around it. Unless you are a free speech absolutist and believe there should be no moderation at all and people should be able to say whatever they want freely. This sounds good in theory but it's extremely complicated to apply in reality because we live in a world that's governed by laws and those laws can differ wildly depending on where you live. We can debate if that's a good thing or not but that doesn't change the fact that this is the world we live in and we have to deal with it.
Personally, I'm convinced that the only solution to this problem is what I like to call naturally emerging communities: groups that interact with each other and share thoughts and opinions using a variety of different tools. In my case, my tools of choice are this blog, a newsletter and my email. For you it might be a Telegram group and Twitter. Different people have different needs and will end up using different tools.
But I am convinced that we'll never have a one-size-fits-all solution. That's just not how humans work.
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2022-04-11 06:00:00
Back in the 90s, there was Web 1.0. It was a simpler era, dominated by personal sites and forums. Centralisation was not a thing yet and money was not really part of the equation. People were not on the web to become rich and content was shared just for passion and for fun. Web 1.0 was dominated by content and content alone. It was a lot more pure than the mess we have right now. It was simply a place for curiosity.
Then in the early 2000s Web 2.0 descended upon us and that's where things started to shift. It was the beginning of the social media era. People slowly started to abandon personal sites and self hosted forums in favour of social media platforms. It's the era where online marketing really took off, where engagement and time spent on platforms started to become important factors. It's the era where we started focusing on the wrong things imo.
And that brings us to today, where in the midst of all the social media chaos, dominated by fake accounts, bots, complete nonsense and rampant advertising, the world of the web has decided to collectively move to the 3.0 phase.
As is often the case, these are nebulous terms and their definition is somewhat vague but Web 3.0 is supposed to be focused on decentralisation and its tool of choice should be the blockchain. Which sounds all good in theory.
What's happening though is that people are going batshit crazy over things like random crypto currencies and fucking NFTs. We've reached the point where NBA players are doing rug pulls to steal a few million dollars on shit NFT projects. This is millionaires participating in online scams to earn a few more millions.
Now, before some of the crypto/blockchain/NFT enthusiasts start yelling at me, I know that there are potentially some legit use cases for those technologies. I get it. But the current reality is that everything is either another avenue of investment for people with money to invest or a giant waste of time and resources.
And what's even sillier in my opinion, is how people online love to complain about capitalism and billionaires—for good reasons—while simultaneously having no issues getting involved in the same shenanigans at a smaller scale.
You might be wondering what prompted this rant. There's a person I used to follow online. He's a creative human being and has done some interesting things in the past. This person has a story worth sharing, the kind of content that was going up regularly on personal sites in the Web 1.0 era. For free. But now this person has decided that in order to post this content online we first need to collectively pay some random amount of ETH on this new writing+funding+crypto platform.
And to me that's just fucking depressing. We're slowly turning the web into a place where people only do things if it generates money and that is so sad to see.
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2022-04-06 06:00:00
Earlier today Carl asked me what is honest design to you? I find it very interesting as a question because it requires me to go through the mental exercise of first define what design is and then figuring out what honest design is and what the term means to me.
To me, design is the result of all the decision making process, all the thoughts, the prototyping, the considerations that are necessary to make something. I'd argue that everything artificial is designed to a certain extent.
If you accept my definition of design, then honest design is the result of a process that is, well, honest. It means to be motivated by good intentions. It means creating something with a clear and valuable goal in mind. It means to make something that will add value to this world.
An honest website is a website that tries its best to not waste my time when I'm using it. It tries to make my experience as pleasurable as possible. Its UI and UX is optimised for ease of use, for readability, for speed, for wasting as little bandwidth as possible.
Honest design to me means to do whatever you can in order to maximise everything good out of a product and minimise everything that's negative or wasteful or distracting.
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2022-02-18 07:00:00
I don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but the internet overall is not exactly a place full of nuances and balanced opinions. And that’s a byproduct of the way we interact online. Interactions such as Likes or Favs are binary options. You can either like something or not. There’s no in between. Polls usually have a very limited number of options to pick from because it’s easy to parse data that way. Also, conversations move fast and if you take your time to think about something and write a carefully considered comment, chances are people have already moved on to the next topic.
As a result of that, the public online discourse is mostly made up of short takes that leave no room for those very important details. If you want to understand someone’s opinion on a topic you need time. Opinions are usually not binary and they can span across a wide spectrum. You need to invest time reading or listening to what they think about and then probably ask follow up questions. That’s not something that usually happens online. Hell, that’s not something that happens in person very often these days either.
I learned that often I both agree and disagree with people on any given topic. And discussing where our opinions differ is where the real opportunities to grow as a person reside.
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2022-02-16 07:00:00
A few days ago, while browsing Hacker News I stumbled upon a blog post titled, Have you “Moved to Substack”? by Raymond Hines, which I then sent to Jatan since the blog post touches on a topic he and I previously discussed. It turned out that Jatan had already written a blog post in response which you can read here.
Since this is a fun discussion, I'm gonna add my opinion into the mix just because why not.
My experience when it comes to blogging is not a complex one. I started out with a custom site I coded for myself that was just a collection of static pages. I then moved over to Kirby which is an amazing CMS I use professionally. That was it. I didn't bounce between dozens of different platforms, I didn't have to move my domain from place to place. I needed something, I knew how to code it, and I coded it.
This is obviously not a typical situation that people find themselves in when they want to start a blog. Most people don't even know how to buy a domain let alone code a site. Which is absolutely fine. That's precisely why there's a market for platforms like Substack or Wordpress.com or Squarespace. People need a way to get online easily and it's not reasonable to expect them to either learn how to code or to pay for a developer to code a site for them.
I personally don't use Substack but I am starting to get a bit worried by how prevalent it’s becoming. I'm hearing more and more people saying "follow his Substack", which to me is kinda scary. Because centralisation of this kind is never good.
Substack is growing fast: they now have 1M+ paid subscriptions but apparently generate no revenue. Which is already worrying to me. Because it means that yes, they can keep running like this if they keep getting investments but at some point something has to change. What that means for your content on the platform, that's hard to tell.
What I can say is that so far they've been great to help people go online and publish content even though, as it's often the case, the people at the top are the ones who are making money. According to some numbers the top 10 authors are making something like 25% of the total revenues. Which is not great for everyone else on the platform overall but I personally don't care.
What I do care about is the ability for people to go online and able to share their content with the rest of the world. Substack right now is good in that regard but so was Medium back when they started. I'm starting to believe that's the inevitable trajectory for most free services. You start with an idea that is awesome but financially unsustainable, and you slowly have to abandon that idea. Substack is free. Can it stay free forever? I doubt it, but I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong.
And what would happen if they decide that all free blogs/newsletters are now private? Or what if they decide that you can only send them to 100 subscribers? Those are things that can easily happen. When you're using a service like that you just have to take whatever comes next.
As Jatan pointed out in his post, Substack so far is doing a great job: they offer custom domains, ability to export your content, RSS integrations and a few other neat features. So they're definitely doing good things. But this is the tech world. We've seen plenty of companies doing good things one day and awful shit the next.
Does that mean you have to go full custom and code your own site from scratch? Absolutely not. I think this constant push to create custom complex systems to run sites is just a byproduct of us developers being vocal online and thinking that coding sites is the most important thing. Developers love to build complex systems because it's fun. But it's also unmanageable if you're not a developer. Normal people want to post their content online and forget about it. Which, again, is totally fine.
I do see Raymond's point though, and I do believe it's important to own your piece of internet real estate if you care about sharing content online. Because trying to move your first steps into this weird internet world also means you're doing your part in the fight against the tech giants. Because it's all fine and good if people move away from Twitter and Facebook and Instagram but if they all then land on Substack then we're back to square one.
So, what I think I'm trying to say here is that if you want to have a space online where you want to share your content and don't have any other way to do it, Substack is perfectly fine to use. The same is true for write.as or micro.blog. But also keep in mind that really owning and controlling your content means moving beyond that.
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2022-02-06 07:00:00
The other day some 200+ Billions worth of valuation were wiped out from Facebook—I just refuse to call it Meta. The primary reason behind that? Probably the fact that for the first time ever the user base decreased.
Facebook has almost 3B monthly active users. There's roughly 7.7B of us on this planet at the moment. Around 26% of the world population is below 15 years old. That's 2B people. You have to be at least 13 to sign up on Facebook. Which means, roughly speaking, that the available pool of users for FB is around 5.7B. Now, out of those we need to remove people who don't have internet access which is apparently 3B people according to the UN. So that brings us to 2.7B potential users.
But didn't we say that Facebook has almost 3B active monthly users? We sure did. Which is why I personally find all this absurd. Don't get me wrong, I couldn't care less about Facebook and yes, I'm certain that some good people work there—you know who you are—but this is not a post to rant about Facebook.
The point is this absurd pursuit of endless growth which is brought to extremes in this case. But this is far from the only place where this social sickness shows up. Do you think you can run out of things to watch on YouTube? Or songs to listen to on Spotify? Or books to read?
More seems to be the only important mode of operation in today's world. We need more of everything and yet we seem to be more and more stressed out by all this more, and we strive to achieve some other type of more: more free time, more silence, more quietness. It's bizarre.
And us content creators—because yes, I do consider myself a content creator of some sort—are responsible for at least part of this mess when it comes to the internet. Because we wilfully partake in this game where in order to bubble up the top you need to constantly produce. More content, longer content, more frequent content. And to do that we need to earn money. More money. Producing constant content requires constant cash flow. And so we need subscriptions and memberships and ad revenues. And when that's not enough we turn to merchandising because that's what the world needs: more crap.
I'd love to offer an alternative. But I'm afraid I can't. That's just the reality of the world we live in and I doubt there's anything we can do about it. Yet.
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2022-01-10 07:00:00
Life doesn't have to be complicated. Sometimes a beautiful sunset on a lake is all it takes to be happy.
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2022-01-01 07:00:00
Almost exactly 5 years ago to the hour, I was sitting on this exact same chair, on this exact same spot in my kitchen and I was coding the first version of what would eventually become the blog you’re reading right now.
It was one of the best decisions I took in the last 10 years. Countless positive things have come out of this blog: from great conversations to new friendships and I’m grateful for every single one of them.
I’m grateful for every kind email I received in the last 5 years. I’m grateful for all the kind words.
What will this 2022 bring? That, I don’t know, but I’m sure I’ll be writing plenty new blog posts. Happy new year to you, fellow internet stranger.
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2021-11-22 07:00:00
Like many other things in my life, I stumbled on this job I'm doing seemingly at random. I never planned to become a web developer. It was never a dream or a passion of mine. It just happened. But I never really cared about the job itself if you know what I mean. I never cared about progressing in my career, never cared about finding new challenges. For me, it's just a job. It's something I have to do and for the past 10 years I worked because one way or another I had to earn a living.
It was a somewhat fatalistic way of living life, I have to admit. You do things because you have to and you don't plan ahead because why bother? I never had dreams to work towards and never had concrete plans. It was mostly about working just enough to take care of my needs and then spending time doing things I enjoy in life.
But one thing I learned about life is that it's unpredictable. And the snowball effect is real. You start changing one thing and suddenly you find yourself in a completely different place, both literally and metaphorically, contemplating new work projects with friends, new life goals with loved ones. For years I was just drifting away. Now I'm enjoying following the flow and seeing where it’s gonna take me.
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2021-11-04 07:00:00
Life is kinda strange, isn’t it? You never know where is gonna take you. I certainly don’t know where mine is gonna take me.
I spent years with the illusion of knowing certain things about myself, about who I am, what I believe in, what I was looking for.
But then, like a neat pile of leaves blown away by a pesky gust of wind, all my belief and certainties got swept away by a series of seemingly random events.
Is all this going to be for the best? I guess time will tell.
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2021-10-25 06:00:00
I was catching up with some of the news about Facebook, Google and the other big tech companies the other day. As is often the case the news was a bit depressing. I’m not going to get into the details here but the TLDR is that companies give zero fucks about user privacy and well-being. They only care about profits.
Now, that is obviously not surprising. That’s what capitalism and the pursuit of endless growth does to a company.
What made me sad is the thought that those companies are made of people, like you and me. There are countless great developers working at those companies that are lending their talent to develop software that is slowly tearing society apart and fucking up peoples’ lives. That is the part that is making me sad.
The fact that the the people at the top are willing to do despicable things is sadly somewhat expected. But the fact that the people at the bottom are willing to go along with the plan, that’s what saddens me the most.
If you’re one of those people working at one of those companies, would you mind telling me why you’re doing it? I’d be really curious to know what motivates you to still work at Facebook or Google.
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2021-10-20 06:00:00
Not sure if you're aware of this but for the past few months or so I've been curating a list of quirky personal websites discoverable on a tiny little website called the forest.
And also—and this you probably are aware of—I've been thinking about personal websites and the web a lot lately. It just so happened that the other day these two facts combined to make me realise something that was probably just hidden in plain sight.
This "fight" I'm trying to fight here, to push people away from social media and go back to own their little corners of the web, is already over. I had this sudden realisation the other day. I didn't measure it precisely but I'd say 80% of the links to personal sites I'm getting on the forest are from people who are involved with tech at some level. The vast majority of them are developers.
The only people who are still caring about an independent web are the people who have the tech skills to do something about it. But they're obviously a tiny minority. And they probably live in a tech bubble. The reality of this fight is that the vast majority of people fundamentally don't care.
Sure, some of them can probably be convinced to try run their own website, but they're just a tiny percentage. For everyone else, it’s just not important to them. And this is not something that's unique about the web. It's the same story in every medium. The majority of people don't spend their time watching niche and unique movies, they watch Hollywood blockbusters. They don't play niche and quirky games made by solo developers, they play triple A titles.
Personal sites are not going to "come back" because they never "went away" to begin with. At one point they were the only available tool and that's why they were everywhere. But at that time the web was also dominated by tech oriented people and those same people still have personal websites to this day. They've simply become a minority. Today's web is filled with people who are not tech savvy—or nerds—and they are content to use social media platforms. They never cared about having a personal site. It was never a thing for them.
So I think I finally found the answer to my question about what can I do to help people go back to personal sites: nothing.
Since I'm trying to be a good friend I have to add this extra bit. It's from Carl and he'd be really upset if I publish this post without also including his comment on the whole matter:
Personal sites aren’t a quest for web domination. The indie web is an expression of digital freedom. They don’t need to be mainstream, they don’t need to be works of art. They just need to be allowed to exist, even in the outer reaches of the web! There is a sad reality, yes, BUT, so fucking what? Let the indie web exist and if anyone wants help with a digital garden landscape that is a personal site, you are here to help where you can. This isn’t about winning or losing. It’s about having the option to create something of your own if you are bothered. Most aren’t, sure. But some are, and those people should be celebrated which is why The Forest exists.
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2021-10-17 06:00:00
It is hard to produce quality content. It is even harder to produce content over and over and over again. It's something I'm starting to notice a lot more these days. Most creators tend to follow an ark. They start at the bottom like most people. They then rise to great levels because they're obviously talented and they're capable of creating excellent content that is inspiring and thought provoking and well produced. But after that a few things can happen:
What I noticed lately is that this last category is also a synonym of low output. One example of this last group of people that comes to mind is Vsauce. Compared to other big creators on YouTube, his creative output is a lot lower. If we ignore the #shorts that are now published on YouTube, I think he posted less than 10 videos in the past 3 years. That goes against the common wisdom in the YouTube space which says you need to upload frequently to stay relevant. And yet, his videos are, in my opinion, always superb.
And when you stop and think about it, this is not surprising. Creating content that is great on an intellectual level requires time. Sure, you can make quality yet shallow content very fast. And there's plenty of examples of that. But great content, the one that makes you think is hard to produce. And I think it's getting harder to produce, in a way, because time is becoming scarce.
The fear of becoming irrelevant, the constant fight for people's attention, the pressure from sponsors and other financial incentives are forcing people to produce content a lot quicker and that means the content, overall, is becoming a lot shallower. And that fucking sucks.
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2021-10-10 06:00:00
In one of my recent internet walks I stumbled on an interesting forum post. In there someone posed the following thought experiment:
If you somehow had the power to go back to the mid 2000s and permanently prevent one from being invented, which would you choose? A world with social media but no smart phones, or a world with smart phones but without social media?
When I read it, my first thought was social media, easily. But then I started to think about it. Sure, social media right now is probably a net negative for the world but I’m wondering what social media would look like if it was confined within desktop computers and laptops.
There would be no quick check to Twitter while you’re in the bathroom, no picture at your food while you’re eating, no constant updates about what you’re up to throughout your day. If you wanted to share something with the world you’d have to sit down and do it on your computer.
It would also be a lot harder to go viral because people aren’t living their lives in front of their computer since they have lives they need to live. Not having internet access with you all the time would probably make for a better society.
Curious to know what you think about it though. If you have thoughts, do let me know.
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2021-10-06 06:00:00
Minus keeps producing thought provoking posts. This time I’m writing as a result of reading a post by Ron Bronson. Couple of interesting passages in there:
The thing I loved about Tumblr and miss about blogging generally, is the rapid nature of getting ideas out widely.
This raises an interesting question: why do we post content on social media? You know what, let me ask you this question directly: if you do use social media, why do you post on there? I personally know why I post on this side and that is to help both my own thinking process and to try generate interesting conversations with others.
But I suspect most of social media is not driven by those two motives these days. The dopamine rush and the need to find some sort of validation are both very strong componente of what social media has become.
If we don’t care about the likes and the possibility of going viral, then there’s no reason for using a social platform instead of a personal site. If the goal is to have a place where you can share content and ideas, a personal site is the perfect place to do it.
In fact, the pandemic changed my habits from posting daily to pretty much only posting either monthly or every few weeks when something not mundane is worth sharing. I like this trend, but I want to be even more extreme about it. Does that mean posting a “monthly digest” post where I share everything I did worth nothing? Or something else?
Why not ditch a schedule altogether, Ron? Why not share what you think is worth sharing when you think it’s worth doing? Social media algorithms have tricked us into thinking that life has to follow a regular pattern. You have to post constantly or you risk fading into oblivion. I call bullshit on that. The people who care about you and what you do will check on what you’re up to regardless. And they’ll do it at their own pace and convenience.
Divorcing the personal from the content feels like a solid direction towards the “internet of yore” where you don’t generate content in the hopes of selling it (or yourself…)
This is what we need more of in my opinion. We need more content that is not commercially driven. And that can only happen when you get back your place on the web and you do things at your own pace, following your own rules. The tools are out there. Emails and RSS still exist. We don’t need DMs and algorithms. Own your content, create your own personal space, and follow your own schedule.
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2021-09-29 06:00:00
I am no linguist nor particularly skillful in this secondary language I'm using to write this blog post. But I am going to talk about words and definitions for a second if you don't mind. I had to describe myself recently and that got me thinking about the words we use to describe ourselves.
I think at some point I used to be what people usually call a minimalist. I was into reducing my possessions, owning as few objects as possible. It was a fun exercise. But that was past me. Current me is not worried a single bit about the things I own. I think I am more mindful than minimalist to be honest with you.
I have a love for minimally designed objects but the quality and the practicality comes way before the visual component these days. The question I'm asking myself is not will this look nice? but rather will this last me 15 years?. That's all I care about.
Sure, I still own very few items compared to the average person but does that make me a minimalist? Some would probably say yes. I'd say no.
And this is why I think definitions are—for the most part—completely useless. Especially definitions that become popular. If I have to explain to you what I mean when I say I'm a minimalist, then the definition has lost its usefulness.
My favorite "minimalism related" YouTube channel is this one. You'll probably say that it's not about minimalism at all and I'd strongly disagree.
We live in an age where we have no limits when it comes to ways to communicate. Maybe we should ditch definitions and stereotypes and embrace the idea of spending time to communicate things more thoroughly. We probably need fewer 140 character tweets and more 15,000 word blog posts.
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2021-09-27 06:00:00
TL;DR: The Gallery has been archived. The site is no longer up but you can download a backup copy of the content.
6 years, 7 months, 8 days. I was born on the 6th day, of the 7th month, on a decade that starts with 8. Seems like a fitting day to end this side project of mine. At first I thought it made sense to wait for the site number 3500 to go up before shutting everything down. Then I decided to archive it on the 7th bday of the site. But the more I thought about it, the more everything seemed so arbitrary. Once the passion is gone, it is gone. There's no point in dragging things until you reach some random date in the future. And so I decided it was time to archive the site for good.
I want to say thank you to the thousands of people who wrote in the past few years, you all made this gallery possible. And also thank you for those few who donated some money in order to help the site. You all know who you are and your generosity was much appreciated.
I was planning to keep the site up but I then decided it was a better idea to archive it for good. Losing the content is a bit of a shame though and so I collected all the content and made it available as a static website.
Feel free to do whatever you want with the content. Keep it locally on your machine, upload it somewhere, I honestly don't care. The archive is a pay-what-you-want product and you can get it for free but hey, maybe someone wants to pay a dollar or two to say thank you. There are some kind people out there believe it or not.
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2021-09-25 06:00:00
A bunch of you took the time to fill in my survey about personal websites. Very grateful for that. The reason why I asked the question in the first place is because I'm trying to figure out what's the current landscape when it comes to personal websites. One of my goals is to encourage more people to abandon social media and move their content over to personal websites because I really believe it's healthier for us human beings and for the web as a whole.
I say that while being perfectly aware that running a site can be complicated for someone who's not tech savvy. And it can also be expensive, especially if you compare it against social media which is "free".
In the past I made available the code that powers this blog of mine but I realised that it's not really that helpful unless you're tech skilled.
And so I'm now trying to figure out ways to help people go online and own their content. And in order to do that I wanted to know how much people would be willing to spend to achieve that, hence the survey.
I am going to leave the survey up indefinitely but I have enough replies to crunch some numbers.
The upper end was kinda interesting because it means that something like Squarespace personal plan is already priced outside of what most people here would be willing to pay since it's priced at 11/month when paid annually (and you need to add a domain on top of that).
Anyway, thanks again for taking the time to answer my survey. Really appreciated.
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2021-09-20 06:00:00
Hello there. I come to you today because I have a favour to ask you. I am currently exploring a topic very near and dear to my heart and that is personal websites. I'd really appreciate if you could take a minute and fill out this survey. It is literally two questions, with only one mandatory. It shouldn't take you more than 30 seconds but it would really help my thinking.
And if you want to know more about why I'm asking you this, feel free to reach out via email and I'd be happy to chat about it with you.
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2021-09-19 06:00:00
Pink flowers, mossy rocks.
Down a dry riverbed
autumnal leaves are flowing.
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2021-09-17 06:00:00
Two pieces of internet content prompted me to write this post. This discussion on HN and a post by Alexa Kirchner on Minus in which she said:
When considering the question “why is social media so bad?” I always have in the back of my mind the worst case scenario: maybe people are just no good. Maybe we’re not capable of handling communication at the scale and speed of the internet and there is no form of social media that could be a net benefit. Better to just shut it all down, take all the computers and throw them into the sea.
I don’t want it to be true and I don’t even think it’s true. But it’s tough to disprove. And I think it’s useful to establish the outer border on your thinking. That’s the worst case scenario, anything short of that allows for some hope.
I'd encourage you to scroll through the comments on that HN post because there's some interesting thoughts in there. Alexa’s question was why is social media so bad? And to that I'd answer with another question: is it really?
I think it's important to establish what we mean by being bad in this context. If she meant bad for the human race as a whole then she's probably right. It is bad. I'm no fan of social media as you probably know. But as a web project? Social media platforms are all but bad. They're some of the most successful internet projects ever made. They are good, but not for the things we probably care about.
The fascinating question is why that is the case. I think I said it already, but for me, the main problem is scale. I strongly believe that human beings are not equipped with the tools to deal with a plethora of other human beings all at once. That's not something that happens in the "real world". But social media allows precisely that. It pushes social multitasking to the extreme and humans are terrible multitaskers. Discussions with people take time and requires effort while social media is trying its best to make it as effortless and as mindless as possible.
And I partly agree with the conclusion Alexa reached in her post. Maybe there is no form of social media that could be a net benefit. At least not a centralised and widely distributed one. What I do believe is possible to create, though, is pockets of sanity—small bubbles on the web, where reasonable people, motivated by good intentions can gather and share their thoughts and opinions on whatever topic they fancy.
But these have to stay small. We must reject this idea that the end goal is indefinite growth of everything on the web. One must be content to have a newsletter with 100 subscribers, a blog with 150 readers if the goal is to have meaningful connections. You can't connect meaningfully with 600,000 people. You just can't. That's the reality. Internet fame can't go hand in hand with deeper human interactions.
We need to scale down, to slow down. That's the only antidote to the madness of social media and today's web.
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2021-09-11 06:00:00
Gregory Manni, on a Minus post wrote:
At least at the start, social media seemed to flatten the hierarchy, made it easier to feel equal. Of course that’s not the way it is now. But at the very least, modern social media allows for some semblance of community and belonging, even if it’s tainted by hijacking our sense of self-worth, and even if the algorithms tend to section off subgroups and radicalize them. So maybe the question is: how do you build a social media that encourages community, discourages power-grabbing, but does not allow you to be siloed off? How do you build a social media that functions like a healthy, diverse, equitable neighborhood?
What does a healthy, diverse, equitable neighborhood look like? Honest question. I know this is just an analogy but the way I see it, it stops being effective as soon as you consider the main characteristic of a physical neighborhood and that is boundaries. A neighbourhood can't scale up indefinitely. The number of people living within one are limited to its physical shape. Sure, people can come and go but the overall size stays the same.
This doesn't happen on social media. The goal on social media is to keep growing, indefinitely if possible. Your social platform quickly stops being a neighbourhood and becomes a town, a city, a metropolis. Once you've reached a certain scale, all your dreams and hopes of having a balanced and well behaved group of people quickly goes out the window.
You asked:
how do you build a social media that encourages community, discourages power-grabbing, but does not allow you to be siloed off?
To me the answer is you do it by setting hard boundaries. You have to artificially impose margins and hard edges. You have to stop pursuing growth, stop incentivising being popular. Make something unappealing to the masses. Masses don't aim for quality content unfortunately.
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2021-09-06 06:00:00
Async conversations are fun so I'm going to keep this one going. What's most interesting to me when it comes to the whole indie web movement, is this entanglement of tech and human intentions. The developer in me sees the point in discussing the importance of the tech but I can't help but think that the human intentions are what really matters.
The first thing I’d note is that only one of them generated an incoming webmention.
I'll be honest with you: I never bothered checking if my site is set up to correctly send out web mentions. I know I can receive them thanks to webmention.io but I never bothered checking if I'm also set up to send them. And you know why? Because if I reply to a person I usually simply send that person an email. It's that simple.
All that said though, as I wrote at the beginning, this entire discussion is a mix of tech and human intentions and the latter is what's been on my mind a lot lately. The more I think and write about tech, the more I'm convinced that the tech doesn't really matter all that much without the correct mindset. The tools to make good things are already out there. If you're a tech savvy person you have already a plethora of solutions to put a site online. There's countless CMS and web servers and SAAS, you name it. If people are not having more interesting and profound interactions online, it is not for lack of tools. It's for lack of good intentions.
That isn't to say that tech doesn't play a role here. It absolutely does, and social platforms are not helping in this endeavor. But blaming social media is easy. Actually doing something to fix the problem is hard. And it's hard because we inevitably end up reinventing the wheel. I often thought that what we need is a web developer friend as a service kind of thing. Because I'm sure a lot more people would be willing to have their own site if it wasn't too much of a pain in the ass. But that idea is a topic for another time.
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2021-09-04 06:00:00
Carl wrote a blog post on the state of user experience in today's web and I have a couple of thoughts on the subject I want to share. I agree with pretty much everything he expressed in his blog post and I do believe that if we wanted to fix this issue we could easily do it tomorrow. But we won't. And when I say we I mean the collective group of people that create content that lives on the web.
Ads won't go away, pop-ups won't go away, fucking newsletters modals won't go away. Why? Because unfortunately, they work. That's just the reality.
Sure, removing all the annoyances would be the most sensible and respectful thing to do but marketing and business people are not paid to be respectful. They're paid to achieve results. And there are many talented individuals that are lending their skills in order to improve those obnoxious things that are ads on the web. That's just the reality of the world we live in.
The web is mostly a clusterfuck because human beings are a clusterfuck. We live in a society where people are stupid enough to litter the place they live in. Do you think these people will care about ads on the web?
The web is and will continue to be a mess because people are messy. Some of us care about our environment. We try to be discrete, try not to make too much noise, try to keep things clean and we do our best to be polite and respectful. Others couldn't care less about any of that stuff. They'll litter, be loud, rude and disrespectful. And that's the way it is.
I don't think there's a tech solution to this problem because it's not a tech problem. It's a human one. And you can't fix human behaviour with more tech.
What we can do is celebrate the people who are fighting the good fight, visit sites that are trying to be respectful, try support companies that are doing things the right way. We can only encourage good behaviour and hope for the best.
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2021-08-30 06:00:00
four months in and I’m nearly convinced that the possibility of a decentralised network of websites talking to each other through comments sections and pingbacks (known as the web) has probably passed.
Funnily enough, I came across this blog post because of web mentions. It was mentioned in another blog post where a post of mine was also mentioned. So I can already say that this decentralised network of websites is working.
That said though, I kinda see the point Leon is making but at the same time I think he's missing the bigger picture. When it comes to human connections happening through the web medium, I believe the path of the indie web is—or at least should be—quality over quantity. A network of personal sites can't really compete with a platform like Twitter when it comes to reachability and possibility of going viral. Nor it should aspire to honestly.
Deeper interactions require time. The indie web has to be slow in order to be effective. No one is going to browse through the last 10 years of your Twitter timeline but I often end up reading 10+ years old blog posts on personal websites. That's the power of the indie web in my opinion.
And since content is what matters, the technology used to share said content is irrelevant. Just get online. Share your thoughts. Reach out to people. Interact in an honest and open way.
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2021-08-25 06:00:00
Carl published a post about online communities a few days ago and I want to contribute to the discussion.
I don't think I have an unhealthy relationship with social tech, but it's not ideal. And I'm looking for ideal. Yet, to be honest, I don't know what ideal means to me.
I believe there's two fundamental aspects at play when it comes to online communities: the human nature of the participants and the scale factor. In my—albeit limited—experience, some issues will inevitably arise when you have people clumped together somewhere, whether that's a physical or a digital space. That's the inescapable reality of human interactions.
That said though, the space in which those interactions take place can have a huge impact on the end result. If you take 50 people and you throw them together in one big empty room, it's almost inevitable that noise will arise. But if you instead place those 50 people in a space that is structured with small quiet areas where small groups can form and interact the end result will be a lot less noisy.
I believe the same is true online and Mastodon vs Twitter is a good example of that. We need platforms that are malleable, that can adapt to our use case. But we also need to accept that after a certain scale, a community will inevitably transform. You can have a chilled dinner with 5 or 6 friends. You can't have one with 600 of them. After a certain scale moderation becomes necessary, having defined roles become necessary. I believe there's no way around that issue. That is unless you are extremely careful in the way you're vetting people at the door. But that's easier said than done.
To conclude this post let me answer those final questions in order to keep the conversation going.
I personally have used Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and Slack. Out of those right now I just barely use Slack, the others are no longer part of my life. I occasionally consume content coming out of Twitter and Instagram but that's about it. I don't think those platforms provide any real value to my life.
Where should you look? Dedicated niche websites. Dedicated forums, subreddits, blogs. I'm a strong believer in small dedicated communities.
I don't think we need something new. We need a new mentality, not a new tool. There's plenty of tools but they all try to reinvent the wheel. My "community" lives on emails those have been around since the 1960s. So I personally don't think we need new tools.
Anyway, those are just some random thoughts on the subject. If you also have thoughts get in touch or write a reply on your own site.
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2021-08-21 06:00:00
They say sharing is caring. I'd argue that's not always true when it comes to sharing online content. It is especially not true when it comes to sending content to friends. I'm slowly realising that impulse sharing is a vice, and not a healthy one. You find something and you immediately feel the urge to send it to someone else. I caught myself doing that just the other day and decided that it is something worth addressing. How am I going to do that? By following 3 simple rules:
Those are the 3 rules I'm going to try follow when it comes to sharing content with my friends. We'll see how it goes.
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2021-08-20 06:00:00
Someone asked me a question the other day and trying to come up with an answer led me to some wild places mentally. The question sounds innocuous at first:
What has your biggest error been?
And the answer to that is a simple “I don't know”. Which I'd say is a normal and acceptable answer. Except, I think it's a terrible answer for me personally. I'm slowly coming to the realisation that doubt—when it comes to your life—is one of the worst things you can have to deal with. There's nothing I regret or consider a mistake because I don't really know if anything in my past was either a mistake or something worth regretting.
There are more than a few things I have doubts about. Plenty of questions, plenty of uncertainties. Both for my past and my future. I'd trade a doubt with a mistake any day. Because with a mistake you have certainty. You can deal with it, try to make amends. But with doubts, what can you do with those? Unsurprisingly, I don't know.
And there are numerous things I don't know. I'm not talking in general, I'm talking about my life specifically. Doubts about what to do with my time, doubts about what's worth pursuing, doubts about what a life worth living looks like. The only thing I know for certain is that life can be damn complicated.
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2021-08-10 06:00:00
It's in my nature to worry about things and there are many important things I am worried about right now but I want to focus on one of the least important on my list for the moment and that is the growing phenomenon of audience capture.
I don't know who came up with the term/definition first. It's certainly not something I invented. Audience capture is basically self pigeonholing as a result of finding something that "works" as a creator. This is something almost everyone that is creating content can experience. It doesn't matter if you're a writer, a painter or a vlogger. It can happen to everyone. The idea is that at the beginning, we're all unknowns, pushed by this desire to create and make something worth sharing. We're free to explore. But once we start to form an audience, this free spirit starts to get supplanted by a more considerate approach to content creation. And we start asking those silly questions: will my audience like this content? Is this good for my brand? Should I post this piece of media on a separate platform and keep my main site "clean"? The moment we start asking ourselves those questions, we are, as iOS autocorrect would say it, ducked.
Because at that point the outcome has become more important than the process. We have decided to give away our creative and intellectual freedom in order to achieve fame or money. Or in the extreme cases we're seeing people also giving away their health or their relationships in order to achieve that same result.
All that is stupid. And it's a phenomenon that is getting more and more relevant in today's web. It's a phenomenon that also goes hand to hand with something I jokingly like to refer to as fast food content.
Fast food is not good food. We can all agree on that. I'm not talking taste here, I'm talking about being healthy and good quality. If you don't agree with me, send me an email so we can fight over the internet. But what's "good" about it is that it's comforting. In most cases, you know what to expect, meal after meal. And, similarly to the audience capture phenomenon, you're usually surprised and confused when a food changes. Because it was not what you were expecting.
I see a lot of that on the web sadly. People who once had something to say that are now trapped in an endless cycle of recycled content, month after month, year after year, saying the same thing, over and over and over again. Not because they want to, but because they have to. Because you have to put up a new video or a new blog post. Even if you don't really have anything to say you have to say something. Recycling what you said last year is the fastest way to put something out there. And after a few years it's time to recycle the same content once again, but this time in a book. And after a few books you can compile everything in a best of. Then the cycle continues which is frankly depressing.
I sadly see no solution to this. Because once money is involved, it becomes a job. And we all need to have a job after all. If you're a content creator, of any kind, please, keep experimenting. Keep being creative and don't stop once you find something that works. Keep exploring.
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2021-08-05 06:00:00
On this very day, August 5, 10 years ago, I purchased my first domain name. Back then I believed that serious freelancers had to have a pseudonym because working under your real name was lame and so my first domain was not manuelmoreale.com but niuenso.com. The meaning behind that name is not important and I’m not going to discuss it here but feel free to reach out if you want to know what it means. Also if you want to guess its meaning, go for it.
The thing I think changed the most in the past 10 years, is how I view the web and my time spent on it. Back when I started working as a developer and designer, I was all in on the visual component of the job. The design aspect was predominant. But today, I don't even consider myself a designer. To be completely honest with you, I don't even know what I am, professionally speaking. Designing takes up maybe 5% of my time. But I also don't consider myself a hardcore developer either. I am actually a passable developer at best. What I'm enjoying the best is this odd in-between role, where I try to make things happen when creative people have ideas in mind.
But these past 10 years have also taught me to both love and hate what the web enables us to do. I enjoyed every single human interaction I had as a result of me being on the web and having this blog but I also started to deeply hate all the chaos that the web is bringing upon us as a species.
And that's probably the biggest shift I have experienced in the past decade: I'm getting more and more worried about things. But that is a topic for another time.
Now, what about the next 10 years? I can safely say that I have not a clear idea about what I am going to do. For sure I'll still write odd blog posts and newsletters. That's something I LOVE doing and plan to do more. But who knows, maybe I'll start an odd one person podcast, that's also something I have considered doing. Time will tell.
Anyway, enough rambling for today. As always, if you have thoughts and want to say hello, get in touch. Maybe we can talk about your last 10 years on the web. Or even the last 20 if you're an OG.
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2021-08-04 06:00:00
House cleaning post about the current situation of my side projects for those who are interested.
First, my Moments in time, is going to be retired. Not because I don't like it or because I don't want to share pictures here and there but because I realised it made no sense to have a separate site just for that. You might have already noticed that I started posting pictures here on my blog and that is how it's going to be moving forward. I'm going to archive the site but I created a public iCloud album with all the pictures that were up on the site.
Next, The Gallery. I started that site way back in 2014 and at the time I was all about collecting inspiration and doing web design. Life changed quite a bit in the last 7 years. I realised I'm only keeping the site up to date because of inertia and because it doesn't take too much of my time but I think it's time to let the site go and focus on something else. Now, I considered the possibility of selling the site to someone but I don't see the point in doing that and so the plan is to keep posting until I reach 3500 total websites—currently sitting at 3159—and then archive it. It's going to take me maybe a year or so to reach 3500 so until then, if you have a nice site, send me an email.
Brief update on The Gallery. There has been a slight change of plan. I'm no longer targeting 3500 websites but the site will be archived on February 20th, 2022. Why that date? Because the first post officially went live on the same date, back in 2015 and so it seems a good idea to also close down the site the same day. I am also going to disable my email that day which means you have a few more months to get your site in if you're interested.
Last but not least, a quick update on a side project that's not really mine but I was somewhat involved with it so it's worth talking about: the new Minimalissimo book has been printed and it's a beauty. The copies are limited and it's a single edition so if you're into minimal design and architecture and want a copy go get one.
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2021-07-19 06:00:00
The older I grow the more I dislike modern architecture. Well, at least a certain type of modern architecture. I find it terribly uninspiring in a way. But sometimes, the juxtaposition of old and new can create interesting views. I took this picture while waiting for a friend, a few days ago.
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2021-07-14 06:00:00
In his post "Photos don’t capture the moment" Chad has managed to describe precisely some of the thoughts I went through countless times in my head. I often considered buying a "proper" camera but I ultimately always decided against it. Two are the reasons for that decision. 1) I don't like the bulkiness compared to carry around my phone and 2) my phone pictures are good enough. That's what taking pictures is for me: an exercise in accepting that something is good enough.
I am no photographer. I never studied photography, never took a course in photography. I am a casual photographer at best. The pictures I take are nothing but visual anchors, a way to help my mind remember moments in time. I even made a website for myself, to share some of those moments, but that site is in the process of getting retired since I'm moving my moments here on the blog.
But this isn't to say that photos can't be more than just a tool to remember moments from your past. Pictures can be an extremely powerful artistic medium, especially when paired with words. Kissa by Kissa by Craig Mod is precisely that and it is still one of the best things I've experienced in the past couple of years.
What I liked the most about Chad's post is what he was hinting at:
So, I look at this picture as a remembrance of all those things I was experiencing this morning. Not as a perfect capture of it.
You can almost say that for people like us, the best part of a picture is what's not in the picture. It's the result of the picture combined with the memories in our head. And that's why photos still carry that something special with them. It's the medium of serendipity, the medium of calm and stillness. And that is probably why I'm fascinated by them.
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2021-07-05 06:00:00
This is a strange topic for me to write about because on the one hand I am terrible at monetising anything—whether it's my content or my skills—but on the other I'm fascinated by the idea of people being able to get paid for what they create online. What I want to share with you today though, is an idea I had in the past couple of days. Maybe it's a great idea, maybe it's an idiotic one. That, I don't know but I'd love to know what you think about it. And before you ask, no, I don't plan to implement anything like this on my site. I just want to share the idea and see what other people think.
Let's imagine you have a blog and you like to write about, well anything that interests you really. Let's also imagine your content doesn't mix well with more traditional tools like affilate links and that you also don't want to have ads on your site. Your options, when it comes to earn money from your content, are pretty limited. Since it's 2021 you can of course start a premium newsletter or have some content paywalled but you believe in the open web and want content to be accessible to everyone. At this point you're left with only one option: relying on people's generosity. That's pretty much it.
But let's now imagine that, for some reason, you wrote a blog post that is referenced a lot on the web. A blog post that also ranks very high for some interesting—from a marketing stand point—search queries. It wasn't your goal, it just happened.
What if you could let someone "adopt" that article, and that article alone? What do I mean by adopt? Let's use this post I referenced just the other day as an example. It's a post about small blogging. What if someone like Micro.Blog could sponsor it? You can imagine something as simple as adding a small intro line to the article that says something like:
Micro.blog believes in the power of small blogging and it's happy to have adopted this blog post
To me something like this could be a win for everyone. You, as a creator, are not pressured into writing anything in particular because the content is written first and sold later. To me, that's a win. A company or even an individual could selectively decide to sponsor individual posts that are directly dealing with the market niche they're interested in. And that also a win.
I was talking with my friend Rob earlier about this and he even mentioned the idea of a marketplace for individual articles. That would also be intriguing. So rather than selling access to your whole site you can decide to only market one article out of hundreds. I'm sure someone smarter than me is already trying to work out how you can make this thing a reality using some blockchain-crypto-nft-thingy.
Does any of this make any sense to you? Has anyone already built such a thing? Is my idea completely idiotic? Am I a complete idiot for even thinking this idea makes sense? I'd love to know so hit me up if you have thoughts on the subject or if you want to le me know that yes, I am indeed an idiot.
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2021-07-02 06:00:00
I was reading this article earlier today and it got me thinking about something that I have never considered before. One major change the web has experienced was the consolidation of discovery and consumption. Digg was—and still is—a place to discover new content but the consumption of that content takes place away outside of Digg.
And the same was true for discussions around the content. Those used to happen in comment sections spread across the internet. But now, places like Twitter or Instagram are acting as places for both the discovery and the consumption of new content.
You also have sites like Reddit or Hacker News that are somewhat in between. There you can still discover content but what's more interesting is that the discussions are happening on the platforms. So you have a consolidation of discovery and community interactions. I'd argue that in those two cases a good % of users value the discussion more than the discovery part.
And as a result of that you're encouraged to come back to the discovery platform once you're done consuming the content because if you want to discuss it, you no longer do it on the site where the content lives, you do it on the discovery platform itself.
Maybe all this was obvious to you but I honestly never noticed it.
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2021-06-30 06:00:00
That magical place that is Hacker News managed to fish up this piece of content today, from the depths of the web. And I am very grateful for that.
Before I start can we appreciate the fact that this piece is a .txt file hosted on a server? The reading experience is so broken on mobile but I don't even care. This is just great.
Anyway, back to the content of that post. Overall I don't disagree with the opinion shared in that lovely txt file. What I do disagree with though, is the root cause for the current "decline" of the web. I don't believe what we're facing is a tech issue. I think what we're facing is a human one.
This level of access seems to be gone these days. Services are still free, of course, but mostly services where you can be siloed in.
I don't believe this is the case. There are plenty of services that will grant you the same level of access these days. Heck there are plenty of services that will grant you whatever level of access you desire. I'd argue that it's easier than ever to make a personal website. The amount of resources out there are staggering. And yet, people are not spending an afternoon setting up a personal site. They sign up to the next social platform instead. Why? Because of the ability to reach people instantly. The web can be a lonely place at times. You create a site, you push it online and then... what? What happens next? Nothing. Nothing is probably what happens next. Because no one knows that site exists. We can safely assume there's more than 1 billion websites out there in the wild and if you add yours you're literally a drop in the digital ocean.
As a result of that, you have to be proactive if you want people to see your content. You have to interact with other communities out there, you have to reach out to people, and all this takes time and effort. But all that goes away as soon as you jump on the social platforms bandwagon. The Algorithm will do the work for you. You only have to figure out what kind of content works. And the payoff can be instantaneous.
No one can amass million of followers on a person blog in a matter of weeks. That is something that can only happen on a social platform like Instagram or TikTok. And that's why most people don't go down the personal site path. Most people are not chasing freedom of expression. They're chasing fame. Quantity over quality seems to be the law of the modern web.
And that is what's slowly killing the web in my opinion. It's not Google's fault. Or Facebook's fault. It's people's fault. We are responsible for what's happening. Now, I have to acknowledge the fact that big companies are spending big money in order to optimise their sites to leverage every single bit of human flaws that are present in our damn monkey brains. That's undeniable. But I still think we, the people, are sharing a good chunk of the responsibility for what's happening online.
But I get it. Complaining about Facebook or Twitter or Google or Amazon is easy. Doing something to change your internet life is hard. But I strongly encourage you to do it. Make yourself a personal site if you have something worth sharing. Reach out to people directly if you want to connect. Make time to build human connections. That is what still matters in my opinion.
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2021-06-28 06:00:00
A more social media savvy person would probably do what I'm about to do using something like Twitter and blast tweets out into the twitterverse. But, as you know, I am not a social media savvy person—and that's by choice—and so I'm going to share a bunch of random stuff here. There's no particular reason behind me sharing these, are just a collection of things I find interesting.
I'm gonna start with three space related links. The first is Brian Koberlein's personal site that I find very enjoyable and the other two are two newsletters by Jatan Mehta: Space Impact and Moon Monday. I said these two are newsletters but I personally read both using my RSS reader as normal blogs so I honestly don't know what to call them.
Next we have another recent addition to my RSS feeds and that is LessWrong and the best way to describe it is to quote from their about page:
a community dedicated to improving our reasoning and decision-making. We seek to hold true beliefs and to be effective at accomplishing our goals. More generally, we work to develop and practice the art of human rationality.
Another site I have to highlight is "Sixty fucking minutes" which I absolutely adore and I can't wait for the next entry to go live.
Finally, Carl and I launched a simple web experiment called The Forest. We're trying to collect interesting personal sites, blogs and independent publications so if you have something you think fits in there, feel free to send us a link.
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2021-06-26 06:00:00
I am an odd reader. Books have always been a constant presence in my life but I cycle through reading phases ever couple of years. Now I'm in the "there's nothing more enjoyable than sitting alone and read a book" phase. Why this is happening I have no idea but frankly, I stopped trying to comprehend how my mind works. I do know two things though.
First is that I am very grateful to Jun’Ichiro for recommending a few books to me. I'm enjoying them all and I'll definitely ask for more books on the topic of Japanese aesthetics. So if you're reading this post, thank you again.
Second, I'm enjoying using Literal. It's a lovely site (do we still call it a site? Or is it an app?) and I'm enjoying scrolling through other people's reading lists and discovering books to read. I have a few invites to share by the way, if you're an avid reader and want to give this site a try do let me know. Also please do let me know if you have book recommendations. I'm always on the hunt for the next book to read.
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2021-06-20 06:00:00
I was recently made aware of the existence of a lovely project called Gemini. The easiest way for me to describe it—and apology to the people that are running this project for probably butchering and oversimplifying the whole idea—is to say it's an alternative to the current Web as in an alternative to the World Wide Web and its http protocol.
The premises of this whole enterprise are genuinely lovely. They want to make something that is simpler than the current www, runs at a human scale, it's distraction free and it's privacy focused. Those sound great.
When I first read about this project I was like "Sign me up!". I started digging into the documentation and even installed a client to browse content served over the gemini:// protocol. And I'm not gonna lie to you, it is pretty neat.
But then I started wondering what would be the point for me to even serve content this way. The four points mentioned above—simplicity, privacy, human scale and distraction free—are not something that it's unattainable on the current web. Quite the opposite. You can easily do that but it requires some conscious effort.
I like what the people at Gemini are trying to build. A primarily text only internet sounds very intriguing but I think this won't really solve the underlying issue. People who believe in privacy, in simple sites, in a more human web, will pursuit all those things no matter the platform they're using.
The page you're browsing right now weighs less than 10KB when served compressed. Your browser had to download two files in order to display the content you're reading. A site on the WWW can be simple. And as for most things in life, it all comes down to what motivates you. If your goal it to have a site where you can track people and sell ads, no matter what protocol you're using, you'll probably try to find a way to do that. And I don't believe that inventing a more limited tech solution is the way to solve this issue. I think what we need is a more humane approach to what websites are. I think we need to stop caring about analytics, about numbers, about bloated websites, about fancy animations, about popups, and go back to a more simple and quiet web.
And this is not meant to be a critique to the people working on the Gemini project. I genuinely believe it's an awesome project and a very intriguing one. I just believe it's not a solution to a problem that is, in my opinion, a human one and not a tech one.
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2021-06-08 06:00:00
I read an article today, Don't let Social Media Think for You and it got me thinking.
There is no room for nuance, there is no room for grey. Every interaction is based on reaction alone - reflection is rendered moot, because there will always be another scandal that needs attending to.
This is a sentiment I agree with and my gripe with social media is nothing new. Something I'm becoming more and more a believer of though, is this idea that we can still have excellent conversations online. I am 100% certain that that's a possibility. The main issue we're facing with social media discussions is that we're forced to accept the boundaries and constraints imposed by the platform. There's no space for nuance on Twitter and that's by design. The same is true on Instagram and honestly if you're trying to have a conversation on Instagram you're out of your mind. Social media is designed for reactions. It's not designed for back and forth dialog and it's not designed for conversations that span across multiple hours or days or even weeks and months.
Forums used to be the public places to have those conversations. But in 2021, Reddit has probably captured almost all the audience that used to be active on forums. There's still a few here and there but they're nowhere near as "important" as they were 10 or 15 years ago.
And so we're left with just a few places where people can have discussions and most of them are not structured to have said discussions. As a result of that, the clusterfuck described in the article is a daily occurrence. We get outraged by something, people start virtually yelling at each other, we waste a few hours, we pat ourselves on the back and we move on to the next event.
Now, is there an alternative? Yes. I said it many times before, I'll keep saying it till the day I die, or until someone invents something better: private conversations via email. If you care about discussing something with someone, like genuinely care, try contacting them directly, in private, via email. In doing that you're removing all the constrains imposed on you by social media platforms, you're giving yourself time and space to explain your ideas in full, and you can provide all sorts of extra material to enhance the conversation. And there's no crowd watching which is another terrible aspect of social media.
Now, if you're a tech person you can also decide to share your thoughts publicly on your site which is great. But in my experience, a good conversation requires back and forth and there's no better way to do that than emails. So my advice is, for anyone who has interest in having good online conversations, have a public email address where people can reach you and try to engage with people that way too.
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2021-06-06 06:00:00
It's not a mystery that I'm a fan of asynchronicity when it comes to online interactions. In a world where it is imperative to react and be first, the concept of doing things slowly at your own time and pace is refreshing. And it's even better when conversations are conducted this way through blog posts on personal sites.
And this is exactly what I'm going to do today. I stumbled on two blog posts in these past couple of days and I'm going to reply to both. The two posts are The Quiet Web by Brian Koberlein and Metaphors for Design by Thomas Wilson.
I wrote about the idea of a quiet web almost three years ago and that blog post was a direct result of me being exposed to the idea of the slow web. That means this topics is already going back almost a decade. And that's not surprising as it is not surprising that the broader topic of creating something that tries to escape the attention economy is more and more present, at least in some circles. The web is getting noisier, that's just the reality. And there's not much we can do about it because the forces behind it are almost unstoppable. In his post, Brian writes:
When you remove the constant interruption and background noise of advertisements, your expectations about media resets. What was once normal is now annoying.
I'd push this further and say this is true for almost everything. This is definitely not limited to advertising on the web. I was discussing this very topic in the car just yesterday, while talking about background noise when living close to a city.
I was noticing how sensitive I've become to background noise and that's the result of spending the last 6 years in a very quiet place. We're a very adaptable species and we get used to discomfort, but once you reset your expectations it's hard to go back. I've been browsing the web with ad blockers at both the browser level and the network level and I'm now bothered by those very few ads that manage to creep in.
I can't even imagine what would it be like for me to browse the web without those. But I don't think the issue is just ads on the web. For the past six years I curated a site called the gallery and one thing I noticed is the constant increase in what can only be described as "Design Noise".
Pointless animations, fancy and totally useless custom cursors, overly complicated layouts. These things are everywhere. And they're making the web more and more noisy, at least for me.
In his post, Brian attempts to provide a definition for what the Quiet Web is. I think the "rules" he came up with are valid but they're also missing something important: intention.
The reasons behind sites are almost as important as the sites themselves. A site doesn't become quiet as a result of a technical decision. It becomes quiet as a result of a human one. You have a quiet site because you want to, because you believe and appreciate what a quiet site stands for. Or at least, that's how I see it.
Brian also touches on the topic of discoverability:
The biggest downside of the quiet web is that it can be difficult to find. You can’t simply Google topics of interest. Instead, you have to dig a bit. Go down rabbit holes until you come across an interesting quiet page.
As we all know, Google is the true gatekeeper here. My site ranks very high for some queries that have absolutely nothing to do with what I blog about most of the time. Why? No idea. That's just Google being Google I guess. But as a result of that, quite a few people discovered my content while looking for something completely unrelated. Now, that's obviously not a sustainable way to discover new content but it can happen.
I think the only true solution is to write more about things we find interesting and link to them. That's why this thing is called the web after all.
There's a passage in Thomas' post that made me think about something. The passage is this one:
You can build a feature complete website with maybe a dozen html tags and a single CSS file. Does it even need JavaScript? It’d be heckin’ fast and SEO optimised to boot. It doesn’t matter what other people are doing. Your website probably won’t turn into the next Reddit or Tumblr. A website can be feature complete. A feature list can not grow.
This was very interesting to me in the context of my site and also sites I work on with friends. It was interesting because I don't think I have a feature list. I have needs. My site is a tool and as a tool it needs to do certain things. And with time those needs change. But—and this is why I think the two blog posts are somewhat connected—I always try to fulfil these new needs in a way that's the least intrusive as possible.
I don't think a site can be fully planned ahead. Especially not a personal one. We're constantly changing, constantly tweaking, constantly adding or subtracting. And our websites will inevitably reflect that. But this isn't to say that I disagree with the spirit of what Thomas is writing. A site can be feature complete. At some point you can be "done" with a site.
And since in his post he mentioned the garden metaphor I think this is another occasion to mention this post which is still one of my favourite posts.
What's even more interesting is that if you look at websites as ever evolving creations then we would have to also rethink the role of designers and developers. But maybe that's a topic for another time.
Thanks to both Thomas and Brian for writing these posts. You both have a new reader.
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2021-05-27 06:00:00
A few days ago my, my friend Carl wrote an interesting blog post about Brutalist Web Design that you should read if you're into websites and web design.
The whole brutalist concept is intriguing and worth discussing but that's not really what I want to write about today. What I do want to write is an attempt answer to the question "What even is a site?"
We can start in a familiar place: Wikipedia. They define a websites as
A website is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server
As my mate Rob pointed out, this is a particularly fun definition because it implies that a one page site is not a website since it's not a collection of web pages.
Also interesting, is the link between the pages and the content. Does a website with no content count as a website? And what even is content in today's web?
The more I think about it, the more I find myself coming back to the Ship of Theseus. If I keep the content but I redesign the container is it still the same site? If I keep the content, I redesign the container, I change hosting provider and move everything to a different domain is it still the same site? Also, if I send these blog posts via email, the collection of them all inside your inbox, can that be considered the same site? What about this site's RSS feed? If you're reading this inside your RSS app, are you "visiting" my site? Can that be considered the same site? And what about the Wayback Machine?
Craig Mod wrote years ago about his love for the physicality of books as well defined objects. A website, in a sense, couldn't be more different from a physical object. And yet it very much is a physical object. It's a Schrodinger object in a way. It is and isn't a physical object at the same time. And that's what makes them special. And also infuriating. Because you sometimes want to smash a site to pieces but you simply can't...
Personally, the more I think about websites, the more I'm convinced that the container is not really that important in the grand scheme of things. As 5G Bill once said, content is king.
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2021-05-21 06:00:00
Scaling up is a very common problem when it comes to internet services. Everything is flexible these days, everything can grow along your product or service. Things can be scaled up at the press of a button. More power, more memory, more bandwidth. The entire ecosystem is designed to support growth.
Because there's only one thing you can do when it comes to online products: grow.
But how do you scale up something that's not meant to be scaled? How do you scale up kindness? How do you scale up something like taking your time to know a person and interact with them over weeks and months?
The answer to that question to me is obvious: you don't.
Some things can't scale. Some things are not "designed" to be scaled. They're probably not even meant to be scaled. Scarcity is a quality of certain things and it's what makes them special.
You can't scale up good friendships. You can't scale up the work of a craftsman. No matter how much technology you throw into the mix, some problems are unsolvable.
At a certain scale the only right answer is to stop growing. You enjoy what you have, you appreciate what's there. And you take your time. You don't scale up. You slow down.
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2021-05-20 06:00:00
Nothing.
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2021-05-17 06:00:00
In the ever expanding list of web related terms, in recent years we've added IxD, or Interaction Design. Wikipedia defines it as "the practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services". This is precisely not what I'm going to talk about. Not directly at least because I do think IxD plays a role in what I'm about to discuss.
When I say digital interaction I'm referring to human interactions happening on a digital platform. It's a human to human connection, not a human to computer one. The majority of these interactions don't happen in a vacuum though and in most cases, there's a middleman.
You see, sites, for the most part, are not designed to encourage and facilitate conversations. Online conversations are asynchronous, by definition. That is unless we’re talking about Zoom and co but that’s a different story.
Most websites want you to engage with content—which is a synonym of wasting your time—and they don’t really care about the quality of your time spent there. Quantity matters. Quality, not so much. And as a result we get these platforms that are endless streams of user generated content with barely any real interactions.
Instagram comments are for the most part an endless stream of one liners. YouTube and Twitch live chats are updated so fast that you can’t even see what’s happening. Twitter. Comment sections in the majority of websites are a collection of statements.
We get to say things but we rarely engage in real conversations. But there’s still a place for conversations to happen: personal websites and emails.
If you have something you want to say, something you want to share, I encourage you to do it on a personal website. Don’t do it on a social platform, don’t do it behind some odd paywall. Own your content, shape the container in a way that fits the content you want to share.
And then let people get in touch with you. You’ll be surprised by the amount of kind people there are out there. Emails also allow for slower and calmer discussions. And that’s something we need more of in today’s web.
I said it before, and I’ll say it again: the best outcome of this blog has been the countless interactions I had with people from all over the world writing in to share something with me, in private. There’s not a single one I have not enjoyed and I’m always grateful when someone writes in.
Lazily tapping a like button is easy. Taking time to compose an email to some random stranger requires a lot more effort. But I assure you that one will lead to something while the other will lead to nothing.
Oh and by the way, I said you should have a personal website but I can already hear you say “Manu I don’t know how to make a website”. That’s ok. If you want a site and you don’t know where to start get in touch and I can help you out.
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2021-05-12 06:00:00
I'm glad I managed to go for a hike this past weekend. There's something special about being up on a mountain alone, early in the morning.
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2021-05-04 06:00:00
I am a curious person by nature. It's rare for me to find a topic I'm not interested in, even if just superficially. Whether we're talking science, technology, engineering, design, architecture, psychology, you name it. Everything is interesting if you have an open mind. But more and more lately, I found myself asking a question internally while reading or listening about a topic: Should I care about this?
At a very broad level, the answer is obviously yes. I should care about things in general because the alternative is to go through life not caring about anything. And clearly, that's not ideal. There are things I need to know—with a very loose definition of need—for my work, things I need to know because I'm part of a society and things I need and want to know because are passions of mine. But the more content I consume, the more I'm wondering if my time could be better spent in other ways. Maybe something can be interesting but also not worth consuming from a personal stand point.
I was reading about the current Basecamp debacle the other day. The situation is interesting from multiple perspectives and the debate around it is a debate worth having. But I can't stop thinking that really, fundamentally, I don't care about it. And this thought, this mindset, is getting more and more insistent. Maybe it's just the effect of this very odd year we've just gone through or maybe it's the result of years on the internet. Who knows.
What I do know is that I should probably spend my time consuming more in depth content about the few topics I care deeply about rather than bouncing around, chasing things that are superficially interesting but won't probably stick around in my mind for long.
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2021-04-21 06:00:00
“This one small step for a man is sponsored by Omega, official watch maker of the NASA astronauts. We'll be right back after the break to take one giant leap for mankind.”
— Neil Armstrong, landing on the moon in 2021, probably.
I wrote about money in the past on this site. Actually, I probably wrote about money way too often on this site. And it's funny because it's not even a topic that interests me that much. But it's inescapable. If you live in modern society you have to deal with the financial implications that it brings with it. And sure, you can get away with more erratic lifestyles even in modern societies but chances are, if you're reading this, you're probably living a normal—whatever that means in 2021—life.
In a recent post I wrote that greed is ruining the web. That post was a rant, as is often the case with my posts. But I truly believe that this constant drive towards monetising everything is slowly ruining the web and also making our lives worse, even if ever so slightly.
Now, pretty much everything I'm about to say, comes from the point of view of someone that inhabits the interwebs for work and for fun and it obviously doesn't represent the experience of all people. Another way to phrase this is that this is my opinion. Should be obvious. It's my blog after all, but you never know.
I am not an OG when it comes to doing things online. While the internet was bursting its first bubble in the mid 90s I was still a kid. So I can't really speak for the very old days. But I was around when Internet 2.0 was all the rage and social media was becoming a thing. Back then, there were no guides or proper way to do things. Social media personalities, Instagrammers, viral challenges, YouTubers, those weren't a thing yet. Hell, even the idea of being a content creator on the web wasn't really a thing.
If you were doing things on the web it was either because you had a business reason to be there or you were doing it for fun and for passion. It was still the internet of forums, blogs and personal sites. There were no algorithms dictating your media consumption and the smartphone revolution was at the beginning.
As a result of all that, the money-making machine wasn't all that prevalent on the web. Because the web was not a place to become rich. It was not a place to have a career. It was a place to have fun and discover weird and wonderful things.
Fast forward 15 years and everyone seems to be on the same path online. Personal sites look the same, people have strategies on how to post content on social media, curation is a key word when it comes to your online presence. Everyone seems to fly around in a swarm, following the lead of someone—or something—in order to amass followers, likes, views, clicks, whatever.
Guides, tutorials, checklists on how to start this or that online, how to gain followers fast, how to get noticed, how to become "famous". Those things, are everywhere.
And now that you have this audience? You need to monetise this. Because you're an idiot if you don't. What's the point of having an audience if you don't get money out of it? We all despise businesses so much because of their business practices but without realising it we're all slowly turning ourself—or at least our internet ones—into single person businesses.
Side note: don't even get me started on crypto, nft, stocks. Those things are now also everywhere on the web. And if you're a person that struggles with FOMO, I feel so bad for you because you can't go 5 minutes without reading a new story about a person somewhere becoming a millionaire by investing in some obscure new internet coin. Shit's everywhere these days...
Yes I'm seriously asking this question. And no, I'm not blind. I can see plenty of YouTube videos or Reddit threads where people are having fun but that's not the fun I'm talking about. I'm talking about being free to do things that are not curated, that don't fit into our internet persona. There was a time when YouTube was mostly crappy videos filmed with a potato. Now, almost everything that bubbles to the top seems to be produced by a crew of 600 people with 5 million bucks worth of equipment. And I'm not saying that's bad, I enjoy quality content. But I also enjoy people that do random things without caring about the quality of their equipment or the production value.
When things become a business, you necessarily need to apply a business mindset to them. It's just the nature of the beast. If you start a YouTube channel in your spare time because you're bored, you can post all sorts of stupid crap on it. Some might be good, some might be bad. And who cares?! You're having fun. And your livelihood doesn't depend on it. But if you start earning money and it become a career then you can't take those risks anymore. Money and business have taken over your space for fun and silliness.
Now, I'm not even going to touch on some of the other aspects that are related to this issue: people burning out, cancel culture and all the rest. I'll just acknowledge that those things exist and are indeed a problem. But it's not what I want to talk about today.
You and me? Probably nothing. And if you were looking for a solution to this problem I'm sorry to disappoint you. I can't honestly do shit about this issue. Only thing I can do is to try do things differently in my tiny corner of the web. As for you, just go have fun. Who cares if your blog is weird, if your Instagram post doesn't fit with the rest of the things you post, if your vidoes are all over the place. We're human beings, we're messy, we're chaotic, we're all over the place. And that's a good thing.
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2021-03-23 07:00:00
Can there be such a thing as too much inspiration? Seeing someone doing something incredible can be inspiring. Climbing mountains, surfing huge waves, coming up with breakthroughs in physics or finding new cures for diseases. Inspiration is abundant on the web.
That said, I'm starting to suspect that this is a double-edged sword. It's probably way too easy to get inspired and to stumble upon unique people doing superb things.
If we go back maybe 30 or 40 years, most of the interactions were occurring among similar human beings. People would mostly go about their lives doing "normal things". And among them, there were special folks that were probably doing something amazing but the majority was not exposed to them on a daily basis.
If you wanted to get inspired you had to actively seek that inspiration. You had to buy a book or attend an event or a talk. Or even watch the occasional documentary.
But today, inspiration is everywhere. People are sharing their achievements daily all over the web. Stories, tweets, vlogs, articles, podcasts. You name it. They're everywhere.
And they're always in front of your face. And I think—and maybe it's just me—this is starting to have the opposite effect. Some will get inspired, sure. But I think the majority is subconsciously getting depressed as a result of this. Because it's a daily reminder that you could be doing something amazing with your life but you probably aren't.
And if you're reading this, and like me, you're just an average person going through your life, with all the ups and downs, joys and struggles, that's great. Keep it up.
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2021-03-21 07:00:00
I was reading an article a couple of hours ago and in the first 30 lines the author managed to remind me that yes, he runs a membership program, that yes, the program is awesome and I should subscribe to it, and that yes, there's also a newsletter that is also awesome and I should subscribe to that as well.
This is happening on every, single, post. Don't get me wrong, I get it. I know why this is happening, I know why people do this. I've been running side projects for years and I helped friends run their side projects for almost as long. Side projects are mostly a product of love and earning a living out of them is extremely challenging.
And I have nothing against people that monetise side projects. I think it's great that we live in a time where this is a possibility. But I also think this is slowly killing most of the great content on the web. As soon as someone finds a niche that "works" they stop exploring and they start digging as deep as possible into this one single thing that works. And by works I mean it makes money. But making money is not the same as creating good content.
The opposite seems to be true more often than not. Great content usually lives in odd corners of the web, seen only by a few people a year, created because someone was passionate about something. It will not generate money, it will not make someone famous. And that's OK.
I think way too many people nowadays approach the web with a financial mindset. To create something that will eventually generate money. And that's just sad.
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2021-03-19 07:00:00
For the past 20 something days I have been stuck at home with something called Covid. You might have heard about it. And when you're forced to remain at home, there's only so many things you can do to preserve your mental sanity, especially when you're not feeling great and you can't really do anything that requires your attention because this stupid virus makes it extremely hard to focus on anything for more than 20 minutes at the time.
So what can you do? You ask the web to entertain you. Ah, the web, this magical land where everything is possible. Ruled by memes, weirdness and randomness.
A part of me loves the web. I love what being connected enables. The unexpected human connections with people from all over the globe, the discovery of strange niches of knowledge, the endless supply of rabbit holes to get lost in.
But these past three weeks have also taught me that a part of me hates the web in a very profound way. Because the 2021 web is filled with rage, sadness and misery. You can't go anywhere without stumbling on a depressing story. Governments screwing people over, companies doing shitty things, some fucking idiot becoming a millionaire doing some despicable things for YouTube or TikTok, the list goes on and on and on.
And what really bothers me is the fact that it's impossible to find the good bits of the web without stumbling on the shitty parts. Because everything on the web seems to be funnelled through Twitter or Reddit these days. And unless you spend a stupid amount of time curating the hell out of your profiles you get served a cocktail of 50% awfulness, 40% memes and 10% good quality content.
And I'm coming to the realisation that all this is making me miserable. I go in with the intent of reading something interesting and I come out enraged or sad or frustrated because of some random reason. And the worst part is that in most cases it is something that has nothing to do with my life directly.
It's such an odd feeling and part of me feels completely powerless. I guess the only antidote to all this is to spend more time away from the web and the screens. If only I were allowed to leave my home...
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2021-02-19 07:00:00
Sometimes all you need is a warm cup of tea and some lovely winter sun. Also, if you're on the hunt for a new favorite youtube channel, give Ghost Town Living a try.
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2021-02-02 07:00:00
As much as I like to think otherwise, I am a content creator. What I mean by that is that I create content and that content gets, at some point, published on the internet for everyone to consume. As a result of that I believe—and maybe I’m wrong—that I have some sort of responsibility towards you, the “content consumer”.
It would be easy for me to say, “well, if you don’t want to read this content go read something else”. And it would be somewhat true. No one is forcing you to read anything. But at the same time, I do think we—and be we I mean both creators and consumers of content—have a shared responsibility. We should all strive to create and consume worthy content.
Now, defining what worthy content is can be tricky, I’ll give you that. And I don’t pretend to be even remotely in the position to be the judge of what should be considered worthy content. But we can all agree, without pointing fingers, that a good chunk of the content out there is pure garbage. And that’s our fault.
The reasons why most content is garbage is because, sadly, the current financial incentives are set up in a perverted way and you’re rewarded for the wrong thing. As a blogger, you’re rewarded if you generate traffic and that because we can’t really track anything else. We can’t really track the real life impact your words have on people’s lives. That’s fortunately not an option. So we settled for a model that rewards people who capture attention.
And this has a terrible effect not only on you, the consumer of content, because it becomes harder and harder to find quality content, but also on us, the creators, because it can trap us into recycling content that “works” over, and over, and over, and over again.
And this is something creators should be more mindful of. Recycling content and becoming a grifter can sadly be very beneficial for you from a financial stand point. But for the rest of the people, it only increases the noise and makes it harder to find other quality content.
So, if you’re a content creator, and have written some good content in the past and don’t have much else to say on the topic, just shut up.
Or even better, use your platform to point people towards other great content. Because that’s how we improve the situation and discover more worthwhile material.
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2021-01-22 07:00:00
As a developer, I spend most of my time writing code and as a result my code editor is my primary tool. When I started, back in 2011, I went for Sublime Text as my editor of choice. In the following 10 years, I found myself trying and considering switching to a lot of different tools: VSC, Nova, Storm and Atom just to name a few. But in the end I always went back to Sublime. And the reason is not that it’s the better tool. Maybe it is or maybe it isn’t, I honestly don’t know. The reason why I’m still using it is because I don’t have enough compelling reasons to start all over again with a different app. It’s just not worth it.
Now, could I be more efficient using a different tool? Undoubtedly. Could I write better code if I switch to a more complex IDE? Probably yes.
And yet, those are still not valid enough reasons to change my current workflow. And that is because there will always be a next improvement lurking around the corner. We can always find a better workflow, a better tool, a better setup.
But that’s not what my job is all about. My job is about creating sites for people to use and enjoy. That’s where my attention should be focused. Once I have a tool that is good enough for its job I can focus all my energy on the things that matter.
I’m writing this as a result of a Twitter thread where people were discussing markdown editors. There’s a billion of those out there and yet people are still making new ones. But no tool is quite right and I think that’s a problem that finds its origin in the current abundance of solutions.
My intuition is that this is somewhat related to the concept of Overchoice.
Tool A is almost perfect but tool B has this feature I like and tool C has a better layout. So you end up not being happy with any of the three. And if you’re a developer, at some point you’ll inevitably think about making that perfect tool yourself. And the cycle repeats again.
Before you start thinking I’m anti-progress and anti-innovation, let me say very clearly that I’m not. I just think some problems are not really problems. They’re annoyances at most.
10 years ago I started writing in iA Writer. It’s definitely not the perfect app to write but it allows me to write this post you’re reading right now and that’s all that matters. Could I be using a better writing app? Maybe. Would the end result be better? Maybe. Is it worth it? I say no. What matters is sharing content and ideas. What matters is starting conversations. My English will still suck even if I write it on a better app. There will still be typos. A better app won’t make me a better writer.
So my advice is, find something that’s good enough for what you’re trying to do and then do the bloody thing. Better tools can wait.
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2021-01-20 07:00:00
Carl sent me this link the other day. It's an interesting read and this post is my considerations on the topic so take a moment and go read that first. I'll wait...
♪ Imagine Elevator Music Here ♪
Done? OK excellent. Let me start by clarifying one thing: I don't personally disagree with the spirit of that essay. I mostly agree with Robin. That said, I do think there are things that need to be said. To start the reason why:
...Websites are treated as these embarrassing, ugly, ad-riddled things, whilst newsletters have established some kind of prestige for themselves somehow.
This is because newsletters are mostly still technically very limited compared to websites. Which is both a blessing and a curse. The limitation of the email platform is the reason why newsletters are still a relatively clutter and noise-free environment when it comes to design and technology.
You don't have banners, sliders, popups and auto play videos inside your emails because those are pretty much impossible to have. And that's not the case when it comes to websites since in 2021 pretty much everything is possible on the web.
Newsletters are still a "pure" medium because the platform is fairly dumb and it's extremely hard to do anything complex. That's one thing.
Then there's a matter of newsletters having killed blogs. I disagree. Blogs are definitely not dead. As for the three reasons provided, I'll start from the end.
Writers can actually, ya know, get paid.
Agreed. Premium newsletters are very easy to create these days.
Your inbox is a notification stream.
Both agree and disagree. It is a notification stream but it's also a mess and notifications can get lost very easily.
They’re impossibly easy to publish.
So are blogs posts.
As for the three points about websites...
Are difficult to make. Can’t notify people of new work. Aren’t able to pay writers easily.
These are all true and false depending on how you look at the problem. Most people don't run newsletters themselves. I certainly don't. They usually rely on a third party platform that does everything for them. If that is the criteria, then sign up for Ghost and you're good to go. They'll provide all the tools and it's as easy to start a blog there as it is to run a newsletter on MailChimp or Substack.
Most of the considerations on the original essay are only valid if we compare creating and self hosting a website against using a 3rd party all in one solution. But that's an apples to oranges comparison.
I run a blog where publishing an entry is as easy as copying from iA Writer and pasting into a text area. It all comes down to what we want to achieve. If we want super elaborate layouts that leverage all the fancy new tools of the web then inevitably that will create some complexity. Most complex layouts are, well, complex. That's just the reality. And that's true for both sites and newsletters.
Also, this notion that you still need to learn CSS and HTML to make a site but somehow you don't if you want to send out a newsletter, well that's just odd. Unless you're writing plain text emails and CCN your entire list, you're using something built with HTML and CSS (and some other tech). It's just hidden from you. But as I said before, you can do the same with a site. Sign up to one of the dozen site builders out there and you're good to go. Get a Squarespace site and you can be up and running super fast. Or get a Micro Blog.
Solutions are available. Sites are only complex if you want something complex. But that is also true for newsletters. If you want a bespoke newsletter you need to know your way around HTML and CSS. And I'd argue it's easier to code a nice site than a nice newsletter.
I do agree that RSS is awesome. We should promote it more.
And finally, as for the financial aspect of it, well I don't know shit about finance or getting paid online so it's better if I don't say anything.
And that concludes my rant response. Robin, if you're reading this, I think you have some excellent points and this is a discussion worth having. I'd have usually sent you a simple email but I thought it was worth discussing the topic in public because it's an interesting one.
And that's all I have to say.
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2020-12-24 07:00:00
It's official, Carl and I are officially writers. Time to celebrate. I'm kidding of course.
All jokes aside we did write a little something. Calling it a book sounds ridiculous but I don't really know what else to call this thing. It is mostly something we wrote just for fun and it's not meant to be taken too seriously.
But it's also not completely stupid either. We tried to find a balance between the silliness—I'm sorry—and some semi-serious reflection. You can blame Carl if it's too serious.
For now it's just a simple digital file you can download and read. Will a printed version of this tiny little thing happen at some point? Only time will tell. Go download it—or buy it if you're generous—and enjoy it. As always, comments and feedbacks are more than welcome.
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2020-11-18 07:00:00
Woff woff woff.
Barking in the distance.
Under a silent sky.
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2020-11-17 07:00:00
I was chatting with my friend Rob a few hours back and while discussing I don't know what I ended up seeing these two questions right here in the Google results:
A while back—damn more than two years ago—I wrote about my quirky and minimal iPhone setup. A few things have changed since then—and that includes, like, the state of the world—but also my phone. And with that my setup. So I guess it's time to write another post about stupidly minimal phone setups and answer a few common questions while I'm at it.
Asking "How do I make my phone minimal" is, in my opinion, a dumb question to begin with. Minimal means nothing. "No phone" is the most minimal phone. So grab your phone and chuck it into the sun. There, problem solved, you now have the most minimalist of all the minimal phones.
What you saying? You still want to have a phone after we're done? Ah, my bad. Ok, easy fix: go into accessibility settings and turn on grayscale mode. Done, colours are gone, your phone is minimal, and if it wasn't for Covid we could high five each other.
Now what? You ain't gonna tell me that you still want the colours but also want a minimal phone? Ugh...
All right, all right. We need to dig deeper into the topic apparently. Let me ask you a question: what does minimal mean to you? Because to me, minimalism is not an objective. It's a tool to achieve a goal. And that is why to me the question "How do I make my phone minimal" makes no sense. A better question should be "How do I configure my phone to achieve goal X, Y or Z".
Turning on grayscale doesn't make your phone minimal but helps making it less appealing and that can help you being less engaged with whatever is on the screen. A minimal icon set can help you achieve a more curated visual aesthetic so if that's what you're after then that's the way to go. To me, the best icon is no icon which is why my iPhone right now looks like this:
Now, I'll be the first to admit this is probably a bit extreme for most people but hey, if you're after minimal, that's as minimal as it gets, at least on iPhone. No dock, no notch, no icons. Also have no notifications and no sounds. Silence is golden. This is as close as I can get to have no phone while still having a phone.
How do I use a phone like that you're wondering? Well, everything goes through the spotlight search. I swipe down and type to search for an app. And speaking of apps, the easiest way to have a minimal phone is to only have the essential apps on your phone to begin with. Don't keep 500 apps on your phone. You probably don't need 490 of those. So go through your library and throw that shit away.
As for the wallpaper I'm using, it's something I made for myself. It visually hides both the ugly empty dock at the bottom and also makes the notch almost invisible. I think Carl is going to release a set of wallpapers based on this concept in the future either on the mimo shop or as a bonus perk for mimo members. Or you can make one yourself, it's not that hard.
So, TL;DR: how do you make your phone minimal? You don't. You ask yourself what you want out of your phone and then you set it up in a way that helps you achieve your goal. Keep asking questions, keep experimenting. Delete what can be deleted, turn off what can be turned off.
If you want to discuss your goals in particular hit me up via email. Always happy to have discussions with people.
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2020-11-15 07:00:00
Containers are interesting objects. Glasses, bottles, vases, jars. What’s interesting about a container is the fact that its most important characteristic is where the container itself is not present: the empty space within it.
The lack of container is what makes a container a container. A container with no empty space would just be a useless hunk of material.
The importance of this non-presence is something I always try to be mindful about. And not only when it applies to physical artefacts but also when it comes to life itself.
New experiences and ideas can find a place in my life if, and only if, I make sure there’s enough empty space for them. Without it, everything quickly transforms into an overflowing mess.
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2020-11-04 07:00:00
Patron accounts, BuyMeACoffee accounts, Donorboxes, stream donations, premium newsletters. We live in at a time where there’s an endless amount of tools at our disposal to ask people for money. Which is great because more and more creators can spend their time doing what they love (creating) and more, and people can support creators directly, skipping the useless middleman aka the advertisers.
Big fan of all this.
But if you’re already running a business, and you’re already making 500k/year, you have absolutely no business asking for people to make donations to support your work.
And I’m not talking about people that follow the effective altruism movement. I’m talking about the people who post pictures of their 100k cars on Instagram. It is not inspirational nor aspirational. It is greed.
If you are one of those people, I have a cactus waiting for you.
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2020-11-01 07:00:00
Inversion, also known as a temperature inversion, is a deviation from the normal change of an atmospheric property with altitude.
Getting to enjoy thermal inversion while up on the mountains is always a magical experience.
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2020-10-31 07:00:00
Feels surreal to think that a war has been fought in a place this serene.
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2020-10-31 07:00:00
I had an idea last night, while trying to fall asleep. An idea for a game. The current internet is dominated by platforms and algorithms and our internet diet is mostly dominated by content that is "curated" for us by some third party. All that is, quite frankly, pretty boring. There's no sense of wandering anymore. Mindlessly scrolling through your Instagram or Twitter feed is not really an exploration. It's like walking through a mall and looking through shop windows. Yeah you get to see different content but the setting is always the same and it is, to put it mildly, fucking uninspiring. So forget the mall, let's instead go for a walk through a forest, carving our own path through trees, roots and rocks.
The goal of this game is to bring back the sense of exploration that used to be part of the web. This is how it works:
That's it. As simple as that. Explore, click, explore, click. Nothing more than that. Only one rule to follow: you can't go through social media platforms. So no Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, Reddit, you name it. Try to stay away from those.
An example is probably the easiest way to show you what this game looks like so here's what my exploration this morning has produced: jon-kyle.com → walkerart.org → taeyoonchoi.com → distributedweb.care → sfpc.io → cyberwitch666.com → cargo.site → troyvasilakis.com → docs.google.com → nytimes.com.
Not gonna lie, this was quite the ride. If you decide to play the game feel absolutely free to share it with me via email or even better share it on your own site. Hopefully more people will rediscover the joy of randomly exploring the web through this fun little game.
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2020-10-30 07:00:00
I’ve been on this planet for a bit more than 30 years and my life, so far, has been the opposite of a success story. Nothing I did in the past 30 years screams success. I wasn’t the best student at school, I wasn’t the best at playing sport. I’m not one of the best designers nor one of the best developers. I’m not a superb writer nor a unique human being. I have not earned a lot of money nor have I created anything unique or special.
Amongst the countless possible lives, mine is extremely unremarkable. And that’s absolutely fine. Success stories are not rare, especially on the internet. Particularly because “the internet” has a very odd way to define what a success story is. “Designer goes viral with product X and makes Y amount of money in Z amount of time” is a common one. Articles get written, stories get shared. All this as if we’re supposed to learn something from these stories.
The majority of those success stories can be traced back to a combination of being the right person at the right time with the right product.
For every single one of those people who “made it” there’s probably hundreds of other people with a very similar story that will forever live in the internet oblivion because stars didn’t align in their favor.
So what are we supposed to do with this newly found knowledge? As I always say, I’m happy for these people, I’m not mad at them. But the older I become, the more I find these stories completely uninspiring. Am I supposed to be “inspired” by someone making 50k selling some WordPress theme? Why? Like seriously, what’s inspirational about it?
Again, good for them. But what are we celebrating here really? We live in this completely fucked up world where on the one end we fight against income inequality and on the other we celebrate people’s “success” aka fortune (not always, just way too often).
Maybe this is just me getting tired or maybe it’s just a sign I need to spend more time outside. Whatever the case may be, let me just say that it’s OK if your life is not a “success story”. It’s ok if you simply wake up in the morning and try your best to be a great husband, wife, dad, mother, brother, sister, boyfriend, girlfriend, colleague, neighbor, or simply a good human being. In my opinion, that’s far more important and valuable than everything else.
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2020-10-29 07:00:00
I'm getting better at appreciating simple things. Like a simple walk in the woods, boulder hunting. This is definitely something I need to do more moving forward. More time with people I care about, more time spent in nature, more time spent enjoying what's good about life.
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2020-10-25 06:00:00
Borders are a funny human invention.
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2020-09-15 06:00:00
Words are interesting. We live in an age where words, especially in written form, are getting more and more powerful. You can get into trouble for things you wrote decades ago which makes you wonder why we keep writing, honestly.
Words evolve, they lose and gain meaning over time which makes them a particularly interesting topic.
I was thinking about this a few days ago, in the context of a discussion about minimalism. But there are obviously way more powerful examples of this phenomenon going on in the public discourse around the topic of sex and gender.
Now, I am not going to touch that subject because 1) I claim no expertise on the subject and 2) I am—for the most part—not crazy, and I don’t want to touch a topic like that publicly. If you want my opinion feel free to ask it privately.
I wrote about minimalism in the past and every time I discuss the topic with someone I’m surprised by how long it takes me to describe what that word means to me. Words should help us create more clarity while in this context the word "minimalism" is doing the exact opposite.
And it's as a result of this confusion that people usually come up with neologisms. You need words to express concepts and sometimes the existing ones don't quite do it for you. So you invent new words.
Does that really help though? Let's say I decide that the term minimalist doesn't really fit me. And let's say I decide to start calling myself a manuist (very catchy, I know). Does that help? You have no idea what that term means so I need to provide a definition. That's easy enough to do. But who controls that definition? No one. Because no one controls languages. In a year we could be back at square one.
I'll give you one more example and I'm going to pick a term that is totally uncontroversial (yes that is sarcasm). Let's imagine I say to you that I am a feminist. What does that tell you about me really? I'd argue it says almost nothing. I grew up in a time and a place where that word used to mean something while now that word—at least from what I can see—has assumed a very different connotation.
The only way for you to actually know what I believe in and what my position is is to engage in a conversation with me. And that's why, in a way, I both hate and love words that have very broad definitions. Yes, they can be painfully unhelpful sometimes but, at the same time, they can be conversation starters.
What does it mean for you to be a minimalist? What does it mean for you to be a feminist? What does it mean for you to be insert your preferred politically charged word here? Those are very interesting questions you can ask someone if you have an open mind and are curious about what other people really believe in.
Words can be misleading and more often than not, it takes time and effort to really understand what someone was trying to communicate in that stupid 200 characters tweet.
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2020-09-13 06:00:00
Mountains have that something special I can quite put my finger on. Like the sea, they invoke this sense of wonder but unlike the sea they push yo to move forward. It's quite weird in a way...
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2020-09-13 06:00:00
There's very few pictures of myself I like. This is one of them. No particular reason why. I snapped this one while hiking a mountain ridge during the brief moment when life felt normal again in a 2020 that has been all but normal.
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2020-09-10 06:00:00
A few days ago we were having a discussion about blogrolls on my personal slack and that got me thinking about how to integrate one on my site. I already have a few links listed in my blogs page but that's buried deep in the footer of this site and I don't know how many will ever venture that far. I started toying around with a few possibile layouts and then it dawned on me that the solution was already in front of me. When I have something worth sharing I can just, you know, share it.
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2020-09-08 06:00:00
They say sunsets are for the lazy. True or not, are still gorgeous. Especially when the sun is setting behind the mountains.
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2020-09-07 06:00:00
Authenticity: noun. The quality of being authentic.
Authentic: adjective. Representing one’s true nature or beliefs; true to oneself.
You are a mystery to me. I know nothing about who you are, where you are, what you believe in. You are, to me, a complete stranger. In a decade or so from now, I will also be a complete stranger to the person who’s currently typing this. According to science, all the cells in my body are going to be replaced by 2030 and I will be a completely different person, at least physically speaking.
How about me as a person? What will I believe in, 10 years from now? Or even tomorrow for that matter. If 2020 taught us anything is that lives can change suddenly and unpredictably.
You are probably wondering what does all this have to do with authenticity and I promise we’ll get to the topic in the title. But let me ask you a question first: what does it mean to be “authentic”? And specifically, what does it mean to be authentic on the internet?
Pretty much everything, on the internet, is curated to a certain extent. Can you imagine what a full day of true “authentic” thinking streamed on twitter would look like? It would be chaos.
Because that is reality of us all: we are messy and chaotic human beings. And yet we are attracted by these hyper curated and organized fake online personas. We follow streamers, instagrammers, twitterers (?), bloggers and youtubers. We look into the lives of these people while subconsciously thinking that the internet persona they put up is an actual reflection of who they are only to then be shocked when they either say or do something “out of character".
And that is because that “something” sticks out like a sore thumb in the sea of manufactured authenticity they have curated over the years. And, don’t get me wrong, I get it. It is understandable why you don’t want to broadcast your “true” self to everyone. But at the same time a part of me keeps wondering what are the lasting effects of this phenomenon going to be. We are already starting to see the effect social media has on the younger generations and my suspicion is that things are only going to get worse over time.
Just to be clear, I claim no expertise in this area. This is just me trying to put into words what my current thoughts are. And that is also a very interesting phenomenon. I’m typing this on the 7th of September 2020. I’ll probably post all this later today. And if you are reading this around that date it means this post is a somewhat good approximation of what my thoughts on this subject are.
But what if you are reading this a month from now. Or six. Or a year? Or even ten years. What if you read this in 2040. I’d be 51. Would I still have the same thoughts on society? Highly unlikely.
Blog posts, tweets, pictures are nothing more that a single data point. They don’t mean much in the grand scheme of things.
People change, both physically and mentally. We all accumulate experiences, we grow, we change. We constantly move forward and the only thing that you can really judge is the overall trajectory.
You can’t really tell who I am from a single post on this blog the same way I can’t really tell who you are by a single picture on your Instagram. But over time you can start putting things together, post after post. And that’s how you start to notice the “manufactured authenticity”. Lives with no ups and downs. Lives that are always on point, always on topic. Lives that seem to have no space to fit anything that is not on brand.
Nothing is really authentic on the internet. No matter how much we try. We can only aim for authenticity and try our best to be who we really are with all the quirks and oddities that we possess.
I said it many times but I’ll say it again: I really appreciate when people get in touch with me via email. So if you have anything you want to say or discuss with me please do it. And don’t be afraid, I don’t bite I promise. At least not via email. As I said in this post, people change and so I might have different views now on subjects I wrote about in the past.
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2020-08-14 06:00:00
I don’t remember when I started playing basketball. I was probably in middle school. I fell into the sport mostly because my brother started playing it. One thing led to the next and twenty years later I’m still playing the game, albeit just recreationally.
Was I ever any good at it? That is an interesting question. I am fortunate enough to be a reasonably tall human being—190cm or 6ft 2.5inches for the Americans out there—and I always played sports so I’m fairly athletic. If you ask me I’d say I was decent. If you ask the same question to the people who grew up with me thought, you’d probably get a different answer.
I lost count of the times someone asked me why I never decided to try play at a higher level. A lot of people were convinced that I had both the potential and the athleticism to play at a reasonably decent pro level. I thought differently.
Now you might be wondering: why didn’t you try? That would be a reasonable question to ask. The simple answer is that I didn’t care about playing pro sport. I started playing for fun and never cared about the competitive aspect. Competing in general is not something I’m interested in. So that’s it. I didn’t play pro sport because I was not interested in the competitive aspect of it. That’s your answer.
But is it the real answer though? I mean, it is my answer. If you ask me that’s the answer I’d give you. But is it possible that the answer I have is not the right answer? Is it possible for me to not fully understand myself?
Since I was very young I’ve always been a very quiet and somewhat reserved person. I don’t like to be at the center of attention, I don’t like to be put under the spotlight, even if it’s for something positive. And this is not some twisted way to be humble. I just don’t like it. I very much prefer to live in the shadow. I don’t need the spotlight. But why is that? Is that just who I am? Is that just a trait of my personality? Or maybe it’s just a self-defence mechanism because deep down I am scared of the consequences?
This is something I started to think about more and more lately. Maybe the reason why I never went into competitive sport is not because I didn’t care about the competitive aspect but because I was scared of failing at it. Maybe that’s also why I attended a very easy high school or why I dropped out of University.
This was a somewhat painful realization. Because once the self doubt machine is set into motion, stopping it is extremely hard. And it’s also something that usually spirals down and permeates every corner of your persona.
I don’t think I am very good at what I do. And I mean it. I’m not saying it because I’m trying to be humble. I genuinely believe that I’m not particularly good at what I do. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that I suck and I’m the worst at it. I’m just saying that I’m not very good. There’s countless better developers out there, or better designers, or better bloggers. I think I am meh at best. But again, is that because I’m objectively assessing the value of my work and my skills? Or is it because by seeing myself as not that good I can shield myself from the scrutiny that comes with thinking that I am in fact good? To that I don’t have an answer.
What I do know, is that self doubt is hard to deal with. Especially when a part of you is convinced that the other people don’t really know you and so they can’t really judge for who you really are. “If they only knew what I know...”
What’s the point in writing all this? Honestly, I don’t know. Maybe a part of me is trying to accept this as the reality and writing about it is a way to cope with this issue. Or maybe it’s just an attempt to find some clarity. I genuinely don’t know. What I do know is that I’ve been thinking about writing this post for months and always postponed it. And that’s because it’s a depressing post frankly. Also because I don’t like when people worry about me. But deep down I know it’s a healthy thing for me to write this publicly rather than keeping it all in for myself. Because you know you need to do something once you start doubting if it’s even worth for you to be here to begin with. That’s never a good thing.
My apology if this post is a bit rambly. Also sorry if there are typos. I’m typing this on my phone with a raging thunderstorm outside my window. That’s always fun.
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2020-08-09 06:00:00
Trembling lights.
A city asleep on the horizon.
Gentile summer breeze.
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2020-07-29 06:00:00
If there's one thing I love to do is to support and help friends—and strangers—with their projects. Sometimes what they need is for me to code something, sometimes is simple feedback and other times is help to promote something. So let's do that, shall we?
When he's not busy eating god knows what, my friend Carl is always pushing content out on Minimalissimo. Recently I helped him launch the Minimalissimo Membership. The goal is to slowly move away from the traditional advertising/sponsorship model and build a dedicated audience that cares about minimalism in design. He has some exciting plans for the membership so definitely check it out if you're passionate about minimalism.
Another thing Carl has managed to ship is the Inside Minimalism Volume 1. Inside Minimalism is the premium newsletter by Minimalism Life and the book is a collection of 50 short essays on the topic of simple living. It's available on the Minimalissimo Shop and on Amazon as an eBook and will hopefully be available as a physical book in the not too distant future.
Last but not least, another book. This one is from my dear friend Rob. What started out as a Twitter thread has now become an ebook, a site, an audiobook, a course and if you wait long enough will probably become a web seminar, a convention and who knows what else. Anyway, the book is currently in pre-sale and you can either grab a copy at full price (49$) or use the Pre-Order Special and get 20$ off. Why should you buy it at full price when a discounted version is available? Who knows. Some people are weird and like to pay more to support small creators.
We're all so caught up in the hustle that we tend to forget about friends and strangers. If you find creators out there that are doing something valuable, remember to tell people about it. Word of mouth is still the best form of marketing available, and kindness from strangers is always very much appreciated.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2020-07-27 06:00:00
A fuzzy tailed star.
Sight wandering across the dotted sky.
Lonely summer night.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2020-07-17 06:00:00
The other day I landed on this post by Jeffery Vaska. I don't know him personally, and I never interacted with him. But his blog post is the reason why I'm currently typing this. He worked—still works?—on a project called Indexhibit which is something I heard about years ago but never used personally. It looked like an interesting and niche project, and I remember checking the site every couple of years to see how the things were going. If you read his post, you'll see a situation that's all too familiar if you've ever started a side project online.
The majority of side projects are a one-person enterprise. Sometimes there are a few people involved, but the vast majority is entirely run by single human beings that need to take care of everything. And usually, there's no light at the end of the tunnel. I don't know why other people start side projects, but I'm going to tell you my story.
You probably know that in addition to this blog I also run three other side projects, two completely solo—thegallery.io and moments.manuelmoreale.com and one in collaboration with Carl—mnmll.ist. I also developed—and I'm involved with—the Visual Journal, Minimalissimo, Minimalism Life and Designed Space.
I'm pretty sure that, combined, all these sites have generated millions of views. At a glance, you'd probably consider these successful side projects. And you'd think it must be super fun to run sites like these. And in a sense, it is. But it's also tough to keep going year after year. Especially when you're the only person working on a project. If you followed my gallery, for example, you've probably noticed that I don't post regularly. And that's because sometimes I don't feel like taking the time to update it. It's a constant roller coaster. Side projects are often a reflection of the state of mind of the people behind them.
It's inevitable for a side project to reach the point where you start thinking about ways to monetise it. And that's fine. Running a site can be expensive and time-consuming, so it makes sense to find a way to earn something from it. But that's where I struggle the most. I am a terrible business person. I feel bad asking for money, and I value human connections way more than money. In the past few years, I tried a few different approaches for my gallery but ultimately decided that was not worth the effort. I took what can be described as the fatalist approach to monetisation and realised I could die tomorrow so who gives a shit if I earn a few dollars a month from advertising or referrals or whatever. As I wrote before, somewhere on this blog, I like kindness as a business model. I'm naïve enough to believe that if you're kind to the people you randomly encounter on the internet, they'll remember you and maybe they'll decide to support your work.
But maybe that's just that: naïve. As Jeffery's post shows, sometimes people will expect you to keep going, for free, forever. And that's unsustainable and the perfect recipe for burning out. That's also a failure in communication. We all love to create brands for our side projects and to hide behind a logo and a fancy website. But at that point, there's no difference between a mega-corporation running a business and me just updating a site in my spare time, doing the best I can.
So what can you do, to not being part of the problem? Well, the first thing is to support the sites and the projects you use, if you can. And if you can't, take the time to get in touch to the people behind the projects and let them know that you're out there, using their creations and enjoying them. Kindness from strangers is often overlooked, and a few words of encouragement go a long way.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2020-07-14 06:00:00
Hi and welcome to Manu's website. For the past ten years Manu has worked with hundreds of clients all over the world and his creations have generated millions of page views. This blog started back in 2017 and since then has gained millions of readers. Manu also runs a very successful newsletter that goes out—very infrequently—to 150000+ users.
Does that sound familiar to you? Have you ever read something similar online before? Because it does sound familiar to me. You read that and think "Oh, wow, this guy must be incredibly good." No I'm not. I just typed some shit. No one will ever be able to check if that's true. No one will even care if that's true. That's just marketing.
I'll ask you this: what would your reaction be if I told you my newsletter goes out—very infrequently—to 15 people instead of 150000+? 15 people? Pfff, that's nothing. This newsletter probably sucks since it only goes out to very few subscribers. But how do you know? Maybe the newsletter started yesterday, and it's merely a matter of time before I reach a million subs.
Sadly, that's the world we live in. Fake it till you make it is indeed a thing that's happening on the web and numbers and marketing are an effective way to warp and twist our perception.
You read a hot take from a blue checkmark user on Twitter and immediately think it must be something worth paying attention to. No it's not. Complete idiots run some of those blue checkmark accounts. Do you think my opinion is worth anything in this world? Absolutely not. Would my opinion be worth more if I had a million readers? Still no. It's a damn opinion.
Necessary clarification: does this mean every opinion has the same weight in every context? Hell no. If two engineers are talking about engineering, I should shut up because I'm not an engineer and my opinion in that context doesn't matter. So if I go insane and start posting medical opinions on this site, don't listen to me.
My advice to you is this: ignore the numbers, ignore the marketing. I know, it's easier said than done but still, try to ignore the marketing. There's good content out there waiting to be discovered. And good content is good content. An excellent newsletter is still excellent if it goes out to ten people and a quality post is still a quality post if read by two people.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2020-07-12 06:00:00
There are two precise reasons why I'm writing this post. The first one is an article I stumbled upon on Kotaku a few days ago. The other is this message I posted in a slack channel that simply said:
my internet has no comments
I wasn't lying. My internet doesn't have—for the most part—comments. I turned them almost all off years ago.
Before my friend Matt starts yelling at me, I'm aware I'm using the word internet when I should say the www. But most people don't know the difference, so I'll just stick to the internet because I like it better.
My internet is almost entirely free from popups and ads, but that's not the point of this article. My browsing experience is nearly exclusively content-focused, and all my internet interactions happen either via email or on private slack channels. And that's the reason why even though I am aware of the toxicity of the overall internet discourse I can't say I really comprehend it.
I removed myself from public online discourse years ago and only posted maybe a handful of comments, almost exclusively on work-related topics. I just don't think there's much value in adding my voice inside comments sections.
Sometimes though, when a topic is polarising enough, I do like to peruse comments sections on specific sites, just to see what's the current status of online discussions. I am doing this while being fully aware that comments sections are not a good representation of the global population, and based on the site, the audience can be strongly skewed towards a specific demographic. Still, it's fun to peek into the madness sometimes.
And that is what happened the other day on the Kotaku article. The content of the post is not really that relevant to what I'm interested in discussing here. Only things you need to know are that:
Those are the perfect ingredients for a very chaotic comment section which is why I was interested to see where the discussion was going. To no one's surprise, it was a mess. But an intriguing one.
If you ever had the pleasure to design a comments section, you know those things are just pure chaos. Every site in the past 20 years (at least) have tried to solve the issue of designing a comment section that doesn't suck, and we're still here trying to solve the same problem.
I think there's just no way to organise a conversation that is frequently branching and regularly welcoming new voices. That is a UI/UX problem that is impacting how we interact with each other.
There's no need for me to show you an example of what I'm talking about. Just open pretty much any comment section ever. Everything is either a tangled mess of nesting—in an attempt to give the discussion a structure—or an @ mention galore where everyone is replying to someone else, and it's all bundled together.
And I get it: comments sections are hard. That's because human conversations are messy. But the messiness of the whole experience is shaping the way we interact with each other. If you feel compelled to add your voice to a discussion, what are the chances that you're going to carefully read all the previous replies to see what people before you have written? I'd place to over/under at 1%, and I'd personally bet on the under.
And, again, I get it. Trying to follow a discussion is more often than not impossible. Everyone is talking on top of each other, often at the same time. You read a comment, start typing your reply and, by the time you're done, ten other people have posted something new and the person you're replying to has posted three other comments to three other users and the discussion has moved to a different place.
So next time instead of typing a long and sensible reply you post something as fast as you can because if you don't do that your "contribution" is lost. Soundbite discussions here we come.
What are you saying? You don't do that and prefer to stick with your elaborate response. Well, I respect you. Really. But we both know the first reply is going to be Do you expect anyone to read that wall of text LOL. That's just how the internet goes these days.
This is all fascinating to me. It's incredible how we've adapted to the medium. And it's amazing how this appears to be the only way people interact online these days. And I say "it appears to be" because I know this is probably not true. I am sure I'm not the only one who has decided to remove himself from public discussions and moved to more private places on the web.
Pretty much 99% of my online interactions are audience-less. When I'm interacting with someone online, there's usually just the two of us. As far as I'm concern, there's also no anonymity. I'm not some faceless and nameless user in a comment section. If you write an email to me, you know you're writing to a human being. A human being that you had the chance to know—at least a little bit—through this site.
And that is also another big difference between the type of interactions I have from the ones you usually enjoy on the web. My interactions with people are typically initiated by something I wrote. People write to me in response to something I posted on my site. And that's my site. I have control over it. You know it's not the product of some fluky algorithm that showed you a random tweet or suggested you a random post. If you're reading this, at some point you willingly clicked on a link to this site. And you're almost a thousand words in so there's no way you just stumbled on this content.
The difference between clicking on a link to open a site, read through a thousand words, click on a link to open your email app and write an email versus mindlessly scrolling through Twitter and hit reply on a tweet is massive. And if you don't see the difference between the two interactions, then I don't know what to tell you.
And that's why I think more people should abandon both social media and comments sections and go back to personal sites and emails.
The other day I read a short post—that now I can't find and therefore can't link—that was suggesting this idea of looking at the web as a social media platform. The more I thought about it, the more I liked this analogy. The web solves almost all the problems social media platforms are currently dealing with.
The web is decentralised by nature. No single authority has control over it. You're not the product when you run your own site. You're the only person responsible for what happens on your own site which means you can't hide behind a 3rd party platform. It's incredibly customisable and flexible. The barrier of entry is very low. I can go on and on with these, but you get the idea.
I genuinely believe more people should go back to personal sites. Or newsletters. That's another big one that is gaining more and more momentum. We should just accept the fact that, for the most part, social media platforms have failed at encouraging good discussions. They successfully managed to gather people in one space but failed miserably at providing the tools to have useful conversations. And we should also accept the fact that we just can't have one to one discussions with five hundred other human being at once. That's just not a possibility. I mean, go out and try it. Or, well it's 2020 so maybe mark it on your calendar and try it next year. Invite ten friends out for dinner and try to have a conversation about any serious topic with all ten at the same time. It's just not going to happen. I can guarantee you that in 15 minutes people will be talking on top of each other. That's just human nature. And yet, for some reason, we expect this to work online. It's just bizarre.
I'm going to stop here before this post descends into complete chaos. The TLDR is more people should delete their social media and should embrace more personal mediums. Start a personal site or a newsletter. Then go read what other people have to say on topics that interest you. And if you find something interesting online 1) share it on your own site and newsletter and 2) connect with the author. And for today that's all I have to say.
As always, if you have thoughts on the subject feel free to get in touch via email. I'm also still running my experimental Slack. If you want to get invited and hang out there let me know.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2020-07-05 06:00:00
Before I jump into this endless topic, let me start with a quick PSA: I could fill this post with probably dozen affiliate links—which is what the majority of people writing about these topics do—but I decided not to. Why? Because integrity matters. If you found any value in this post consider supporting this site directly. Thank you.
So, you decided you want to start a blog. Congratulations! I'm relatively new to this world considering I started writing on the web in 2017 but as a developer I think I can probably say a few things on the subject without sounding like a complete idiot. So let's do that.
Needless to say this post is going to be highly opinionated, but I'll try my best to explain the reasoning behind my opinions. Also, this is not going to be the classic quick how-to post that provides a solution. My goal is to explore the topic and then let you figure out which solution works best for your specific use case. All good? Cool, let's start.
No matter what solution you'll decide to adopt, every blog needs a few key ingredients. You'll need:
In order to start a blog—or any site really—you don't need anything more than that. Now, if you're a developer or know anything about how the web works, you know that two of those three ingredients are MASSIVE topics and one could probably write books on the subject. I'm no book writer and—just as an FYI—we'll probably just barely skim the surface of this topic. If after reading this post you have questions and want to know more, you can either ask Google, ask me via email, or hop on my personal Slack and ask me there.
Before we tackle the main ingredients we need to discuss the big topic of Hosted vs Self Hosted. In my opinion, this is the biggest distinction when it comes to setting up your blog. Again, the topic is way more nuanced than this but for the sake of brevity, the main difference between the two is this: with a hosted solution, you pay someone to take care of most—if not all—of the aspects of your blog for you and you just focus on your content, while with a self hosted solution you need to take care of most things yourself.
Now, before you start typing angry emails, I am aware that there's a lot of in-between solutions and the distinction is not that clear cut. This is just a very broad definition.
Which one should you chose is up for debate. I personally think it's useful to own your content so I'd say go with a self hosted solution. But I'm also aware that maintaining a website can be a complete pain in the ass and I see the appeal of a hosted solution where I can just pay someone to handle everything for me.
The following is a completely arbitrary list of hosted solutions to start a blog. This is by no means a complete list of what's available and I'm not paid by any of these companies to list their products. I also have not tried most of these so I don't even know if they are good or not.
These are just some of the platforms available out there and I tried to only list the ones that are blog focused/oriented. There's also a growing list of platforms that are designed to help you create a self hosted site—so not a blog specifically—that you can obviously use to create a blog. Again, I'm gonna list a bunch here and this list is by no means complete.
I personally wouldn't use a generic site builder to create a blog and if I had to pick a hosted solution I'd go with something like Ghost or Micro Blog that are very blog focused platforms.
The majority of these hosted services will offer you a "free domain" which is technically true. The free domain is, more often than not, a subdomain but they also offer you the possibility to use your own domain name. So let's talk about domain names.
The domain scene right now is in complete chaos. In recent years dozens of TLDs have been released and you can find the craziest name for your blog. Common wisdom tells us that you should pick a domain that is short, memorable, and easy to type. I know shit about SEO so I have no clue if Google (and Bing ahah) gives more importance to a .com domain compared to a .pizza domain. Do I personally care about your domain name? Absolutely not. Should you care about your domain name? You decide. I'm personally using my name as my domain because it's my personal site and I decided to use a .com because it's the one people are probably most familiar with.
As for how you go about buying a domain name that's pretty straightforward: you go to a domain registrar site, pick a domain name, register with email and pay with your credit card. As for most things on the web, you can buy a domain name from one of the dozen domain registrars out there. I'm gonna list a few down below but again, use whatever you like. Every single site listed here has both pros and cons and I'm not going into details because it's boring. Also keep in mind that not all sites sell all possible domains. So if you're after something specific you might have to browse a few sites.
I personally have all my domains on Hover (and one .dev on Google). Why? Because I appreciate the fact that they don't try to upsell me crap. They don't have the cheaper prices and they don't have ALL the TLDs. But their service works for me.
You won't spend a ton of time messing with your domain name but it's a pain in the ass to change down the line so my advice is think about a name you like first and then stick to it. Some more marketing oriented people will probably suggest you to pick a domain that contains keywords related to what you intend to blog about and also suggest to check if the name you want to use is available on the major social media platforms.
Is this good advice? Who knows? You should not listen to me in general but definitely don't listen to me when it comes to social media marketing because I hate that shit and I couldn't care less about it.
So, to recap: find a domain name you like, bonus point if it's short and easy to remember and type. With that secured it's time to create some content.
Now that you have a name for your blog it's time for you to start writing your content. I'd suggest you use a writing app for that rather then writing directly on the web. That's obviously just my suggestion but you can do what works for you. There's no right way.
I personally write everything in iA Writer. I've been a fan of the app since version one and I still love it (I'm writing this post on iA Writer). But the fact that I like it doesn't mean you should like it too. So I'm going list down here a few writing apps you can use to write your content. Maybe give these a try and see which one works best for you. You can also do a quick Google search for Best Writing App and I'm sure you'll find dozens more.
Again, these are just a few of the apps you can use. I don't think I'm in the position to recommend one over the other because I'm no professional writer and I don't know what I'm doing most of the time. I personally started using iA Writer because I liked the minimalist style but now I use it because I love the overall experience and I like to write in Markdown since that's how the content on my site is stored anyway. Different people will have different experiences and different needs so try a few and find out what works best for you.
Another few apps worth mentioning are:
These are not exactly writing tools but more like writing aid tools. Sure, you can write directly in the app but the main service they provide is help with your grammar, syntax, style, and a bunch of other things. In theory, they are supposed to help you become a better writer. Do they work? Maybe. Some say yes, some say no. Most of them have free plans or free versions so give those a try and see if they work for you.
OK, you have a name and you wrote some content on your fancy new editor app, it's time to push it online somehow and for that you'll probably need a CMS.
Unless you really want to go old school and manually create html pages or take the brutalist path and push .txt files online directly, you'll probably want to use a CMS to update your site and publish your content.
CMSs come in all shapes and sizes these days. Just have a look at this page. That said, not all CMSs are created equal and not all of them are designed with blogging in mind. More often than not a CMS is designed to be content agnostic which means you can create a blog with it but it's not designed specifically for that purpose. A very notable exception to this is WordPress. You have probably heard the name before. I used to use WordPress but I stopped a few years ago because I found better solutions. A quick online search will show you that thousands of people suggest WordPress as the CMS of choice to start your blog. Why? Because almost all hosting providers offer a 1 click install for WordPress these days and you can be up and running very quickly. There's also a billion themes to chose from and probably as many plugins to customise your site.
Now, to me, those are not pros. Those are cons. If you're just starting, the last thing you need is an infinite assortment of options to chose from. People usually think that more options is always a good thing but I find the opposite to be often true. The older I grow the more I appreciate highly opinionated software that is designed to do one thing and do it well. I personally run my site on Kirby which is a CMS you should probably avoid if this is your first experience with running a site. But again, that's a personal opinion. It's free to download and try so definitely give it a go if you're intrigued by it.
Selecting the "right" CMS is no easy feat. My advice is to use one that is easy to maintain and has a nice community around it. That's all I'm going to say on the subject.
Selecting a CMS is also not needed if you decided to use a hosted service because the service itself is the CMS. So if you decided to create your first blog with Ghost or with Micro Blog then that's your CMS.
I'm going to briefly mention static site generators because I know some people use it for their blogs. I think site generators are great if you know what you're doing and are probably not the best choice for someone who's just getting started. A site generator is a bit of a hybrid solution. You're not manually creating html pages to be uploaded on your site but you're also not using a CMS. Instead, you're using a tool to generate the html for you using the content you wrote. They're kinda neat and very flexible and you can build awesome websites with them but they do require some tech skills to set them up, and unless this ain't your first rodeo you should probably avoid them.
All right, you have a domain name, you wrote some content, you decided which tool you're going use to publish your content online so it's finally time to tackle the third and final ingredient: hosting.
If you opted to use a hosted service they'll provide this for you so you don't have to worry about it. With this type of platform it's usually just a matter of configuring your domain to point to their service and they'll take care of the rest for you. Each service has its own quirks but I'm sure you'll be able to find answers to all your questions on the official help sites or support forums.
If instead you opted to host your own site, well welcome aboard. The topic of web hosting is huge and we'll try to avoid going too deeply into this rabbit hole. To keep things simple let's just say that the hosting you're going to use will depend on how much you want to spend and what type of CMS you decided to use for your blog.
As always, the answer to the question "which hosting is good for me?" is: it depends. For the sake of keeping this guide somewhat short and not too technical I'm going to assume you're not a developer with years of experience. Based on that assumption I'm going to exclude a few categories.
This is the classic solution experienced developers love. Especially VPS since in the last few years this kind of solution has become very affordable and extremely powerful. I personally use a VPS to host my sites but it's not something I'd recommend to someone that is just getting started. Don't trust the people that will tell you that it is super easy to spin up a new droplet on Digital Ocean. It is easy, if you know what you're doing. As for bare metal, this is something 99.99999% of people reading this post will ever need so we can just ignore them.
I don't even know how to call these but they are very popular amongst developers at the moment. I'm talking about services like netlify.com, pages.github.com, vercel.com and probably countless others. These are all awesome platforms that can provide an incredible service and a very reasonable price (sometimes even for free). But are very, VERY developer oriented and probably not the best idea if you're just starting out.
So what should you use then? A shared server is, more often than not, the best solution for someone who's just getting started with a blog. Shared servers means you're sharing space and resources on a server with other users and other websites. The specifics of the plan depends on the hosting provider. Some will provide you with more space, others will provide you with more bandwidth. Some will guarantee that on a single server there won't be more than a certain number of sites while others will try to cram as many sites as they can on a single machine.
The hosting world has hundreds or probably thousands of players so I am not going to even attempt to list some here. I stopped using shared hosting years ago so I honestly don't even know what's considered good out there right now. What I do know is that you should avoid hosting that is too cheap. 100 bucks a year is a reasonable place to start imo.
Also, make sure your hosting has everything you need to run your blog platform. Since shared hosting is the most common, the more mainstream CMSs are designed to run on them but that's not always the case and some require unusual configurations that are not always available on shared hosting.
Since WordPress is very, very popular, you'll find plenty of hosting solutions that are specifically designed with WP in mind. They are usually more expensive than traditional shared hosting but they will offer a few services in return that could make your life a bit easier in the long run. Managed WP hosting usually come with automatic plugin updates, some extra security—the internet loves to hack WordPress sites—and a few other nifty features.
Finally, it's time to put everything together. Grab your domain, set it up to point towards your server or your hosted service, install your CMS of choice, create your account, and post your first blog post. And you're done. Congratulations!
Now what? Well now it's a matter of letting people know your content is available to be read and that is a chapter I'm not going to write because I have no expertise in that area. I'm naive enough to think the only thing that matters is writing good content. But again, I'm no successful writer so don't listen to my advice on this.
Maybe a good idea is to let people know on social media that you have new content or maybe you can go find a subreddit related to what you plan to write about and sneakily promote your new blog there. Will that work? Who knows? It's 2020, absolutely everything can happen these days so give it a shot and see what happens.
This was quite the post and I am perfectly aware that after reading this you'll probably be more confused than before. And I'm also aware that in a guide on how to start a blog I wrote everything but how to actually start a blog. But that was by design. A blog—or any site really—is a very subjective creation and there's no right solution. I personally love my blog because it's very simple, very lightweight, and straight to the point. But it's also extremely rigid and changing anything requires me to open my code editor. Which is fine, I'm a developer after all. But that doesn't mean it's the right solution for you.
Having said that, if you just want my personal opinion on what's the best way to start a blog today here's my take: start with a relatively cheap, hosted solution, see if blogging is good for you and then plan your next move.
Investing money and time upfront is not always the best idea. You start blogging because you think it's cool, you buy a domain, set up a fancy hosting solution, buy a premium WordPress theme, buy a bunch of premium plugins because why not, spend a week setting everything up, and then you lose interest after a month when you have nothing to write about. All that work, time, and money is wasted.
So again, start simple. The simplest thing you can do is set up an account on Medium and start writing. I'm personally not a fan of Medium but it's good enough if you just want to experiment with public writing. if you're willing to invest just a small sum of money you can get a premium blog on Micro.blog for 5 USD/month. You can pair that to a domain name (usually 10 to 15 USD) and you're up and running with a blog in probably less than an hour and for less than 100 bucks.
Start there and see what happens. You never know what you need from a site until you actually run one. I have changed my site dozens of times and I'll probably change it a dozen more. Sites are living creatures and are always evolving so consider all this just the beginning of the journey.
This "guide" will probably raise more questions than it has answers. And that's OK. Creating and running a site can be overwhelming at first, but you'll find plenty of good folks who are willing to help you through the process. I'm certainly willing to help anyone who needs to be helped so if you have doubts, questions, or just want an opinion on something feel free to reach out via email and I'll see what I can do.
And again, I avoided adding affiliate links on purpose because I don't want to be a sellout and suggest you should use a software or a service I don't personally use just because they pay me money. That's something I personally hate.
And by the way, If you're curious about what tools I actually use to run my site here's a rundown: my site is hosted on Hetzner, domain is hosted by Hover.com. The servers are maintained using RunCloud, and my blog is powered by Kirby. Everything is written in iA Writer on a Mac. I also have an awesome human editor in my friend Carl, which makes my writing more tolerable. He also provides inspiration for my random blog posts, along with my friends Mike and Rob. And that's all I have for you today.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2020-06-30 06:00:00
This is going to be a complete waste of my and your time but let me just say this: I absolutely hate domain squatters. If you ever thought about creating a site you probably know what I'm talking about. Dozen upon dozen of good domain names that could be put to good use for interesting projects are currently just parked there, gathering digital dust.
Why? Because some smart ass thinks that at some point someone will pay a good amount of money to get that domain. Guess what? That ain't gonna happen chief. You're just actively making the web worse. So congrats on that.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2020-06-29 06:00:00
What is it worth working on? I ask myself this question often. My work lives on the internet and as a result it is, more often than not, very volatile and impermanent. The majority of the sites I coded in the past 10 years are probably already gone from the web.
Was the work I did worth doing? I don't know. I honestly don't have an answer to that question. Maybe it's the pessimist in me talking here but the more I grow older the more I think my work is mostly pointless.
Just a few moments ago I was coding a site for a client I don't personally know, to help him promote his business, a business I don't even know if it's good or not.
That's the nature of my job, of most jobs really. You do something because you must earn some money in order to go on with your life. That's not true for all people obviously, but it's probably true for the majority.
And so here I am, sitting in front of this screen asking myself what's the point of what I'm doing while outside is raining again. Maybe I should stop taking on new projects and spend more time hiking and accept the fact that I'll probably go broke very quickly as a result of that.
Would that be a terrible outcome? Again, I don't know.
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2020-06-17 06:00:00
We live in the age of social media. Everyone is on at least one platform. The same platforms you and I use. Everyone is right there and can be reached just by clicking a button. You can follow everyone, you can have their words and pictures in your feed, and you can connect with them directly, or at least you can try. When it comes to "famous" people, what social media is selling, is an illusion. That illusion is that you and the famous person are at the same level. And don't get me wrong, at a human level, you definitely are. They're just human beings; they're not special.
But when it comes to social media and internet interactions, when you tweet at a famous person or when you comment on an Instagram post, you don't really expect that person to reply to you. They can't possibly reply to everyone. They probably won't even read your comment. That's just the reality of social media.
That said, you could have spent that same time and mental energy writing to someone "less famous" and more approachable and maybe something meaningful could have come out of that interaction.
What if, instead of adding your meaningless emoji comment to an Instagram post with 15000 other comments, you decided to write an email to a small content creator to simply say hey I love your content.
What if, instead of buying merch from a YouTube channel with 15 million subs, you decided to spend that same money to support a small indie blog or publication?
Those are tiny actions but trust me, they make a difference.
The web is getting more and more centralised, and we're not helping. We're part of the problem. Browsing the web should be an exciting experience. We need to bring that sense of discovery and exploration back.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2020-06-15 06:00:00
I recently launched a new version of my gallery and took to opportunity to implement imgix. I didn't really need it and it's an extra cost. So why did I do it? Two reasons:
The average weight of webpages is constantly increasing and I blame designers for that. Yes, I said it. If you're a digital designer, and especially if you're a graphic designer that for some reason is working on the web, ask yourself this: when was the last time you considered page size when designing something? When was the last time you decided that page weight was more important than visual quality? Probably never.
You probably don't care. You're probably happy with your site loading fast on your 500 Mbps connection and don't give a FF that your homepage makes 150 requests for 50MB of data. You probably don't even care that your stupid WordPress theme builder is loading 8 font files that you're not even using. Because it "looks fine" on your machine and that's all you care about.
Who cares if I'm wasting expensive data on mobile connections in other countries. Who cares if load time contributes to more Co2 emissions. It looks great and that's what's important right?
Fortunately, some people do care.
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2020-06-12 06:00:00
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about random online interactions. I appreciate all the people that took the time to get in touch via email to suggest potential solutions. I love to hear from you so thank you for that. I'll go through a few of the ones that have been suggested here, just to keep the discussion going.
This was by far the more common suggestion. Comments are an obvious solution. But this is why I'm not a fan of comments. First, a comments section is tied to the content of a particular post. Which can be good but it's also not what I'm after. I'd love to find a way to let you discuss whatever you want without me being in the way. Comments are also a double edge sword. You need to moderate them, make sure bots are not taking over them and more importantly they add complexity to the site and that's something I'm actively trying to avoid.
This is a variation on the same topic but it's way more interesting. The idea is to have a place to host comments that are separated from my site. This is slightly more interesting but also adds complexity because now you need to find a place to host the comments. Someone suggested Reddit (and even created one with my name which felt very weird and kinda awesome at the same time). Now, I'm not a Reddit user but I know Reddit can be awesome and terrible at the same time. So I'm not sure about using it.
A few people suggested using something like Slack or Discord. This could be a solution. I personally already use Slack for work and I do have a personal slack we can use. If you're interested and want to give Slack a try send me an email and I'll send you back an invite. I'm not a Discord user but if there are enough people interested in using it as a platform I can set it up. Again, if you're interested, send me an email.
This is a concept I'm still considering. The idea is to create a private directory, password protected and not indexed where you can add just a few contact information. And only people that are willing to share their contact information will have access to the directory. Contact info can be whatever you prefer: an email address, a social media profile, a phone number, whatever works for you. Could this work? I have no idea. But I'm intrigued by this concept.
As always if you have thoughts on the matter please do get in touch. I love discussing these topics with you.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2020-06-11 06:00:00
Almost two years ago I wrote a blog post about my browsers setup. A few things have changed since then and my browser setup is a bit different now. So let me post a quick follow up.
I stopped using Chrome almost entirely. Only launch it every now and then to test sites i'm working on and that's it. I'm trying my best to avoid Google and its business model. As a result I'm using Firefox a lot more and also Safari.
A good chap called Daniel decided to code a Firefox version of my New Tab Chrome Extension. If you're a FF user you can download it here
If you're after some very minimal and experimental browser I have two to recommend: Oryoki and Monochrome. Both very unique in my opinion.
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2020-05-20 06:00:00
Yesterday I stumbled on a Tweet that was saying something about the resurgence of RSS and personal blogs. The tweet itself is not that important so I'm not going to link it here. But that made me ask if that is indeed happening. From what I can see, social media usage is not necessarily winding down but I do see more and more people going back to personal sites and personal blogs.
Why is that happening I don't know. I can only speak for myself and to me, this blog is a much quieter and enjoyable place compared to a Facebook or Twitter profile page. There are no distractions here, no ads, no suggested content, no interferences.
But then I started thinking about the structure of our interactions. We, and by we I mean you and I as well as all the other people that are reading this post, have a relationship. More likely than not, it is not a very profound one but it is a relationship nonetheless. And that's great, I'm a big fan of that.
But in a way, this still feels centralised. I don't know how many of you out there are reading these words, maybe there's ten of you or maybe ten thousand. Whatever that number may be, the only point of contact between you is the fact that you all read this blog. You, the readers, probably don't know each other and have no way to interact with each other. And that's sad frankly. The random interactions I had with you via email are the best byproduct of this blog and it saddens me to know that's only something I get to enjoy.
I was thinking if there's something I can do to solve this problem but I'm not sure what the best solution could be. What's the best way to help you connect with each other? Is that even something you'd be interested in? Let me know.
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2020-05-18 06:00:00
Clutter: [noun]
"a collection of things lying about in an untidy state"
We all have to deal with it. It's usually the result of the "just in case" mentality. You keep things around because you never know when you'll need them again. And slowly but surely, clutter grows. There's also what I call "sentimental clutter": all those items we keep because we want to remember a specific moment in time.
Pictures are the most common example of that. We all have pictures stored somewhere. Especially now that pictures no longer occupy physical space in our homes but live inside SSDs in the cloud. The cloud is prime real estate for digital clutter.
And don't get me wrong, I'm as guilty as you. I have thousands of pictures in my iCloud account—mostly cats and nature— and my email archive contains thousand of both read and unread emails. Will I ever need those again? Probably not.
But archiving is just as easy as deleting and if I ever need to read that email again, it's there. Just in case.
Noise: [mass noun]
"a series or combination of loud, confused sounds, especially when causing disturbance"
Noise is another thing we all have to deal with. Well, unless you're deaf, in which case, you don't really have to deal with it I guess. Noise, to a certain degree, has become a fixture in our modern lives. Cities are noisy, offices are noisy, restaurants are noisy.
But there's a solution to that: noise cancelling. The technology is spreading rapidly now that small earbuds are equipped with noise-cancelling and you no longer need to carry around a bulky pair of headphones on your head. You can walk around and live in your own acoustic bubble in a way. And that's great, I think.
But what about visual noise? What do we do about that? Our eyes are as stimulated as our ears but there's not much we can do to overcome visual noise. We're constantly taking in information, constantly processing. But there's no such thing as a visual noise cancelling.
The only thing you can do is to stop and close your eyes. Or you can curate the space around you, as much as you can. You can clean up, remove the clutter, curate the colour scheme of your home or your office. Visual noise is something you need to fight against actively.
Abundance: [noun]
a very large quantity of something
Abundance is probably one of the hallmarks of the 21st century. And yet, quite bizarrely, owning less is becoming a desirable goal. Granted, this is a goal only if you have enough to live a reasonably comfortable life to begin with but still. Minimalism is growing in popularity. People are reconsidering their life choices and a simpler lifestyle is getting more and more desirable.
But how do we get there? What does it even mean to live a simpler lifestyle? To me, it's all about minimising noise, reducing clutter, avoiding abundance and owning less. As you may have noticed, those are all abstract goals. There's no number to reach, no goal set. You know better than me what a reasonable level of noise and clutter is for your life. It's not up to me—nor anyone else—to set a baseline for you or everybody else.
I like to constantly keep an eye on my digital possessions. I routinely go through my photos and apps and documents and check if there's anything I can delete. That's not because I need to, there's plenty of space in the cloud. It's mostly to maintain a healthy relationship with the digital world. And I do the same with my physical possessions as well.
Don't own more than you need. Don't make more noise than necessary. It's that simple.
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2020-05-08 06:00:00
If I had to judge my internet self using internet and marketing metrics I’d have to conclude that I’m failing. My projects are not well known and I am certainly not famous. I don’t have a curated and coordinated internet presence, I’m not growing a popular newsletter, don’t have lots of supporters, am not verified on Instagram or Twitter. I'm not winning this game. And that's a good thing.
The current web is strange. It seems to be governed by some silly rules:
Those are reasonable rules if you’re wearing your marketing hat and if your livelihood depends on a website. But that's not me and probably it's not you either. It's also sad that more often than not, those rules become the goals. It's not unusual to see websites that are designed to maximise the time you spend on the site for example. The question is: why?
Don't get me wrong, I get why. It's not that I don't know why people are doing this. I'm asking why in a more broad and "philosophical" sense. To me, all those goals should come up naturally. People will visit and share your content when the content is compelling and your site is designed well enough to not frustrate your audience.
I think—and maybe I'm wrong or just naive—that a site should focus on the user. What I mean by that is that you should keep in mind that your content is ultimately going to be consumed by other human beings and you should put their experience before everything else.
At the same time, you should try to be guided by some moral principle AKA things you believe in. That is, for example, what I tried and I still try to do with this site. When I started working on this design I asked myself "what do people really need to find in a blog?" and the answer was simply "the content". The entire point of a blog is to have an easy path to the content, especially the new one. That's the reason why my homepage is the latest blog. If you've opened the site before and you open it again you immediately know if there's new content for you to read.
Does changing the homepage of my site hurts SEO? Maybe. I honestly don't know and frankly, I don't care. Because to me, preventing you from having to scroll down even 100px to find out if there are new posts in the archive was more important than ranking high on Google.
The same reasoning was applied to the archive. I want you to have access to the rest of the site but at the same time, I don't want to blindly push related content at the bottom of each article. It's not up to me to tell you what you should read next. Maybe the next thing you should read after my post is a book. Or maybe you should close the browser and go for a walk (if you can, which is not a given considering the current situation).
By following that line of thoughts I landed on the current archive solution. Is it the best solution? Probably not. Worked quite well at first but then the archive became long and the page was tedious to scroll. That's why months ago I introduced the new design with only the posts from the current month visible by default.
These were all design decisions taken by thinking about your reading experience. Because in this particular case, that's all that matter. This site is a blog. The entire point is to provide you with a nice and pleasant reading experience. My goal is to consume the least amount of bandwidth possible and to serve you the content you're looking for, as fast as I can in the most pleasant way possible. That's what matters.
Does all that translate to more time spent on the site? Or more page views? Maybe, but it's not relevant. I'm 100% sure that I could grow the size of my newsletter by adding a fullscreen modal that reminds you that it exists and you can subscribe to it. That crap apparently works. But there's absolutely no chance I'm going to do that. Why? Because I am not going to sacrifice your browsing experience in exchange for some email addresses. It's not a worthy tradeoff.
And that's precisely the reason why you probably should not listen to me. I'm terrible at marketing, I'm terrible at creating content for the 2020 web. My guiding principles are all over the place. But I hope that you at least ask yourself a few more questions when you're taking the next design decision.
Side note, since we're talking websites. A bunch of people in the past few months have asked me if there's a way to receive my content via email. Now, I never considered setting up a newsletter just for that but if that's something you want I'm happy to do it. I'm using Buttondown and you can subscribe here. I'm going to experiment with this until the end of the year and see how it goes. The plan is to send out the exact content available on the site. So no need to sign up just for the FOMO.
So I guess that's it for today. As always, if you have thoughts on the topic of this post do get in touch. Or even if you just want to say hi. I don't mind that.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2020-05-04 06:00:00
May is upon us. Italy, like most of the rest of the world, is slowing trying to go back to normality (whatever that means). And as the world is deciding how to get back together and finally escape the isolation I'm here planning to escape the isolation in search for something even more isolated. If there's one thing this weird situation has taught me is that I need more time away from the screen and away from human beings. So that's my goal for the future: fewer hours in front of the screen and more time outside.
But how about you? Did you learn something new about yourself in the past few weeks? I'm always interested in learning from other people's experiences so hit me up if you have something you want to share. Or send me a link if you have a blog. I'll be happy to read it.
All this isolation is feeling more and more like a social experiment not 100% under control. And if we ignore for a moment the tragic aspects of this mess—and there are quite a few—it's almost fun in a way. Not gonna lie, seeing major players of our daily lives (sport, television networks and the rest) is quite interesting. Everyone is in complete scramble mode to stay relevant.
It's also bizarre to see how incapable TV networks are to produce decent content once you remove all the big studios and the infrastructure. I mean, getting a decent webcam is not rocket science.
Another fascinating aspect is how lonely people are feeling. We're more connected than ever and yet, once forced to stay inside, people started to feel lonely. But just a few months ago, people were glued to their screens even when together in person. Everything is backwards and in a way, it's kinda funny.
Maybe this mess will serve as a moment of reflection for all of us (I highly doubt it...)
As always, I'm more than happy to have a chat with you if you feel lonely or just want to vent your frustration/angry/sadness/whatever. This situation is stressful for everyone so if I can help in some way I'm happy to do it.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2020-04-22 06:00:00
I wrote many weird posts in the past. That’s not a deliberate and calculated choice, is just the result of me being me.
This one will probably rank quite high on the “weird scale”.
Let me just start by saying that I’m currently breaking the law. So if you’re a cop, please ignore this post. Thank you.
Like you, I’m supposed to be self isolating and in a sense I’m doing it to the extreme. I’m currently sitting on a rock, behind me there’s just trees, in front of me just grass. The nearest human being is probably a few km from me.
So, from an isolation stand point, I’m doing great. That said, the law says I should stay in a 500m radius from my home.
I left that 500m radius probably 5km ago. That’s me breaking the law. I guess I’m a fugitive. I quite like that.
This isolation and overall situation is slowly grinding me. It probably forced me to accept the fact that I am in fact burning out. I just ignored all the symptoms up until now. So in a sense I should be grateful for this. At least now I’m aware of that.
At the same time, cabin fever is definitely kicking in. I tried to stay inside as much as possible to help with the current situation but I guess I reached the limit.
You don’t really know how much you need something until it’s taken away from you. That something for me is apparently walking around mindlessly.
I just walked for a couple of hours and I feel great. The sun is setting in front of me, the wind is blowing through the trees and birds are enjoying the spring.
Life without “all the rest” is great. Once you remove the work, money, clients, responsibilities, rent, bills, projects, dreams and everything else, life is actually fucking amazing.
It’s just hard to notice it.
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2020-04-06 06:00:00
Coding websites is—in theory—my full-time job. And yet, as of today, I don't have a portfolio. That's the reason why weeks ago I decided to invest some of my spare time to code myself a portfolio. The current situation is forcing me to stay home so I might as well do it now. I had an idea in mind for a design. I sketched it on paper like I usually do and started coding. A few hours later It was ready.
I didn't like it. Hit Delete. Back to square one. The design was nice, don't get me wrong. It was just too much. I don't need all that stuff. I need a portfolio that reflects who I am as a person and as a designer/developer/site maker. I need something simpler.
I started sketching something new....
"Maybe I can remove some of the elements, maybe I can use a video and not a gallery of images. Yes, videos could work. Let's do that. Nope, videos are a pain. Don't like it. Screw the video, let's just use a simple screen for now, that seems reasonable. No, I don't like it either. But why though? The layout is nice, the colour scheme is minimal. Ah, I see what the problem is. There's just too much "stuff" in here. Descriptions, links, images. That's not what I like. Also, why do I even have js in here? Let me remove all that. Do I need both an intro text AND an outdo text? I can maybe use only one. Yes, an intro plus a gallery. That should do the trick. But I really don't want to use js. Can I code a slider without js? Let me try... YES! It works! YAY. I can build a fancy and minimal gallery with links and images and no js. That's awesome. Ok, let me put all this together. This is exciting. Ah, you know what? This layout... I don't like it. I mean, it IS nice. I just don't like it. It's not "me". Doesn't really reflect who I am, as a person and as a designer/developer/site maker."
Then it dawn on me: the reason why I don't like these designs is because I already have a design I like. I already have a portfolio, I just didn't realise it until now. It's the site you're seeing right now. The chaos of this blog, the randomness of it all. This is my portfolio. And it's the perfect representation of who I am as a person and as a developer and designer. I'm not the most professional person out there, I'm not a pro developer and I'm definitely not an amazing designer. I learned by trial and error like many others and in the past eight years I coded all sorts of things, the majority of which I'm definitely not proud of. There's no point in showcasing all that stuff. There's no point in having a "proper portfolio". I don't even know if I want to keep doing this for a living so what's the point in spending time polishing a new portfolio for myself?
So there, welcome to my new portfolio. I hope you like it.
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2020-03-29 07:00:00
We've been drawn to stories since probably the beginning of time. Stories are inspiring. Stories are entertaining. Stories can make us feel like we're living a different life. Someone else's life.
Stories are an escape way. Escape to the repetitiveness and boringness of our lives. If you look around, stories are everywhere now. Social media, blogs, books, movies, tv-series, video games. We need those because let's be honest, the majority of us—including me—has a boring life.
We'd love to be different, to take risks, to live adventures. But we don't. Most of us has to grind through life, day after day, to earn a living. For the vast majority, that's life.
It's not adventurous, it's not thrilling. It's just reality. Now, you might be reading this and thinking "fuck you Manu, my life is not like that" and to that I say: good for you. I mean it. If your life is not boring I'm genuinely happy for you because that's great.
My friend Rob shared something on his Yo! podcast a few weeks back. It was the story of how he ended up doing what he does. And no, I'm not talking about butchering buttons in css. I'm talking working on one pagers and running One Page Love.
Now, It's not the most incredible life story you'll ever hear. But it's his story about his life. And that IS inspiring.
We often turn to TED talks or to some other crazy adventurous stories to get inspired but let's be honest: 99.9% of us won't drop everything we have going on to go on a solitary walk to the north pole.
Which is why we need more "regular" stories. Stories of people that just do their best to live a life worth living. So, if you can, consider sharing your story. Blog about it, vlog about it, start an Instagram or Twitter thread about it.
The format doesn't really matter. What matters is the message.
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2020-03-25 07:00:00
Life is not normal right now. It doesn't feel all that different but it's definitely not normal. I'm fortunate enough to live in a place fairly remote compared to millions of people out there that are all crammed together in big cities. I'm grateful for that.
As you probably know, I live in Italy, and unless you just woke up from a coma or you're a Big Brother contestant, you're probably aware that a lot is going on here in the country. And around the world in general honestly.
People are told to stay inside, to limit human contact. Economies are tanking, workplaces are closing and step aside Bitcoin because we have a new, way more valuable, currency going around: toilet paper rolls.
Seriously people, what's wrong with you. Toilet paper? Seriously? I'm disappointed, especially if you live in a country that knows what a bidet is.
Also, don't be a dickhead and use other types of paper to wipe your ass. Those will just create an even bigger problem.
Anyway, I'm not here to talk about the currency of our new economy. I'm here to talk about what happens when the majority of your human interactions gets converted into bits and bytes, floating through cables across the globe (and satellites in LEO in the hopefully not too distant future).
You've probably seen the news about online service getting overwhelmed with traffic and from a sociological and technological stand point, this current chaos is a very interesting large scale experiment. Companies are adapting, people are adapting.
In the midst of this mostly uncontrolled chaos, people are doing what they can to stay connected. For the first time in my life I made a group video call for god sake. And not because I needed, just for fun.
People I never met in my life wrote me emails just to ask how everything was going and if I was doing ok and I wrote similar emails to people around the globe. Because, at the end of the day, we're going through this shit together whether we like it or not.
I couldn't be more grateful to have the internet right now. The majority of my friends live abroad, in different countries, continents and timezones. Without the internet, staying in contact with them would be a total nightmare.
I'm also grateful for all the people I can interact with daily. The small group of friends I can play videogames with, night after night and share countless laughs. The wonderful people in the Kirby Slack, scattered across Europe and the globe, always there, doing their best to keep the community and their lives going.
Numerous are the things we take for granted in this 2020 society. Hopefully, as a result of this crazy time, we'll all have a new appreciation for what we have and what we benefit from, day after day.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2020-03-09 07:00:00
The beauty of the web is its open nature. Content is—for the most part—free for everyone. But that openness and freeness has become, in the last few years, deeply intertwined with the advertising world. Content is free to consume even though you're still paying for it, albeit not willingly.
Today, the 2020 Internet is experiencing the rise of subscriptions. I'm sure you've noticed it. They're everywhere. Everything is a subscription these days.
Subscriptions aren't inherently bad. The difference is not the money. The difference is human perception. Impulse buy are just that: impulsive. You buy something and then you forget about it. Subscriptions are a bit harder to forget. That's because every week or every month or every year, something will remind you that you decided to subscribe to that service. And that's a decision you need to face constantly.
Do I really want to keep sending this money to that person? Do I really need this service? That's mentally tiring.
The older I grow, the more I enjoy the idea of paying for the content I consume. There's something oddly satisfying in knowing you're contributing, even in a small part, to the creation of good content.
I'm no billionaire, I'll probably never become one, and so I know my contributions are just a drop in the ocean. But it's still something worth doing.
If you can, consider supporting the sites you enjoy. Don't take for granted that what's available now will be available in the future. The majority of the web is a labour of love and passion. Countless people invested their time and money to produce original content that's now available for us to consume.
I'll end this post with the shortlist of sites and people I'm actively supporting. Maybe go check them out and also consider writing about your list. Promoting good content is often as important as supporting it directly.
I'm an active member of Craig's Explorers Club. I consumed pretty much all the content produced by this man in the past few years and I'm more than happy to spend some of my money to help the creation of even more content.
Joh doesn't have a way to support him directly but as soon as Kawara—his latest project—went live I subscribed. Not because I need the app but because I'm happy to support what he's doing in that space. I love his writing and I love his digital experiments.
I've been a subscriber to Sam's podcast for years. There are some awesome conversations in the archives and in addition to countless excellent book recommendations I also got a lifetime subscription to his Waking Up app in return.
Guess there's no need to tell you what Wikipedia is.
Rob is a good friend of mine. We connected quite randomly back in 2013 when I submitted a one pager I designed to his One Page Love and he got in touch and asked me to convert that into a WordPress theme. The theme is long gone but our friendship is still there. Rob recently launched a subscription/membership to support the awesome Yo! podcast and I think I'm member #1. Always support your friends.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2020-03-05 07:00:00
Hey Einstein, have you ever stopped for a second and considered that maybe, just maybe, if you're producing a podcast you should start with the assumption that the majority of the people are listening and not watching you talking on youtube?
The entire damn point of listening to a podcast is that I only need to listen to it and I can do something else in the meantime.
Each medium has its own boundaries. If your podcast relies on me staring at a screen then you're not making a podcast. You're making something else. Find a new name for that.
I feel like an old grumpy man yelling at the clouds. I need a coffee...
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2020-02-24 07:00:00
We, as human beings, are extremely adaptable. We are creative, we can design solutions, we can use the environment to our advantage. That is something worth celebrating.
At the same time though, we're extremely good at getting used to all sorts of unpleasant situations. And that's not necessarily always a good thing.
You get used to physical pain and after a while, that knee that was bothering you becomes normal. Without realising it, you stopped doing a few things that you used to do daily. Those terrible social situations that used to annoy you? Now you're able to tolerate them. That terrible relationship? I mean, it's not too bad after all.
"You'll get used to it" it's a phrase we hear way too often. And as I said, sometimes it's a good thing. Sometimes getting used to events in your life IS a good thing. But sometimes it just sucks. Sometimes you want to change something but for your damn brain, it's easier to simply adapt and accept your new reality.
And it's hard enough to notice this when you have a point of reference. You know what a healthy knee feels like so you have the tools to realise that no, your current knee is not just fine. But it's way harder to notice you've become accustomed to a shitty lifestyle and that you need to do something.
Life and mental changes are subtle and gradual. They're like a river, slowly carving its way across a landscape. You don't notice it at first but what used to be a small and straight creek, gently sweeping through a plane has now become a meandering river, deeply embedded into the surroundings, and changing its course now requires some serious work.
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2020-02-20 07:00:00
Earlier today I stumbled on an old tweet from Jack Dorsey (Twitter CEO, if you don’t know who he is) and that led me to an interesting article titled “Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech”. That got me thinking about what my responsibilities are as a person who has a site and shares content online.
One subject particularly dear to me is personal sites and human connections. Personal sites are a window into other people’s mind and can be the gateway to very meaningful human interactions. Those interactions can then evolve into genuine friendships, even across the globe. That’s something worth celebrating.
But right now, the internet is set up in a way that doesn’t encourage you—or even discourage you—to send people away from your site and towards other people's sites. And that's because there's too much emphasis put on quantifiable metrics.
If you run a site, people will tell you that you want your bounce rate to be low. I think that's a mistake. If you land on a page on my site, my goal should be to provide you with both compelling content and links for you to explore to learn more about whatever I'm writing about.
And today I realised I'm currently terrible at that. My posts contain very few links and that goes against the spirit of the web. Connections should be celebrated, exploration should be encouraged.
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2020-02-17 07:00:00
My quirky newsletter is about to reach 100 subscribers. That’s at least 100 more than anticipated. I started that newsletter mostly as a motivational tool. I was trying to find excuses to leave the home and hike more. It worked. Sort of...
The content is all over the place and there’s not really a theme. But maybe that’s why 100 of you decided to sign up.
There’s something fascinating in a “small crowd”. Something that can’t be found on social media or on a blog.
For a lot of people, the goal of social media is to grow an audience. That’s kinda the whole point. You have this number attached to you and you want to see it grow. Why I have no idea. Maybe because a bigger number means bigger opportunities to broadcast your thoughts. Or maybe because it opens the door to commercial opportunities. I honestly don’t know. Social media is a mystery to me and I want it to stay that way.
The same is true for newsletters. I love to have a small newsletter. I have honestly no desire to see it grow to thousand of people. Because a bigger number means a bigger distance between you and me.
Right now I’m fortunate enough to live in the internet suburbs. My site sits in a quiet, niche road and only a certain type of person comes by. And I love it. Every time someone rings at the door and wants to chat I can stop what I’m doing and engage in conversation.
And that’s because you’re a small crowd. But what if instead of one of you, five thousand show up at my door? There’s no way I can let five thousand people in. I’d have to pick and choose who’s “worthy of my time”. That’s just stupid.
The 2020 internet—and society in general—has become obsessed with growth. Growth is not always good. We should spend more time appreciating the small things. Both on the internet and in life.
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2020-02-14 07:00:00
Almost two years ago I wrote about my minimal phone setup. Since then many things have changed but my phone setup has remained pretty much the same. There’s a few minor changes and a major one so let me go through my phone setup again. Maybe you'll find something useful you can incorporate in your setup.
The major change is the hardware I'm running. After more than 4 years of honourable service I retired my old iPhone 6s. Why? Because my battery was basically dead. I could have replaced the battery but my screen was cracked. So to change the battery I'd also have to replace the screen. And that wasn't worth it honestly. I was planning to change phone in 2020 anyway, upgrading every 5 years seems reasonable to me.
Right now I'm on an 11 Pro Max. Reason why I went with the Pro is the camera. That's it. That's the only reason why I decided to get it over the 11. I take a lot of pictures when I'm hiking and the wide angle is awesome. Reason for the Max over the regular Pro is the battery. I genuinely love how long the battery lasts on this thing.
I bought the phone second hand from a guy that got it as a gift and saved quite a few bucks in the process. It didn't cost me a lot more than a full price 11. No cover, no screen protection. We'll see what happens.
In terms of setup, my phone feels a lot similar to my old 6s. I still rely a lot on the spotlight search to launch apps but I tweaked my notification preferences a bit. I'm trying to leverage the notification center more this way I don't need to unlock my phone if I need to reply to someone. For my lock screen I'm using one of the stock wallpapers which I quite like.
Like in my old setup, I'm leaving the first screen empty. All the apps are in the second screen. This is to mitigate the temptation to tap on one of those icons. Two of the most used apps—Messages and Spotify—are in the dock and WhatsApp is there mostly to balance the color in the dock. I'd love to get rid of WhatsApp but it's a bit complicated to do right now for a variety of life related reasons.
The other minor difference is the way my apps are now organised. I used to have just one row of apps and a folder. I decided folders are not a good way to organise stuff. Folders, especially digital ones, are a gateway to clutter. You can simply hide stuff in there and have the impression to have a minimal phone. But that's just an illusion. So folders are out.
Five rows, twenty apps. Let me go through them row by row. Top two rows are apps I don't need to use on a daily—or even monthly—basis. I don't make or receive phone calls (all incoming phone calls are blocked on my phone), don't use my phone as an alarm clock. 1Blocker is a passive app so it's not something I use as a standalone app. Same deal for 1Password. Find My can't be delete or hidden so it just stays there. App Store and Settings are rarely used so they can both live on the second row.
Now, Mail is an interesting one. I only have my personal email on my phone, not my work one. That means I don't receive many emails on a daily basis. Maybe one or two a week. Usage of the app is quite low and that's the reason why it's in the second row.
Third row are apps I use somewhat often. First one is my home banking app. Sky Guide is just an awesome app overall and I keep it on my phone simply because I like it. I use Voice Memos to send voice messages to a few friends mostly because my spoken english is a disgrace and sending voice messages is a good way to get better at it. Almost all the books I own are currently on iBooks and reading on the 6.5" screen is not a terrible experience.
Fourth row we have the browser which I use quite often, Waking Up, my meditation app of choice, camera and photos. Pretty basic row.
Lastly, the fifth row, also called the white row. iA writer is my go to app to write anything. I'm currently using it as a daily journal and I use it to write everything that comes to mind. Kawara is an awesome new app made by overall interesting guy Jon-Kyle. Inner Garden is a weird and interesting digital experiment. It's a strange mix between a meditation app and a game. And finally Snapseed is what I use to edit my photos on the iPhone.
And that's it, that's my current phone setup. Could it be more minimal? Absolutely. But it works for me and that's all I care about.
As always if you have questions, comments or anything else send me an email and I'll be happy to reply.
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2020-02-13 07:00:00
I hate money. I really do. Money is the primary reason why I can't spend more time doing awesome things. I know what you're thinking: No shit, I'd also love to spend more time doing awesome things and not worry about money. And you're right, who doesn't want to do that.
But I'm not talking about spending time doing something wildly different from what I'm doing now. I'm not talking about travelling the world or go skydiving. I'm talking about helping people. I absolute LOVE using the skills I developed in the past 8 years doing this job to help others. But I just can't spend time doing it because—you guessed it—money. More often than not, the people who need help can't pay for the work I do and that means I need to accept client projects that suck almost all my time.
Nothing makes me happier than helping strangers with their projects and their sites. I met some of my best friends online this way. They reached out and I decided to help them just because it makes me happy.
Was that an intelligent business decision? Absolutely not. From a business standpoint that's mostly wasted time. But I'm terrible at business. I'm terrible at assigning a value to my work. I really am.
I also suck at promoting myself or doing marketing. I tried to sell a few digital things I made during the years but always felt wrong in a way. I don't know why though. It just doesn't look right to me. I'm charging a few bucks for the code of this blog and even that doesn't look right to me. Frankly, I'd love to just give it away for free.
At the same time though, I don't like the free economy. I don't think it's sustainable. People need to understand that no one can do something for free forever. Money has to come from somewhere (unfortunately).
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2020-02-05 07:00:00
There's something oddly refreshing in being pushed around by the wind on a mountain. You feel hopeless in a sense. And small. But at the same time you feel somehow more connected to the surroundings. Moving through a landscape feels "more real" when you have to constantly fight against the wind.
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2020-02-03 07:00:00
Can you write about your desktop, the dock and how to declutter your workspace?
I sure can. This is going to be way less inspiring that my other setups though. That's because my desk setup is not very inspiring or original.
My physical workspace looks something like this: an early 2015 MacBook Pro, a 4k Space Monitor from Samsung, a Magic Mouse Gen. 1, Ikea lamp, paper & pen and something to drink. That's how I roll 95% of the time.
As for my virtual desktop, it's usually just an empty screen with a picture I like. For months I rocked a dynamic wallpaper by 21wallpaper but now I'm back using an old Firewatch wallpaper (this one). I use the desktop as a temporary folder. I only move there files I need NOW and then I delete them. I don't like to keep things hanging around on my desktop. I'm also not using the new stack thingy available in the latest version of macOS. Not a fan. Plus there's plenty of space on a 4k monitor...
I don't use the Mac's dock. I navigate my OS using a combination of Alfred and cmd + tab to switch between programs. I also have four virtual desktops on my mac and two on my external monitor. Why? No idea. I got used to work that way and now I keep using this setup. Don't have any special or fancy app. Majority of my time is spent working in the browser and on my text editor and that's what I have open almost all the time. And that's honestly it for my desktop. As I said at the beginning, it's a pretty uninspiring setup.
As for how I keep my mac organised, I have the smallest SSD possible—128gb—and every time I'm done with something I move it on an external drive. The small SSD forces me to do that. I don't keep on my machine anything that's not necessary or relevant. I don't have music or movies or photos on my machine. Everything it's either streamed or stored in the cloud.
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2020-02-02 07:00:00
I'm fascinated by all sorts of digital experiments. Kind Words is the latest to have caught my attention. It's supposed to be a game. Instead it's more like an anonymous and asynchronous global chat room wrapped in a game-like container.
The goal—if you can even call it a goal—is to ask and reply to questions to strangers who are looking for something. Sometimes it's advice, sometimes it's a word of encouragement and sometimes it's just to be listened.
It's an intriguing concept and the execution is lovely even though my mac is constantly trying to get airborne while I'm "playing".
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2020-01-26 07:00:00
I was chatting with one of you the other day via email and he raised an interesting point. We were talking about social media and the concept of being present on social platforms.
I am not a social media kind of person but that doesn't mean I hate them either. They've done more harm than good which is why I don't use them. That said, I kind of see his point of view: if you have something worth sharing you want to be present on all those platforms. It's a no brainer.
This is part of a bigger discussion about online content. If you're a "content creator"—whatever the hell that means—you want people to find you. It's a constant battle for attention against other fellow creators. And a fight against the algorithms to rank high whether on Google or Instagram or Youtube (or even LinkedIn and Pornhub, who am I to judge). If you like all that and want to partake in that game, good for you. I decided it's not my thing.
Which is why I spent almost no time optimising my content for search engines or for social media. My posts are ugly when shared on social media. My side projects are usually designed to avoid playing the analytics and SEO game.
Two reasons for that. First, I'm a weird person that likes to do weird things and second, I don't care about being found. It might sound counter-intuitive for a person that has a blog and runs a couple of public side projects. But that's the truth. I didn't start this blog to become famous and being read by thousands of people and the same applies to my gallery. I work on these sites because I want to and because I like to do it. That's the only motivation.
But don't get me wrong, when someone does find me and reaches out, I'm thrilled. It makes me happy to know some of you out there do read what I write and I'm glad to know that thousands of designers use my gallery as a reference. That's a nice feeling. But it's nice because it's not something I'm seeking. It's the spontaneity of it that appeals to me.
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2020-01-19 07:00:00
A few days back I wrote about my inability to browse the internet. In that post, I asked you about your browsing habits and a few of you suggested possible alternatives.
Let me just say that I am very grateful for that. All the answers were very interesting and it's fascinating to see how different people use the same medium in different ways. As a result of that, I first decided that maybe RSS was the best solution. So I signed up for a service to sync my RSS feeds on my laptop and phone. Why did I pay for that? Because I don't like to be the product of a free service. And neither should you but that's a topic for another time.
So I did that and that was great. I started adding feeds and a few of you even sent me lists of blogs to follow. Amazing. But then I started thinking: what if this was not the problem after all? What if the problem was not to find new content to begin with? Maybe the real problem is accepting that there are just so many hours in the day and I will miss content no matter what.
Realising that was a blessing. And it sounds obvious in retrospect. Here's what I did as a result of that: since there are a few people I like to follow online I set up hardlyeverything.com as my homepage on Safari on my Mac. That's only for new windows, not for new tabs. That means I'll see that site maybe a few times a week. On there I saved those three or four blogs I want to check somewhat regularly and I told the site to remind me about them every three weeks with an added randomness of one week. What that means is roughly once a month the site will remind me to check a site and see if something new has been published.
It's such a simple solution and I can't believe I didn't think about it before. Now, how about the new sites or new articles. I guess I'll just accept that I will miss out on that. That's just a reality. But maybe some kind soul out there will send me an email to let me know about it.
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2020-01-10 07:00:00
The majority of the people I met in 2019 were both faceless and voiceless. What I mean by that is not that they have gone through some freakish accident but that I only met them via either chat or email. Try to explain that to your grandma. Something like this would have been unthinkable 25 years ago and yet here we are.
I find those interactions fascinating. Mostly because they don’t feel out of place or weird or embarrassing. There’s no uncomfortable eye contact, no awkward first approach no etiquette or protocols to follow.
If you want to reach out to me you don’t need to ask yourself if I want to get disturbed, if I’m busy, if you can. You just open your email, type in something and hit send. And that’s it, you’re now in contact with me.
That’s an interesting dynamic because opens the door to interactions that are way more meaningful than some random chit chat on a train or at the pub.
Must be because it’s easier to approach and be open and honest to someone you’re 99.9% sure you’ll never meet in real life.
If you feel down and want to chat with someone feel free to get in touch via email. Or who knows, maybe if you’re in the Apple ecosystem you might even find another way to get in touch using that same email address ;)
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2020-01-04 07:00:00
Not technically of course. I know how to browse the internet. I have nine different browsers installed on this machine so browsing is not the difficult part. What's getting harder is finding worth reading material. Which might sound a bit odd considering there's probably six hundred billion new posts/tweet/photos/video posted every two nanoseconds. And yet, here I am. The "issue" I'm facing is my unwillingness to give my attention to social media. I refuse to accept a world where I must browse Twitter or Reddit to find content worth consuming. Maybe it's time to step up my RSS game and simply grow my reading list there. That seems like the only alternative. Or maybe I am missing something. How do you browse the internet? Honest question. I want to know so please get in touch and tell me how do you find worth reading content without relying on social media. Because right now it looks like an almost impossible task. Everything is funnelled either through newsletters or through social media channels.
And that's the perfect segue to remind you you can follow me on... just kidding. My content is not time-sensitive so you can just open this site once a year and catch up with what I wrote. That's probably the healthiest approach. I even feel bad letting people know I have a newsletter I send out very sporadically. That's an inner conflict I'll write about in the future.
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2020-01-01 07:00:00
Almost exactly 3 years ago, on new year's eve, I coded myself a new website. It wasn't exactly a blog but the idea was to write short posts weekly. Needless to say, that didn't last very long but It did start what would eventually become this blog you're visiting right now. Looking back, that was probably one of the best decision I took in the past few years. The amount of weird and interesting interactions I had as a result of my blog posts are priceless and I really hope to get more of that in this new decade.
That said, I did want to push something new online in this new decade. Enter Moments in Time. This is going to be a place for me to share pictures I like. I know Instagram exists but, honestly, fuck that. I left the social media world long ago and I don't plan to go back.
I do plan to release the site as a "theme" but there's still a few bugs. Once those are ironed out I'll make it available somewhere. As always, comments are appreciated so don't be shy and write me an email if you have something you want to share.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2019-12-31 07:00:00
31st December 2019, last day of the year, last day of the decade (calendar differences and overall weirdness deliberately ignored). I guess it's the appropriate time to start writing about fashion. 2020 is the year I become a fashion blogger! Just kidding. I will write a fashion related blog post though but this will probably be my first and last, at least for a few years.
The bulk of my purchases in 2019 were all fashion related. You won't be shocked to know I have a strange relationship with clothes and fashion in general. If I had to describe my style I'd say I'm a "functional minimalist". Let's discuss that.
You can't discuss the topic of clothing without taking lifestyle into consideration. Some fashion choices are dictated by life circumstances that are not under your control. Maybe you live in a very cold or very warm place or maybe you work a job that has a dress code. Those are all aspects you need to factor in when you decide how to dress. I have the luxury of working for myself so there's no dress code I need to follow. As for the weather, we go from +35° in the summer to 0° in the winter and that means my wardrobe needs to accommodate both extremes.
When it comes to lifestyle, 90% of my time is split between my home where I live and work and the outdoors, mostly hiking the mountains or walking the woods around here. In addition to those two things I play basketball (both in the gym and at the park). I attend the occasional work meeting and sometimes I go out for a pizza.
When I started working on my new wardrobe I set up a few goals. I wanted to spend more time outside—especially in the cold season—and I wanted to own fewer items overall. My old wardrobe was already very minimal but I was confident I could do better.
Ok time to dive deep into the new wardrobe. Just to be clear, I'm not writing this as a guide. I'm sharing mostly my thought process so that you can maybe apply some of the same principles and come up with something that works for you. This setup works for me because of my life circumstances so yours will probably look very different even if you follow the same guiding principles. Also, the final product isn't exactly cheap. That's by design. I decided to buy fewer items but spend a bit more for quality products. I buy new clothes every three or four years and some of the clothes I have lasted me for more than ten years. So for me, spending a bit more is not a huge concern since I don't buy clothes very often.
For cold weather, I decided to go with wool on the skin. My brand of choice ended up being Devoid. No particular reason why. I looked at a few different brands—Icebreaker, Woolpower and Smartwool—but ultimately decided to go with Devoid. I bought two Expedition Hoodies for the top and one Expedition Long Johns for the bottom. I wear the hoodie every day, 24h a day while I only use the Long Johns under my pants if it's particularly cold or if I plan to spend a long time outside.
As for socks and trunks, I'm still in the process of replacing those. Right now I have a weird mix of Nike and Uniqlo socks and a six or seven Uniqlo trunks. I am planning to get wool socks and wool underwear but for now, I'll just keep using my old ones until they are worn out. I did get a pair of Smartwool socks that are super warm (wearing them right now) and are awesome for when I'm hiking.
For the hot weather, I purchased two Patagonia Capilene Cool Daily Hoodies. A long sleeve for the summer? Am I crazy? Yes and no. A long sleeve with a hoodie might seems an odd choice for a summer garment but these not only are very lightweight and dry super fast but also provide 50+ UPF sun protection. That means I don't need to carry sunscreen protection when I'm hiking in the summer. I can just roll down the sleeves and put the hoodie on. These are also excellent when I need to play basketball. I go the entire summer wearing just those two.
For the past probably ten years I wore almost exclusively grey sweatpants. That streak ended a few months ago when I bought a pair of Patagonia Stonycroft pants. These are now my go-to pants for everything. I went for these because are lightweight enough to be worn when the weather is warm, are "casual" enough to be worn in a more casual situation—for example when I'm at a meeting—and are excellent pants for when I'm hiking. These are hiking pants after all. I have two of these.
For the summer I have three identical pairs of Nike shorts. The thought process was the same. Shorts that are simple and multi-purpose. Plain black, very comfortable, I wear them everywhere to do anything. I can use them to chill at home, to play basketball or to go out at night. I bought them more than three years ago I believe and they're still holding up quite well.
Hot weather doesn't require a top mid-layer but for the other conditions, I bought two Patagonia Performance Better Sweater Fleece Jackets. You're starting to see a theme with the brands here. My thought process was similar to the one I followed for the pants. First, it's a fleece and that means it's warm and lightweight which is what you want when you're hiking. Second, it's grey and the style is very simple and that doesn't look out of place in more casual situations. Finally, it's comfortable and that means I can wear these every day at home.
Using these items means I can go anywhere without the need to change clothes. Right now I'm at home and I'm wearing the same clothes I'd wear if I had to leave the house to go for a hike or to go for a meeting. Which means I don't need to wear extra clothes.
This was the trickiest part to figure out. I wanted to only own one jacket but was almost impossible to find one that was working well in all conditions. I ended up getting two. The first one is a Patagonia Nano Puff. It's not the warmest jacket available out there but it's not very bulky, can fit inside my backpack very easily and can be worn during the midseason. Plus I can combine it with my wool base layer and my fleece and that provides plenty of heat in cold weather. The second item is my Mammut Convey Pro GTX hardshell. It's a GORE-TEX jacket that's both wind and waterproof and since it's all black I can wear it pretty much everywhere without looking out of place. If the weather is very cold I can combine these two and wear the GTX on top of the Nano Puff.
The shoe situation is pretty straightforward. I have a pair of Nike running shoes I wear pretty much every day, a pair of hiking shoes and a pair of boots for when I'm out in the mountains and a pair of basketball shoes. That's pretty much it.
And that's my new wardrobe. Here's a full list of what I currently own just to have a better idea of how many items in total are in there:
Questions? Suggestions? Insults? My email is always open if you want to get in touch. I'm happy to discuss fashion with you. Or anything really.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2019-12-17 07:00:00
The year is about to end. The decade is about to end. And you know what else is about to end? The WordPress installation that powers Minimalissimo.com. In fact, that installation is basically gone already since the new site is now live. That is unless I screw up something and I take down the server in the meantime. That wouldn't be the first time.
This is the second Minimalissimo website I coded in collaboration with Carl and it's always a fun process but hopefully, I won't have to do this again for another year or two. This version 5 was exhausting.
This was quite the project but I'm pleased with the result. We—Commander Carl and I—decided to move away from WP and port everything on Kirby. And in the process, we made substantial changes to the site. 10 years worth of content has been archived, gone are some of the old categories and the site is now more focused on the topics of Architecture and Interior Design.
More focus has also been put on the editorial aspect of the site. Articles are now longer and more structured, with a mix of images and text. We also created a new Moods section, a fun addition to the site that allows for more exploration and experimentation.
I'm not going to discuss the technical aspects of the new site. Those are boring. If you want to know more about it just send me an email and I'll be happy to chat with you. And I'm sure you'll find bugs. And missing pages. And broken links. That's ok, we're working on that.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2019-11-24 07:00:00
The concept of trust in the context of the online world is a tricky one. Deciding who is trustworthy and who isn't it's extremely hard. Where do you even start? I wrote on this blog for almost 3 years and I said many things. Sometimes of those things are about myself. But how do you know that what I wrote is the truth? I'll answer that: you don't. You can only trust me and believe that everything I wrote about who I am and how I go about living my life is true.
In the context of my blog, that's not that big of a deal. And that's because the consequence of me lying to you aren't all that bad. What if I didn't have a super minimal phone setup? What if my inbox was a mess? What if I own a shit-ton of clothes? All those things aren't that important in the grand scheme of things. But how about those who write about how to treat medical conditions? How about those who write posts on mental health? Or politics? Or any other topic that has an impact on other people lives.
How do you know you can trust someone on the internet? And how do you know you can trust someone in general? I don't have an answer to that question. The only thing I can say is that I made quite a few friends just by trusting people online. And it all came down to basic human decency. I trust people that are genuine and straightforward.
Is that a good strategy? I don't know. Probably not. But you shouldn't trust my advice on who you should trust online anyway.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
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2019-11-22 07:00:00
To wrap things up, let's spend a moment talking about what does all this mean and why is it worth pursuing a simple way of living. Being a more mindful consumer is good for your finance and the environment. Being a more careful user of technology will have a positive impact on your mental well being. Being a more present person in your personal life will create healthier relationships.
Minimalism also has a few useful "side effects". Owning fewer items will make it easier to keep your space in order and you'll need to spend less time cleaning and owning fewer clothes will simplify the act of choosing what to wear day after day. Those are small things but small things add up quickly.
One thing needs to be said: living a simple life is not an easy process. It requires dedication, it requires attention, it requires deliberateness. It's hard to just stumble into a minimal way of living. For the majority of people, it's either a deliberate choice taken at a certain point in time or—like in my case—something they created through a long journey.
I didn't choose to "be a minimalist". I don't even consider myself one. I'm just a somewhat weird person that likes to own fewer items and likes to experiment with ways to make my life simpler.
I don't have any good advice for you here since we all live very different lives with wildly different requirements. What works for me might not work for you which is why this guide is not really a guide. The only advice I can give you is to start small. Don't try to revamp your entire life all at once. Find an aspect of your life you don't currently like and try to simplify it. Go slow, experiment with it. There's no correct way to do this. And also be open-minded: maybe your life doesn't need to be simplified after all.
I don't plan to write more about the specific topic of minimalism—mostly because there are better things we can talk about—so I'll leave a collection of links to blogs and books you can read and follow if you want to check what other people have to say on the topic. Some are about minimalism in design, some are about minimalism as a lifestyle. I'll add more links in the future.
If that's the case, that's awesome. I love to interact with people so if you have questions or comments or just want to chat about minimalism and the topics discussed in this small guide get in touch.
This is the final chapter of Manu's Guide To Minimalism. Links to the other chapters are down below.
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2019-11-20 07:00:00
A minimalist life is not just about objects—whether physical or digital—it is also about "the rest". Relationships, moods, sensations. Oftentimes people seek outer simplicity to compensate for a lack of inner one. Life can be messy, noisy, and chaotic. A quiet and clean environment helps to keep things under control. But that's not a permanent solution. Like hiding objects is not the same as getting rid of them, keeping our messy lives under control using external tools and tactics is also not the same as facing and solving our inner issues.
I'm not going to tackle the issue of mental health here—I'm not even remotely qualified to do so—I'm just going to point out that we can apply the same minimalist mindset to that sphere of our lives. You don't want too many relationships cluttering your life, focus on the ones that matter. You don't want to be constantly over-stimulated and hyper-active, take some time to decompress and relax. You don't want to always be surrounded by noise, find a quiet place where you can spend 5 or 10 minutes every day.
Go for a walk, enjoy nature, spend quality time with loved ones. These are all activities we often neglect. Focus less on the most popular object in you life—your phone—and more on the people around you.
Life is not all about objects. They play a role—an important one—but at the same time, objects can often be replaced. There's no replacement for wasted time and missed opportunities.
Minimalism is all about finding value in the world around us. We appreciate craftsmanship, we appreciate curation, we appreciate good design. But it's important to focus the same energies to appreciate a quality friendship or the kindness of a stranger. Don't be afraid to "declutter" your personal life. There's nothing wrong in letting people go. Sometimes it's the best for both of you.
I'm saying all this but at the same time, I'm perfectly aware that's easier said than done. Sometimes it's easier to start minimising our environment rather than facing our inner selves. And that's ok. Start wherever you're more comfortable. This is not a race. Just be mindful that life is not just about objects and a messy inner life will still be messy, even when surrounded by beautifully designed and minimal furniture.
This is Chapter 5 of the Manu's Guide To Minimalism. Links to the other chapters are down below.
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2019-11-19 07:00:00
The digital world is an often neglected aspect in the life of a minimalist. It's not uncommon to see people with thousands of unopened messages in their inboxes, countless unread notifications, and dozen of updates waiting to be installed. And don't even get me started on the number of apps installed on your phone. But why is that? I guess that since none of those occupies physical space in the real world, people don't tend to consider them clutter. But a pile of unread emails in your virtual inbox is no different than a pile of unread mail in your physical one. You'd never allow that to happen so why let it happen in your digital world? Think about that for a second.
Digital space is very much physical. The "cloud" is a lie. There's SSDs and Hard-Drives getting filled, swapped, trashed and recycled constantly to allow you to store an ungodly amount of crappy emails you'll never read.
If you don't plan to read that newsletter, don't just ignore it. Take a second to unsubscribe and delete it. It costs nothing and it's not hard. As for all those notifications, those are clutter. Those are a distraction. Take the time to go in the setting on your phone and turn off the notifications you don't find useful. Again, it only takes a minute.
I already wrote about my phone and how much I hate it so I'm not going to ramble again on the subject but please, take the time to go through it and delete the apps you don't use. You probably don't need 15 pages of apps on your iPhone.
Start thinking about digital life as an extension of your physical one. Don't let the crap accumulate in every corner, don't let the empty space of your screen be filled with obnoxious icons. Try to keep your technological space clean. I'll guarantee you that it will make a difference.
This is Chapter 4 of the Manu's Guide To Minimalism. Links to the other chapters are down below.
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2019-11-18 07:00:00
If you own something that's beautiful but doesn't do its job well, then you're doing something wrong. That is not to say aesthetics have no place in daily life. You want to be surrounded by items you like and not something that looks ugly and you despise. The two aspects, Form and Function, don't have the same weight. Function should always come before form.
When it comes to objects you should also try to take into consideration what owning that specific items means, not just using it. Every object in your life comes with a set of requirements, things you need to do in order to take care of it and use it properly. Try to minimise those as well.
You want items that have a small footprint in every aspect of your life. You want clothes that don't require constant washing and ironing, you want furniture that doesn't require constant cleaning. Items should be there to serve a purpose and not be a burden.
Also, try to buy things that can serve more than one purpose, this way you can invest in a single quality object rather than owning multiple ones. That's my mindset while buying clothes: how many different things I can do with just this one item? My new pair of pants are comfortable enough to be worn at home everyday and plain enough to be worn for dinner or for a client meeting. But are also hiking pants which means I use them when I go hiking and are waterproof so are excellent in wet weather.
Combining functions is the key to a minimal lifestyle. And coincidentally, it's also the reason why I ended up wearing only a certain type of colours. it's easier to combine clothes when you only own black, grey, white, and beige clothes. Mixing becomes way harder when you have a wardrobe that resembles a rainbow.
This concept of giving function priority over form is the single most important aspect of minimalism. It's what enables you to own less because it forces you to evaluate what you need to accomplish before you purchase something new.
Giving function priority over form is the single most important aspect of minimalism
It forces you to be mindful. And when you have your "consumer priorities" straight then you can add a layer of style on top of that.
This is Chapter 3 of the Manu's Guide To Minimalism. Links to the other chapters are down below.
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2019-11-14 07:00:00
Yes you read it right. When it comes to the kind of Minimalism we're discussing here, I think design is irrelevant. It really is. Now, Carl will almost certainly disagree with me on this point and that's ok. There's no right way to proceed down this minimalist path so it's ok to disagree sometimes.
Let me explain why I don't think design matters in this context. When I say design what I'm referring to is the visual aspect of things. I'm not talking about design in the more broad sense of the world. I'm using the layman's version of the term—which is probably misused, more on that here—to describe just a subset of the characteristics that any particular object possess.
Just to be clear, design does matter in absolute terms. You want objects to be functional, well designed, and to perform well. It's the visual component that is not important in the grand scheme of things and it's certainly not important in the context of the discussion we're having here. But that does not mean that aesthetics don't matter at all, because they certainly do.
Now, if I ask you to picture in your mind a minimal house, what would that house look like? If you've browsed a couple of blogs you're probably thinking about something like this:
And what about the interior? if I ask you to picture a minimal living room you'd probably imagine something similar to this:
Are those two valid representations of what—to me—minimalism is all about? Maybe. It's certainly possible but it might also not be the case. As a counter example, how about this house?
And how about this room?
Are the last two examples of minimalism? Again, it's possible. In my opinion both styles are equally valid expressions of what minimalism is all about. It just so happens that one of the two is more "visually minimal" if we want to define it that way. But that's just an accident. You can have a big house full of "minimal design objects" that serve no purpose and you can also have a very uncluttered home without a single "design object". That's why I said that design doesn't really matter in this context.
As discussed in the previous chapter, minimalism is a matter of intent. Nothing less, nothing more. And if you love a certain type of design style and love curation that's good. That's awesome. If you want your house to be monochromatic go for it. There's nothing wrong with that. But don't think that's the only way to approach design with a minimalist spirit.
You can "be a minimalist" and live in a colourful home. Don't let anyone say otherwise.
This is Chapter 2 of the Manu's Guide To Minimalism. Links to the other chapters are down below.
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2019-11-13 07:00:00
As I wrote in the introduction to this guide, minimalism for me is all about the mindset. It's a simple concept and can be summarised in just one sentence:
Ask yourself the question.
What question depends on the context but the idea behind this mindset is to constantly challenge your assumptions when it comes to consumption and material possessions. Do I need this? Do I want this? Can I do without it? Are there alternatives? Can I optimise this? Does it bring value to my life? These are all perfectly valid and legitimate questions you can and should ask yourself every time you're about to make a decision that involves material possessions and sometimes even non-material ones.
I'm a fan of optimising the things I own. I'm constantly trying to find out if I can replace two items with one—usually a better quality one. Has become almost a game. It's like a game of Tetris where you try to perfectly match life needs with items. And the more you play it, the better you become at it. And like any other skill, it takes practice.
Keep in mind that the goal is not to own fewer items. The goal is to challenge your assumptions and make sure you only own what you need. As a result, you'll probably end up owning fewer items anyway. You can have fun with the number—I did it in the past and the 100 things challenge is a fun game to play—but that's not that important in the grand scheme of things.
Some people can't realistically bring the number of possessions down to 100 items. it's just not possible. If you're a surfer like Rob or a rock climber like my brother, you'll probably need dozen of items just to practice a sport you like. For them, stay below 100 is not realistic.
Which is why I think the overall number is not that important. Don't stress on that. But keep this concept of asking questions in mind. That, in my opinion, is what all this minimalism thing is about.
Ask yourself the question.
This is Chapter 1 of the Manu's Guide To Minimalism. Links to the other chapters are down below.
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2019-11-12 07:00:00
Before I start digging deeper into the main topic of this guide I think it's important to spend a moment clarifying what Minimalism is and is not.
This is something I wrote about in the past and different people have different opinions. I'm not here to argue that this is THE correct definition. This is just A definition.
To me, Minimalism has nothing to do with anything visual. That might sound a bit strange since most of the online world seems to be focused on minimal aesthetics, minimal design, minimal fashion, and on and on and on.
There is an art style—called minimalism—that has very little to do with what these days we call Minimalism (I'll use the capital M version when talking about the latter). The current definition of Minimalism has morphed into this strange mix of a lifestyle and a set of aesthetic rules that the govern how people design their wardrobes, their websites (guilty), their homes and so on.
That's all very confusing. I wouldn't call minimalism a lifestyle. I'd much rather refer to it as a mindset or a guiding principle. There is a certain type of lifestyle that comes out as a result of applying a minimalistic mindset to your life but that is exactly that: a byproduct of that particular mindset. You can be a minimalist and not look like one if that makes sense.
As an example, my wardrobe is "minimal" not because I am a minimalist. My wardrobe is minimal as a result of me applying a minimalist mindset when it comes to buying clothes. The two might look the same but there's a subtle difference. I'll explore the topic of clothing later in this guide but let me just say that in my case the goal is not to be a minimalist. The goal is to be functional and to optimise as much as possible. And the result of that is a minimal wardrobe.
So keep all this in mind when you go through this guide of mine in the upcoming days and weeks. Everything I'll be talking about is a mindset and all the examples are just one of the possible outcomes when you apply that mindset to a specific situation. You might apply the same mindset to the same problem and end up with a completely different result and that's ok. There's no "right way" to be a minimalist.
This post is the introduction to what I jokingly called Manu's Guide To Minimalism.
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2019-11-09 07:00:00
I need to put my mind into something. I found myself to be very distracted recently and I need to focus my energies and attention on something that's not work-related (because that's already taking a toll on me). That's why I decided to start working on something I'm gonna call "Manu's Guide To Minimalism", a series of posts I'll be posting on this blog in the upcoming weeks.
The name of this is very tongue in cheek, but the content is going to be "serious". Now you might be wondering why should you be interested in reading a guide on minimalism written by me, a Mr no-one. And the answer is: the hell do I know.
There sure are people that have written about the same topic in the past and are better writers than me (not that hard) but it's always nice to have a different perspective on things which is why I'm going to write it anyway.
But seriously, go read Zenhabits or The Minimalists or BecomingMinimalist if you're after a more mainstream or traditional type of content. Mine is going to be all over the place but will also be somewhat useful to somebody else other than me.
My guide is now complete. Links to the chapters are down below.
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2019-10-31 07:00:00
The day finally arrived. I'm typing this while still feeling somewhat sick. Have a stupid cold that doesn't want to leave me alone and a slight headache that is making working on a screen a particularly pleasant experience. But I decided it was time to get on with this post number 100. It's a stupid milestone post, I know and frankly, I don't care that much about it. Still, it's nice to use it as an excuse to look back and reflect on what happened in these almost 3 years.
As I wrote in my History of my personal website this blog experiment started on new year's eve, almost 3 years ago but those initial posts are long gone. The archive on this site starts in July but maybe I can try to find those old posts. We're almost at the end of October which means I've been "blogging" for almost 3 years. That is honestly shocking to me. I never thought this could become a thing for me but hey, looks like I'm enjoying it.
What changed in these 3 years? Not much. I feel like my life is in the same place and that's a good and a bad thing at the same time. On the one end, it's comforting to know things are not getting worse, I'm still healthy (cold aside) and still managing to do something helpful with my time. On the other end, it's sad to know nothing has changed. Personal projects are all still there and I feel like I didn't move forward that much. How do I change that? Don't know.
One thing that did change is my awareness of my mental state. I'm more painfully aware of how "not happy" I am with my current situation. But finding out how to overcome that is taking me time and it's tricky.
And that's pretty much it, I guess. I know this is not exactly the happiest "milestone post" ever but at least is an honest one. Time to start working on the next 100 posts. Hopefully is not going to take me another 3 years.
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2019-10-22 06:00:00
Should be a pretty easy task. You've been with yourself since the day you were born so it shouldn't be hard to know who you are. And yet...
Knowing yourself is harder than it looks. At least it is for me. Maybe it is for you, I don't know. It's hard because we're an adaptable species, we settle into routines very easily and we think we like things simply because we're used to them.
Truly knowing yourself requires time and dedication. Also requires that you question everything you think you already know about yourself. And that's a hard thing to do.
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2019-10-20 06:00:00
I've realised that myself and the idea of self-promotion don't go well together and frankly I'm ok with that. This blog of mine is almost two and a half years old and in my mind, I still think no one reads my posts (and I'd be ok with that).
My gallery is almost 5 years old and even though I posted more than 2500 websites and received thousands of emails I still consider it a niche side project that I keep working on for myself because I like weird and quirky websites. I have a newsletter that I don't promote anywhere because I don't think it's worth subscribing to.
Now, you might be thinking that this is some subtle humblebrag. It isn't. It honestly feels very weird to me to promote my stuff publicly and that's because I know there are countless folks out there that do a much better job than I do. I think you should follow and support them. I really do.
Craig's essays and newsletters are amazing and I know for a fact that I'll never be able to write something that good. Daniel's gallery is still one of—if not THE—best place to find inspiration online if you're a web designer. I still visit his site regularly because I'm a huge fan.
"Online success" (whatever that means) to me has to be grounded on a level of self-confidence I don't honestly think I possess. And I think I'm ok with that too.
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2019-10-15 06:00:00
My relationship with meditation can be described as complicated. I've been fascinated by the practice since I was 14 or 15 but I never managed to make it a solid habit. I meditate daily for a few months, then skip a day or two for one reason or the other and usually fall out of the habit completely. I then don't practice for a few months and then the cycle starts over.
I don't know why it happens, that's probably just me being completely inconsistent with my routines. I suck at being consistent.
Anyway, I decided to give it a try again, but this time with a different approach. On my phone, I have the Waking Up app and they recently introduced groups.
Groups allows you to practice with others—while listening to the daily meditation, sitting in silence, or both.
I created two meditation groups, "The morning meditation" at 7 am and "The evening meditation" one at 7 pm (my time) you can join if you want. Maybe the thought that other people can participate will trick my brain into being more consistent because I'm incredibly reliable when it comes to meet someone in real life. The hope is that my brain will look at these as a digital meetings.
Full disclosure: the app is a paid app but I think you can get a free month if you want to try it. I use it for free because I'm a long-time supporter of the podcast and I got a lifetime membership in return.
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2019-10-14 06:00:00
A few days ago I was thinking about how to set up a website. I am a web developer so for me, setting up a website is not a hard task. I know my way around servers and domains and CMS configurations but I never stopped to think about how this whole process is for someone who doesn't know anything about it.
If you ask me what's the simplest way to set up a personal site I'd probably don't know what to answer. That's because building a website these days is a game of tradeoffs and compromises.
Most people will tell you that you can build your site yourself using WordPress. Grab a theme, slap a few plugins and you're done. That's certainly a possibility. Would I recommend it? Probably not. WordPress is not inherently bad but is not exactly "good" either. It's easy to use on the surface and that comes at a cost.
Another option is to go with a completely hosted solution like Squarespace or Wix or one of the other site builders out there. They'll take care of everything for you but you're giving up ownership of your site. You can't grab your site and take it somewhere else in the future. You're getting a "site as a service". Is that bad? Is that good? I don't know.
I'd personally never use a service to build a website but I see the appeal of not having to deal with servers and domains and DNS and configurations and all that crap.
At the same time though, it makes me kinda sad to see people giving up ownership of their web presence. Personal websites are a mirror of the human beings behind them. Some are elegant, some are brutal, some are complex, some are simple and that's the beauty of it. Right now people are sharing their thoughts and moments on social media platforms that are anonymous and bland and uninspiring.
But I get why people are doing it. Setting up a Twitter profile costs nothing and takes 2 minutes. Same is true for an Instagram profile or a Facebook one. Maybe this is a problem worth solving because I think more people should have a personal site and the current "barrier of entry" is not helping anyone.
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2019-10-13 06:00:00
Like many other things in my life, my relationship with technology—and in particular smart technology—can be described as "complicated".
I'm confident I can describe myself as a tech-savvy person but I'm far from being an expert on any type of technology. My relationship with my phone is old news if you've followed my blog for a while and my other interactions with the rest of the tech items are not that much different.
I generally want my tech to be dumb but smart enough to not be frustrating to use. A good example of this is the connection between my TV and my PS4. The TV is not a smart TV. It's an old (8 years?) Samsung that is nothing more than a glorified pc monitor. But it's "smart" enough to "know" that when I turn on my PS it should also turn on and automatically switch to the correct source input.
This is an example of the kind of "smart technology" I want in my life. I'd just call this good design.
To me, it looks like we're trying to make technology smarter because teaching people how to use technology properly would be way harder.
This post is a relpy to Derek's post "Where we do and don’t want automation".
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2019-10-12 06:00:00
Do more of what makes you happy they say. But what is that? What if you don't know what makes you happy? How do you solve that? How can you even know what makes you happy? I found myself bouncing between different activities lately but the thought of what makes me happy never left my mind.
Do you know what makes you happy?
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2019-10-09 06:00:00
Debugging [noun]
The process of identifying and removing errors from computer hardware or software
Debugging is a fairly common task in programming. You code something, it doesn't perform as expected and you then open stack overflow use your knowledge and expertise to find out why the error is occurring.
It's an easy and straightforward process that usually involves swearing, trial and error and asking for help from dev friends and strangers. I quite enjoy it.
Jokes aside, debugging is, for the most part, a relatively easy task in my job as a web developer. And that's because I generally have a reference to how that particular piece of code should work and I can compare the two.
But what happens when you're trying to "debug yourself"? "Mechanical" issues on your body are, for the most part, simple to debug. Your knee doesn't normally stop working for some mysterious reason and your back doesn't hurt at random. And by your back I mean mine. I'm still fairly young and I'm aware of what I did and didn't do to and with my body in the past 15 years. Some pains are expected and I can deal with them.
As for mental well being, that's a different story. I don't have a frame of reference for what's a healthy state of mind. I don't have a reference point I can compare to when I try to debug that. There's no precise pain I can locate in my mind, no incident I can identify as the root cause. I don't know if my brain hurts in the same way my back does.
And that makes this whole process of debugging very hard. It's similar to debugging an issue that only happens on a machine or a device you don't own. Someone said to you that an error occurs on their machine and you have no idea how to debug that because you can't even replicate the issue in the first place. But the error is still there and it's still causing issues.
The only information you have is that something is wrong, somewhere. And that's not a fun problem to deal with.
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2019-10-06 06:00:00
On a road near my house, if you pay attention you can see this...
For some reason this simple detail makes me smile. It also raises so many questions in my head. Why didn't the person that was painting the line remove the leaf? What happened to that leaf? How long will this mark stay there?
It's such a tiny detail but it makes that otherwise boring stretch of road very interesting. For me at least.
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2019-10-01 06:00:00
This blog, like most things in my life, lives a life full of ups and downs. A month I feel inspired and I post 5 or 6 times, and the next month I don't post anything. It's a very interesting phenomenon to observe. Being consistent is something I struggled with all my life. I'm not exactly the most consistent person at, well, pretty much anything.
Can I improve? Probably yes. Will I improve? That remains to be seen. Do I know how to get better at this? No clue. Which is quite fun actually. I'm sure I'll blog about how I'm unable to blog more consistently.
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2019-08-26 06:00:00
I already wrote a post about my setup but since the topic came up in the Kirby Slack I'll write a second one to go a bit more in depth. This one is for you Bruno 🍻.
I write this on a MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) running whatever is the latest MacOS version at this point in time. It's connected to a DELL U2913WM Display, 29" Ultrawide. I don't use an external keyboard, I type on my MacBook. Mice is a Magic Mouse and two 1TB WD MyPassport Ultra are used for backups. Audio is provided by a pair of AKG K545 (black, obviously).
As for mobile, iPad Air 2 and iPhone 6s are used mostly for debugging these days. Testing on real devices is always nice.
Paper and pen are always on my desk. I do most of my design that way. Falcon Mug for coffee/water, a random Ikea lamp to provide extra lighting, Ikea desk and a a Varier Thatsit (black, obviously) as my sitting.
For work, the apps currently installed on my machine are:
The list of other apps, not necessarily work related is the following:
I don't use a ton of online services for work. I used to have quite a few subscriptions but I scaled that back months ago. This is everything I currently pay for on a monthly/yearly basis:
And I think that's it. If something's missing I'll make sure to update this post.
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2019-08-20 06:00:00
My recent dive into the analytics of my website had the unexpected side effect of making me think about minimalism in technology. As I said many times already to some of my friends, I'm not interested in writing more about minimalist setups. I already wrote about my iPhone, iPad, Mac, Browser and Email setups and I think that's all I have to say on the subject. I can give you a complete rundown of all the apps I have installed on my mac if you like but I personally don't think that's very useful.
What's interesting though, is the fact that so many of you are intrigued by the concept of minimal technology. Why is that? Why aren't we happy with the currently available tools?
Let's look at emails for a second. As the word suggests, emails are nothing more (or at least should be) than digital versions of the traditional mail. But that's not really the case. They are similar in spirit but are very different tools in practice. They have a different pace, a different way of being consumed, a different way of being delivered. The only thing left in common is the text they contain.
There was a time when sending a message via mail was a deliberate act. The infrastructure was simple: all you needed was an envelope, a sheet of paper, a pen and a stamp. It was a slow process that involved physical movement (going to the post office or to a mailbox) and also involved time because delivery wasn't instantaneous. It was "minimal", but I don't think it was a deliberate design choice. Sometimes minimalism is just the byproduct of efficient design.
The email infrastructure borrowed most of the concept of traditional mail and added a layer of convenience on top. Which was great... at first. Because at the beginning there was no spam, no mobile phones, no newsletters, no unsolicited emails. Your digital mail still had a physical location (your bulky personal computer either at home or at work) and even though the delivery was now instantaneous we were still living in a world of very slow connections.
The world we live in right now is a different one. Your email is with you all the time. Can you imagine living in a world where no matter where you are, a mailman can always show up out of nowhere and deliver you something? it would be a nightmare.
To get around this issue, email clients are trying to get smarter. They automatically sort your emails, they try to teach you a particular workflow, they try to remove unwanted messages. All that is great, except for the fact that it doesn't really solve the real issue: some people, like me for example, just want a simple tool. I don't want a workflow that's optimized. I just want a dumb letterbox. I want a message to be delivered, I want to be able to see it and I want to be able to act on it. That's it. I don't need anything more than that. Which is why I still love my Apple Mail setup.
And that's of most technology. We reached the point where we probably want our technology to do less, instead of more. @internetofshit is a hilariously good example of what we don't want our technology to be.
Minimalist technology is often a synonym of single-purpose technology. I love my tv because it's nothing more than a screen that lights up when asked to do so. It doesn't have a camera, or a microphone, or an internet connection. If I didn't have a PS4 or a Blu-ray player it would be absolutely useless since it's not even connected to an antenna or a cable. I have a tv that doesn't function as a tv. And I love it.
I think every piece of technology can be "minimized" if you really put your mind into it. It's a matter of will. It's also a matter of tradeoffs and priorities. You need to decide what you want that specific piece of tech to be in your life. And that means there's no right answer or correct path to follow. I can't write a guide on "how to minimize your tech" because that guide would probably only work for me. You need to experiment, see what works and what doesn't. And keep in mind that this will probably be a never-ending exploration. You need to embrace it and enjoy it.
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2019-08-16 06:00:00
We've all seen a blog post or a video titled I quit social media for 30 days. I certainly did and probably you did as well. They're everywhere—especially on social media, which is the funniest part. What's also hilarious is that most of the people who write these posts or make these vlogs are human beings that have spent countless hours of their lives growing their social media presence.
I quit social media years ago. Did I care? No. Should you care? No. Is social as a whole bad? Perhaps. Should you quit social media? Maybe? I guess it depends. Do you spend 5 hours a day on Instagram? Then the answer is probably yes. This is not exactly a complex issue.
Another fun aspect of those blog posts is the lessons learned.
I was spending 4 hours a day on scrolling through my Instagram timeline. Now I have more free time to do things I love.
Yeah no shit. Doesn't take a genius to reach that conclusion. You can substitute social media with pretty much every other time waster and reach the same conclusion.
I was spending 4 hours a day watching paint dry. Now I have more free time to do things I love.
This doesn't sound very insightful, does it? Other common conclusions include:
Also, if you're one of those people who has amassed 5 million followers on some social platform be honest and admit you're probably part of the problem here. There are better ways to share content with people without relying on social media. And if you decide not to do that because you want to reach a bigger audience, then whatever. You do you.
Rant over. Thank you for listening.
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2019-08-13 06:00:00
Early today I was doing something I do quite often: chatting with my friend Rob. As a result of that chat, I ended up checking the stats for my personal website just out of curiosity. Now, as you probably know, I don't have analytics on my site. The only way for me to know if people visit my site is to analyse the server logs. That's not something I do very often, maybe once or twice a year and that's usually because I'm talking about a related topic with someone.
And so I did that (site seems to do just fine btw, not that I care) and then for some reason I decided to open the Google Search Console. Now, for those of you who don't know, the Search Console is this tool that Google provides that allows you to see where and how your site is linked across the pages that has indexed as well as seeing what queries people have performed in relations to your content. It probably does many other things and I'm sure there's some SEO guru out there that's screaming at me right now because I don't understand how this Search Console actually works.
Anyway, I went in the console and checked the only few things I usually check there: what sites link to my site (which is how I usually discover if some of you lovely people have wrote something about my blog or have mentioned me) and what kind of queries have lead to people visiting my site.
This last one thing is the main reason for this blog post. Here's how the results look like:
Doesn't take a genius to see that there's a trend there. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not going to complain about people finding my blog when looking for minimal email clients or minimal browsers. But it is interesting to see that that's what people are after when it comes to content.
A more marketing oriented person would probably see an opportunity there and say I should write more about this topic. I'm not that person. As a matter of fact, I'm quite the opposite. All this (waves hands furiously towards the screen) is not a marketing operation nor a personal brand operation. I don't do any of this because of the potential return. I do this because it's fun.
But still, it is interesting that so many of you are interested in this topic of minimalism in technology. Which makes me think that there are many of us that are currently struggling to find a good balance between the digital and the "real" world. That's a topic worth exploring. Hell maybe I'll do end up writing more on the subject. Who knows.
Anyway, if you're one of those people that are interested in the topic, get in touch. Let me know why, let me know what you're after.
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2019-08-11 06:00:00
Sometimes you click on a link without knowing where you'll end up. That was the case when I clicked on a link in one of the few newsletters I still read these days. And that's how I found A Short Hike, a wonderful and relaxing short game by Adam Robinson-Yu.
I love everything about this tiny little game. I love the low res graphics, love the music, love the colors and love the overall execution. If, like me, you're a sucker for indie games, give it a try. It's worth it.
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2019-08-08 06:00:00
I'm not entirely sure understated is the word I'm looking for honestly but, I'll run with it. I'm currently coding and designing a few different websites for clients, friends and myself and that led me into thinking about web design. Every time I browse, looking for websites to publish on my gallery, I find myself impressed by what other designers and developers are doing. The are some amazing talents out there, that's for sure.
But one thing I also noticed is that these impressive designs don't push me towards the actual content. I can't remember a single time when I stopped and looked at the content of one specific site beause of the design of the site itself.
I want my websites to be understated. I want them to be invisible and possibly even boring.
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2019-07-07 06:00:00
In my neverending exploration of minimalism in technology, I stumbled uppon this super simple Mac app called Monochrome. It's a neat web browser and its most unique feature is the fact that it only allows you to use it in what you can call a mobile view.
The viewport goes from 320x480px (the original iPhone screen size) to 414x896px (the current iPhone XS Max screen size) and that forces you to browse the web in a very different way. Big fan of these kind of apps.
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2019-05-15 06:00:00
A few days ago I received an email. The part relevant to this post is the following:
I would call you a rebel, a man who is not quite satisfied with the modern structure of the world. Such people are more prone to depression. Therefore, I want to ask - have you ever had depression, apathy, and if so, how did you cope with it?
The email was unexpected, like most emails, and the question extremely interesting therefore I'm gonna do my best to reply.
I never considered myself a rebel. I don't think what I do with my life is that special or unique and I don't consider my lifestyle an act of rebellion. But I do see myself as a person who's "not quite satisfied with the modern structure of the world". There are many things I don't like and/or "approve" about the way modern society is currently set up. And just to be clear, that's my problem. I don't expect society to conform to my view of the world.
Having said that, I must admit that I do like the rebel label.
Let's take the question apart and tackle Apathy first. Apathy, according to the dictionary is defined as lack of interest, enthusiasm, or concern. Now, in order to give a proper answer we need to define the scope of that definition. What are we talking about here? Are we talking about apathy in regard to life in general and other human beings? Then no, I don't think I am apathetic. I care about the people around me, I care about the two other human beings who live with me, I care about my 4 cats, I care about my friends that are currently scattered across the globe and I care about life in general.
Yet, there are moment when I feel down. There are moments when I don't really care about what I am doing with my time, moments when I don't care about my work, moments when I'd love to just throw my computer out the window and disappear out in the woods.
Now the hard one, depression. I'm gonna grab the dictionary definition again as a starting point:
a mental condition characterized by feelings of severe despondency and dejection, typically also with feelings of inadequacy and guilt, often accompanied by lack of energy and disturbance of appetite and sleep
If the question is "am I depressed according to that definition" then my answer is maybe?. Here's the thing: I don't really know what depression is. And I'm not saying this because I'm the tough guy who can't be depressed. I'm saying this because I genuinely don't know what depression is. Do I "feel depressed"? No. Do I think I could be happier? I guess yes. Do I think I could be in a better mental space? Absolutely. Do I think there are people who are in a worse situation than me mentally speaking? Yup.
Depression to me (keyword "to me") is one of those borderless terms that can be used to describe situations that are wildly different. I'm perfectly aware that there is a clinical definition of what depression is, I'm not arguing against that just to be clear. I'm talking about the use of the word among people who are not psychologists, when the term is used very loosely to describe any type of downward swing.
I can confidently say that I'm not going through the happiest time of my life. Lots of thoughts about what I want to do, how I should spend my time and so on. At the same time though I am aware of how lucky I am because I'm healthy, I live in a beautiful place, with wonderful people.
As for the "how did you cope with it?" part of the question, there are a bunch of different things I do to stay afloat:
This is by no means a complete list. Just some of the things I like to do that make me happy. As always, if you have comments or questions or just want to say hi send me an email.
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2019-05-06 06:00:00
For the past few years I wrote on this blog about pretty much everything. This site is not focused on anything specific and it's more like a chronologically organized collection of thoughts than a "proper blog". And despite that, people seem to come back to this site for my thoughts and experiment around the topic of digital minimalism.
Now, I didn't even know this was a thing before a few months ago. But apparently it is definitely a thing and it makes me feel a bit better to know that I'm not the only crazy person out there who's struggling to keep up with this digital world we live in.
And that pushed me to start this new experiment of mine called "From the Summit". This is going to be a hopefully monthly newsletter written and delivered from the top of a mountain. That means that at least once a month I'll leave home, hike a mountain, reach the very top, make coffee or tea, sit on a rock, write the newsletter and then I'll hit send.
The newsletters will be focused on the interaction about the digital world and our lives and are probably going to be a complete chaos full of typos as usual. I'll also try to attach a very nice picture each time. Sometimes the sunset is gorgeous up there.
If you want to follow the journey just click this link. And even if you don't, I wish you a wonderful day and as always thanks for stopping by.
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2019-05-02 06:00:00
There was a time when we, and by we I mean us human beings, were living on this lovely round planet without the aid of any technology. That was a long time ago. Was that a better time? Probably not. Technology has improved our lives immensely and we should be grateful and also proud of what we developed during the centuries. What we shouldn't be proud of though, is the current state of a subset of those technologies, particularly phones.
Phones have become this ubiquitous object that does way too many things and creates more problems that it solves. That's not the case for the majority of technologies you use on a daily basis.
Think for a moment at your washing machine. What model of washing machine do you have? When did you buy it? What brand it is? I couldn't answer any of these questions about my washing machine because, honestly, I don't care. I know it's there, I know it solves a problem and it frees me from having to wash clothes by hand and that's it. That's what technology is supposed to do. Every piece of technology is supposed to make our lives simpler and in some way better.
Decades ago the phone was a washing machine. It wasn't this omnipresent item thats's always with you. It was an object in your home attached to a cable coming out from your wall. And back then the phone was essentially a single purpose item: you were able to make and receive phone calls with it. That's it.
Now? God knows what a phone is today. Mine doesn't even receive phone calls. Is it a digital camera? Sometimes. Is it a voice recorder? Occasionally. Is it a book? It could be, yeah. But primarily it's a gateway to the internet.
That's a good and a bad thing at the same time. It's slowly changing the way we interact with each other in ways that I think are not healthy.
I want my phone to go back to being a washing machine. I should probably tie a string to it and attach it to the wall. Maybe that will help.
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2019-04-30 06:00:00
Before I start: I'm probably going to ramble a lot in this post. You've been warned. The past few months have been particularly challenging from a personal stand point. And just to be clear, nothing crazy happened, life is chugging along as usual, I'm healthy and there aren't any major issues I'm dealing with. So compared to a shit ton of other people out there my life is great.
Still, it has been tough.
I started working as a full-time freelancer back in 2012. I was 23. I had no idea what I was doing back then and I probably have no idea now either. But I did it anyway.
Coding websites for a living is fun, I'm not gonna lie. The web is an interesting world full of amazing people doing amazing things. And the opportunities are endless. Pretty much all the people I consider friends today I met them through the internet in one way or the other. And that's great, I love that and I couldn't be more grateful for all the interesting human connections I developed over the years.
At the same time I'm slowly realising that coding websites for clients (not all of them but a good 90% of them) is no longer rewarding. It's a job. I get money in exchange for a service and that's it. And don't get me wrong, that's ok. There's nothing wrong with that.
The problem is that I'm slowly getting consumed by this mindset. I open my computer in the morning, I see that there are 10 emails in my inbox and I think "let's hope those are not 10 new issues I'll have to deal with today".
That's not ok and it's not fun. I don't want that for my life. I'd love to spend my time helping people with their websites, help people who care about their sites which is why I love to help friends with their personal projects. Those are fun things to work on because the people involved care about the final product.
With clients that's not always the case. Because in the majority of cases a site is just a thing you need for your company like a business card or a new piece of equipment. And most of the time the site is pushed online and then forgotten. And that sucks.
All this rant brings us to the issue of money and side projects. Side projects, by definition, are not business enterprises. I didn't start thegallery.io 4 years (2 months and 10 days) ago to make money. I wanted a place to collect websites I liked and that's why I coded that site. Could I add some shitty AD banner and earn something from it? Probably. Should I do it? Fuck no. Why? Because I care about the web and I care about you. You visit the site for a reason and that reason doesn't include getting served some crappy advertisement.
Last year I ran my weird gallery experiment to see if people were willing to contribute to the project and was pleasantly surprised by the results. There are some very kind folks out there and that is comforting in a way.
This year I decided to try something different. I'd love to have more time to spend to help people who can't afford to pay for a developer. I'd love to have more time to help people getting online to blog and to share what they do. It sucks that 95% of the sites I post on The Gallery are either portfolios or sites for companies with big budgets while there are hundreds of charities or small creators in all fields stuck with shitty old websites because they don't have the financial resources to hire a studio or a freelancer.
That's a problem I'd love to work ok. And that's only possible if I earn something in some other way. Which is why I set up a few different ways for people to contribute to this project of mine. I'd love to reach the point where if you have a charity that has no budget you can say to them "Reach out to that guy and he'll help you out even if you don't have a budget."
Does any of this make any sense? Probably not. Anyway, if just the thought of contributing to this endeavour crosses your mind, thank you. Really.
And, as always, if you want to reach out please do it at [email protected]. I love to chat with people via email.
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2019-04-15 06:00:00
It's not a mystery that I have a love hate relationship with technology. On one side I love tech in all its shapes and forms. I work in the tech world since I make sites for a living and I use tech pretty much everyday. On the other, I currently hate my life because I find that technology has permeated pretty much every corner of it.
No need to say that that's no healthy and it's something I am a bit worried about. What sucks about this is that technology is very convenient. Probably too much. We just get used to it and accept it without asking too many questions.
But then I thought: what if I flip this and use it to my advantage? What if I structure my life around tools and forms of communications that are not convenient to use? What would happen if my phone only had access to a 56k internet connection? What would happen if I only used SMS and Emails instead of Slack/WhatsApp/Telegram/Whatever?
What if my phone didn't have access to the internet at all? Or what if I didn't have a browser on the phone? And no apps other than my music? I think this is something I'm going to experiment.
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2019-03-28 07:00:00
That's a weird question I know. I was thinking about this the other morning. I woke up early and was listening at the birds chirping outside while I was laying in bed. And that got me thinking about sounds. The minimalist folks out there on the internet (don't really know how to describe them ahah) seem to put so much emphasis on the visual aspect of the whole minimalist experience and no-one seems to talk about sounds. And that's interesting.
I'd much rather live in a quiet but cluttered space than in a noisy but uncluttered one. How does your life sound like?
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2019-03-08 07:00:00
Personally I am not that interested in writing about the apps I use or my digital setup. Most of the posts I wrote in the past were the result of people asking me to write about that specific topic whether is my weird minimal email setup or my minimal iPhone (which is still a work in progress and yes, I still hate you phone).
This post is not different. Someone asked me what my digital setup looks like so here we go.
My primary and only work machine is an early 2015 13inch MacBook Pro usually attached to a a 29 ultra wide Dell Monitor. I type on the built in Mac keyboard and I use primarily a Magic Mouse. I have two 1TB WD My Passport Ultra external Hard Disks I use to back up my machine and a pair of AKG K545 headphones. Also have an iPhone 6s with a broken screen and an iPad Air 2. That's pretty much it when it comes to tech hardware.
As for the software, I don't have that many apps I use on a daily basis. If we exclude all the crap that comes pre-installed on the Mac this is what I use. I'm gonna group these by topic. When it comes to development this is what I use:
That's basically all I use for work. I occasionally use the terminal app if I need to do something specific but 90% of my time is spent on those apps. When it comes to design I use Sketch but if I have to be honest my design are done with pen and paper and then code and the browser. I don't even remember the last time I made a full design on sketch.
As for other apps, I use iA Writer to write my blog posts and Numi is my go to calculator. I can't live without Alfred, 1Password and Spotify, and I use Apple Mail to handle all my email accounts. Other apps I use occasionally are Sip, SkyFont and ImageOptim.
That's all I have on my Mac right now.
When it comes to services, I try to keep things as simple as possible. I have a fonts.com subscriptions for webfonts and I use a combination of Hover.com, DigitalOcean, RunCloud and Google Suite for domains, hosting and emails. Only subscription I currently have that is not strictly work related is spotify.
And that's it. If you have questions let me know.
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2019-03-05 07:00:00
Abridged version for people in a hurry: a few hours ago I pushed live version 2 of Minimalism Life. It's a site about minimalism. I bet you didn't see that coming. I designed 5% of the site, credits for the other 95% goes to Carl. It runs on Kirby 3, site is set in TT Commons. That's it. Go check the site and have a nice day.
You still here? That's very kind of you. I assume you want to know a bit more about the site so let me tell you about it.
Version 1 was running on WordPress. Just to be clear, I wasn't involved with the project at the time. Can't remember why though. My friend Ale designed the identity for the project and I have this vague memory of being asked to work on the site. I could be wrong though. Anyway, it ran on top of WP for 2 years and it wasn't exactly pretty.
The site was slow and the code was a mess. So when Carl asked me to work on the V2, ditching WP was an obvious choice. Coincidentally, Kirby 3 was about to come out so the timing was almost perfect.
Working with Kirby is a pleasure compared to the nightmare that is working with WP. Definitely give it a go if you're in the market for a new CMS.
If you're planning to move from WP to Kirby get ready to spend way too much time porting the content from one platform to the other. I spent a couple of not-so-fun hours generating all the kirby content from the xml created by the WP export tools. If I had to do it again I'd probably do this the other way around and use the WP installation to generate all the txt files and folders.
The new site is an interesting experiment. It's a free blog with an optional premium newsletter. It's an interesting model, one that I think could work for this kind of publications. As you probably know I'm not a fan of ads and I also think it's worth paying for the content you consume. Investing money forces you to be a bit more mindful about your time. If you pay for a newsletter you'll probably read it and not let it rot in your inbox folder.
As for the design, going minimal was an obvious choice. The site uses just 1 font, TT Commons and the color scheme is pretty much just black and white with the occasional grey detail. There's no need to overthink these kind of websites. The goal was not to design something super original and push the boundaries of blog design but rather to create a quiet and enjoyable reading experience. The readers are there for the content after all.
As I mentioned already, the site runs on Kirby 3. It's a custom build with a custom design. I used the Markdown Field to improve the writing experience inside the admin and the Kirby 3 Feed to generate the RSS and JSON feeds for the site. The site is pretty much just HTML and CSS with just the bare minimum JS (mainly to improve the loading experience in the Journal archive). There's nothing particularly fancy going on but if you have questions feel free to send me an email.
And that's it. I'm glad the site is live. It's always nice to ship a website. It gives you a sense of accomplishment, something I definitely need these days. Feedbacks are always appreciated.
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2019-02-22 07:00:00
In the past few days I came to the realisation that time, is the most precious thing I have. Is probably the only thing I have. Time to breathe, to enjoy a sunny day, to watch and appreciate a sunset. Time to stay in bed longer in the morning and listen to the birds chirping outside. Time to think, to write, to interact with other people.
And instead, right now, my time is consumed by work, by doing things that, deep down, I don't really enjoy nor I care about. This is probably the one thing that I need to change about my life.
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2019-02-05 07:00:00
How are you doing today?
Yes I am talking to you, the person in front of the screen. It's very nice to meet you. I have a question if you don't mind: who are you? I'd love to ask you this question via email but I don't have your email address. I don't even know who you are or what your name is. I'd love to know it though.
Who are you? What are you up to in your life? And how did you end up on my site anyway? As I said before, I don't track people that visit this site and I don't know if and where people link to it online. I'd love to know what is the path you followed that ultimately brought you here.
This is very much an invitation. Please do send me an email. Even to simply say hi. I'd love to interact with you in a more meaningful way and emails seem the most convenient way to do it.
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2019-01-21 07:00:00
When was the last time you saw something amazing, a stunning sunset, an intriguing piece of architecture, and didn’t think “should I take a picture of it?”.
When was the last time you thought about a person and the idea of sending him or her a message didn’t cross your mind?
I was thinking about this last night while in bed. Technology is shaping us in strange ways. And that’s not necessarily a good thing.
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2019-01-20 07:00:00
If decluttering has taught me something it is that sometimes less really is more. And that is true not only for material possessions but for pretty much every aspect of our lives. Think about it: there aren't that many things you need more of.
I started the new year thinking about new ways to apply this mindset and one aspect that could use some decluttering is my digital projects. So I asked myself, what could I remove from my side projects in order to make them better?
One obvious answer was to remove some of the projects from the web entirely. And that's why I did. As of today, only this blog and my thegallery.io are currently online.
Everything else has either been deleted, archived or redirected here. This will free some of my time and attention and also save some money, and that's always good.
The other less obvious action was to remove something from The Gallery.
I was doing some maintenance work on the site and I decided to get rid of the search. Why? Because why not? The search engine itself is still there, you can still search across the site but the search form is now gone.
I never used it anyway, and if I need something I use Alfred on my Mac to search on the site. Plus, this means one less JS library I need to load on the site and that's a good thing.
Another thing I'm going to remove is the current Twitter Feed. The feed has been there since day one and at first it was manually updated along with a bunch of other social media channels. I dropped all the other accounts one by one and Twitter was the only one left. It survived mostly because it was generated automatically.
Now you're probably thinking, why don't I just leave it there then? And the answer is simple: because I don't want to add to the noise of your life. I know, it's not up to me to decide what's considered noise and what not but still, I don't want to take part in that game.
I'm not going to delete it, I'll leave it up mostly as an archive. The Gallery will continue on as usual, you can still visit the site and there's still an RSS feed available (which right now is broken for some reason and I'm in the process of fixing it).
As always, if you have thoughts on the matter, shoot me an email. Always happy to engage in conversations.
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2019-01-10 07:00:00
If I can’t offer a solution, the least I can do is to not be part of the problem.
This is the mindset I’m currently in. I'm still talking about digital interactions, a topic I've been thinking about a lot lately. I decided that I don't want to be part of the noise. This is probably the only meaningful contribution I can offer to the human beings I interact with.
As for myself, what I want is to filter out all the meaningless conversations and be left with only the interactions that really matter and have value.
Quality over quantity, deliberate over instantaneous.
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2019-01-05 07:00:00
Don't know about you but I'm reaching peak levels of digital tiredness. Tired of the rhythm of digital communications, tired of all these chat apps, tired of websites with annoying "how can I help you" pop up messages. Stay out of my way, that's what you can do to help me, silly bot. I just opened this page, give me a damn second to see what's in here before asking me if I need help.
I'm slowly realising that in this digital age we live in, emails are probably the last safe space we still own. If we're careful with how we use them.
And that's why I decided to get a new email for myself. I'm not going to make it public here for obvious reasons but I am going to code something that will hopefully help me connect with people in a more meaningful way.
Because I don't want to become a proper hermit, completely isolated from the world. I love to interact with strangers, especially the ones who spend time reading what I post here on this weird blog of mine.
I really hope you're having a great beginning of 2019.
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2018-12-11 07:00:00
Yesterday I realised that walking alone in the woods is the best way to spend my time at this point of my life. There are so many things I can learn from nature and from paying close attention to my body as I walk among the trees. I'm surprised it took me this long to figure it out honestly. Sometimes the answer to the chaos and uncertainties of life is as simple as a silent walk through the forest.
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2018-11-26 07:00:00
It’s November, almost midday and I’m already eating lunch. Weird, I know. It’s the first blog post I have written on my iPad and I have to admit, iA Writer on iPad is not bad. This post is not about anything specific and I’ll probably ramble quite a lot. This is just so you know what to expect.
For the past 8 days I’ve been running an experiment on my thegallery.io that essentially consisted in asking people for money. The site is growing, expenses are growing and since I really dislike advertisements I decided to experiment with the site and see what happens. And the result was quite surprising. Dozens of people have donated and I received a lot of supporting messages along with the donations. And that’s great. We’re talking about a few hundred dollars in total so no one is going to get rich here, but it helps and also helps the mood.
Is it sustainable? Obviously not. Still, it was a very nice experiment and I'm happy with the result. I'll keep it going until the end of the month and then the site will go back to its normal state. Maybe I'll do it again next year, we'll see.
Winter has yet to arrive and I'm already tired of these days with pretty much no sunlight. It also doesn't help that I'm in a terribly bad mood and I'm starting to feel a lot of "freelancer fatigue". I need to do something to get my life back on track but I don't know where to start. I guess I'm not the only one though.
Anyway, thank you for reading this.
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2018-11-11 07:00:00
Yesterday I stumbled on this list of PS4 games by Kotaku and I was discussing it with Mike. The TLDR of his opinion is that that list is a bad list and I agree. I'm not saying that those are bad games, I'm saying that they left out a lot of good ones. And before you say it, yes, I am aware that that's a constantly updated list and they try to keep it fresh. I don't really have a problem with that. I do have a problem with lists in general though.
My issue with lists is that we all see things from our perspective and it's hard to make a list of this kind in a way that's not opinionated. Because these are opinions after all. You can't have a "the best of" list that's objective. It just not going to happen.
Lists like these should come with a warning label. You should let everyone know what angle you're coming from. Because based on that I can decide if your list is worth reading. I, for example, like games with a story and I have no interest whatsoever for competitive multiplayer games. But that's just me. My list would probably include a game like Firewatch and not Fortnite.
This is a problem with opinions in general. When you write about a subject, any subject, who you are matters because it's the key one need to use to interpret that particular opinion. Opinions don't live in a vacuum.
That said, do you have a good game to suggest? I'm always looking for interesting new things to play, especially if they have great stories and visuals.
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2018-11-07 07:00:00
As you may know, I like blogs. And you know what else I like? I like when my friends start blogs. Which is why I’m particularly happy to see that both Carl and Mike have now a personal blog. The two will probably be very different in terms of topics and that’s the beauty of it. Blogs are a reflection of who you are and your interests.
And how about you? Do you have a blog? You thinking about starting one? If you need help get in touch. I love working on blogs and I love to read what other people write.
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2018-11-01 07:00:00
I’m a fan of feeds. Whether is a curated RSS feed, a nice Twitter account or a great newsletter. All these are great tools to stay always up to date with things I care about and don’t miss out on “important news”.
And that’s precisely why I stopped using them. I don’t want to live a life where “staying up to date” is a priority. I don’t need that. I don’t need to always know what’s going on everywhere and with everyone.
And neither do you (probably).
Which doesn’t mean that I stopped reading or listening to what people have to say. I still enjoy reading good blog posts and listening to great podcast episodes.
It simply means that I’m no longer subscribed to their feeds. I don’t know when the new episode comes up, I don’t know when the latest blog post is published. Every now and then I remember about that particular podcast or blog or site and I simply visit it and catch up with the new content.
Good content is rarely time sensitive. You don’t need to consume it NOW. Take your time, live the internet at your own pace.
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2018-10-09 06:00:00
There was a time when pretty much everything in life was slow. Transportation was slow, communication was slow. As a result, everything had to be deliberate. At least more than it is today. I’m not saying it was better, but I do think that technology, with its speed, has destroyed, or at least profoundly altered, some aspects of our lives.
Communication is now more often than not “intention-less”. You chat with people mostly because you can, not because you really have a desire to share something with them. It’s just part of our lives. Same is true for information consumption. You scroll and consume digital content simply because it’s easy to access it. And it’s so bizarre.
The modern life has managed to greatly improve aspects of our lives and completely mess our life rhythm at the same time. And the more I spend time in front of this screen, the more I become aware that all this is not good.
At least, not for me.
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2018-10-08 06:00:00
Roughly seven years ago I digitally met my friend Ale on Behance. The shocking part is that Behance is still around seven years later. Anyway, we ended up working together and became friends in the process. One of the things we made together was a new version of his personal site and in that version we included a blog that later became the AesseVisualJournal which we then rebranded, back in 2015, simply as the Visual Journal. The blog has grown significantly since its inception back in 2013 and it was time to design a new version.
When I was chatting with Ale about the possibility of making a new version of the VJ he came up with an idea: to "connect" The Gallery and the Visual Journal in some way. And that made a lot of sense. Even though the two sites have different target audiences since my The Gallery is focused on web design and his VJ is all about branding and graphic design, they do have a significant overlap. Plus both sites have pretty much the same structure. The decision was taken.
In an unexpected coincidence, we found ourselves working on the V7 for both Visual Journal and The Gallery, in the seventh year of our friendship. The Gallery is a bit younger than the VJ, I started the site in 2015, but I burned through versions a lot quicker. That’s my fault, I’m never happy with what I do and hopefully this new version will help fix that problem.
Back to TG and VJ, the plan was to build “sister sites”. They would look very, very similar but not identical. Visual Journal has traditionally been a light site while The Gallery has used a dark background since V1. The other main difference is the layout. On the VJ we have always used a single column to display the posts while on The Gallery I opted for a grid. For this V7 we ended up using a hybrid solution that’s quite clever if you ask me. Both sites go from one column on mobile, to two columns on bigger screens. The main difference is that on The Gallery I then quickly jump to 4 columns. That’s because I want the site to be very quick to browse and I want people to leave it as fast as possible. On the VJ on the other hand, we stick to two columns as long as possible and we jump to 4 columns only on big screens. I’m very happy with that compromise.
The VJ has also become much simpler since both About and Archive pages are now gone. We also used a new font for both sites. We went with the lovely Metro Sans by Samuel Oakes and I couldn’t be happier with the choice.
There’s not much more to say really. Go check the sites and let us know if you spot bugs or anything weird. You can reach out to Ale via Twitter at @aessestudio. I’m not on Twitter because I couldn’t care less (although, you can follow The Gallery at @thegallery_io if you feel like) but you can get in touch with me via email at [email protected] if you want. You can visit The Gallery at thegallery.io and the Visual Journal at visualjournal.it.
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2018-10-07 06:00:00
I know what you’re thinking: please no, not another post on minimalism. And I hear you. Minimalism seems to be everywhere online these days. But I promise you, this is not going to be another one of those posts that will tell you how to simplify your kitchen or how to minimize your cat. Many, many people have already written about that and there’s no need for another post on the subject.
What I am going to write about, is my issues with minimalism as a concept. Because I think people are mixing a bunch of things together and that’s creating a lot of confusion. So let’s start with this:
This will sound a bit confusing since minimalism IS an art movement. But when people talk about minimalism these days you can almost certainly assume they’re not talking about that type of minimalism. The term minimalism is now referring to a particular type of lifestyle but that lifestyle doesn’t have attached visual aesthetics that comes with it. To me personally, minimalism has nothing to do with design but that doesn’t mean that you can’t be a “minimalist” and be interested in minimal design. The issue here, I think, is related to the term itself because we’re using “minimalism” to refer to a variety of different subjects that can potentially have nothing in common.
This will also sound a bit strange because if you spend 10 minutes googling minimalism, you’ll find a lot of articles about owning less than 100 items and decluttering. And again, the two concepts—minimalism and owning fewer items—are not incompatible but are, in my opinion, separate. You can easily own very few items without being interested in minimalism and vice versa.
So the question now is, if minimalism has nothing to do with a visual aesthetic and has nothing to do with owning less, what the heck is minimalism? To me it comes down to two things: simplification and awareness.
I personally see minimalism as a tool and nothing more. It’s a tool I can use to keep my life on balance. And yes, as a result, I do own fewer things, however that’s not the goal but rather a byproduct. The goal is to live a life that’s less stressful and there are countless little things one can do to achieve that. And I must point out that there’s no magic formula. What works for me may or may not work for you. We are all different after all and we live different lives with different priorities and needs.
I’ll give you an example. I own very few clothes, they’re almost all either black, white, or gray and I bought them in bulk. Let me explain why. I buy in bulk because I don’t want to waste time buying new clothes. Fashion is not something I personally enjoy, nor does it have much significance in my life, and since I work solo and I am my own boss I don’t need to follow a dress code. That means I can optimize my wardrobe. By “optimize” I mean using the same item in more than one “social circumstance”. For example, I own three pairs of identical black shorts. Those are the only shorts I wear during the summer and that means I use them while I’m at home, when I’m out to play basketball and when I need to meet with a client. I bought them specifically because they’re plain and “elegant” enough to be used in pretty much all occasions. The same “philosophy” is applied to pretty much everything else I wear. I try to buy things I can use in as many contexts as possible because that means I can own less stuff overall. I also don’t care about being “pretty”. I want to be comfortable in my clothes and everything is optimized to that effect.
That’s one example of what “minimalism” means to me. It also means following fewer social conventions, and that’s another thing that has nothing to do with owning less or living a life that’s only black and white.
Minimalism has become this bizarre and broad term that encompasses a multitude of aspects that are not really connected. They can be, but they don’t need to. So in the future, try to think of minimalism simply as a way to live a life that’s simpler and more optimized and see how you can apply those two concepts to your specific situation. You can be a “minimalist” and have a life full of colors, and you can be a “minimalist” and own 5,000 items. There’s nothing wrong with that.
And as always, if you have thoughts on the subject, please write me an email. I’m always happy to engage in conversations with people.
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2018-09-09 06:00:00
If you’re into design, any kind of design, you probably heard about ”timeless design”. Timeless is defined as something that’s “not affected by the passage of time or changes in fashion” and so timeless design is, by definition, a piece of design that’s not affected by the passage of time. Something that’s equally beautiful and functional now as it was 50 or 100 or a 1000 years ago.
The web is a very young medium. We’re talking less than 30 years which in the grand scheme of things is nothing. Is there such a thing as a “timeless website”? I was thinking about this a few days ago while I was scrolling through my gallery. I was looking at the first websites I posted just a few years ago and most of them (a good 85% I’d say) have been redesigned or are gone completely.
Ironically, compared to a chair or a lamp or a desk, a website is a much more fragile object. There are a lot of components that can change and evolve with time and websites depend on those components. Unless you build a very simple website, you can’t realistically expect to leave it there and come back a decade later to find it still in perfect shape.
We rely on CDNs and 3rd party services and we expect them to work, well, forever. And that’s a bit silly if you stop and think about it. This website you’re looking at right now, will stop working in less than a month if I stop paying for the hosting . Same is true for the domain.
Anyway, I’ll stop rambling now, but if you have opinions on what’s a timeless website let me know. Always interested to know what you think.
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2018-09-08 06:00:00
Yesterday I stumbled upon this post by Jason Stirman in which he talks about his iPhone setup. I don’t have anything against the post itself and his setup is pretty similar to mine. I do have a bit of an issue with this idea of balancing “beauty” because, well because it’s a damn phone. Stop looking for beauty in your phone and look around. But anyway, that’s not a major issue. The major issue is this: how many apps do you have on your phone Jason?!
I think many people are missing the point when it comes to simplifying things whether it’s in the digital world or in the physical one. The goal is not to organize and move stuff in order not to see them anymore. The goal is to get rid of them altogether. Having said that, here’s my 3 steps guide to improve your iPhone.
Pretty straightforward. Delete everything. I don’t believe you if you tell me you need all those 130 apps. You don’t. Unless you’re a crazy person you don’t need 130 apps. Ever. I have 25 apps currently installed and that includes 15 system apps. I don’t think everyone should be this extreme but you can probably live just fine with less than 50 apps. You want to know what apps I have installed? There you go:
And this is what I have inside the only folder. As you can see, most of the stuff in there is either utility apps (home banking, 1Password, Dropbox, etc) or iOS apps.
And yes, I have no email, no social media and no games. Because I use a computer to work and if I’m not at my computer it means I’m not working and I don’t need to waste time on any of that stuff.
Because unless you’re in the 0.00001% of the population who need the phone to do his or her job then you can simply forget about it. And if you’re out with friends you don’t need to check your phone anyway. So turn off everything.
Once you got rid of everything you can go a step further and use the search function to navigate around your phone. This way you don’t even need to open folders and swipe through pages. To do that, go under Setting → Siri & Search, turn off the first 4 options unless you like to talk to Siri, and then, for each app, turn off the Search & Siri Suggestions. Once you turn that off a new option will appear below that will simply show the app inside the search results. This way you’ll be able to simply search through the apps and you won’t get distracted by anything else inside the search results.
Almost forgot, forget about widgets. You don’t need them. So there, that’s my take on how to improve your iPhone experience.
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2018-09-01 06:00:00
I quite like using the panorama mode to take vertical pictures on the iPhone. You end up with these crazy tall pictures with a strange perspective.
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2018-08-30 06:00:00
Yesterday I came across this article “Put your phone in Do Not Disturb mode forever” and the only thing I could do while I was reading it was smile. The article is quite reasonable, having your phone constantly in DND mode is a great idea IF you’re in the position to do that. Not everyone has the luxury to ignore his or her phone and email for hours. Some people must be reachable for a bunch of differente reasons and that’s ok. But if you can, then do it.
The reason why I was smiling, is because my phone has been in DND for the past 2 years. And not only that, it’a also on silent and almost all apps have notifications disabled. And I don’t have many apps to begin with. There’s no email on my phone and no social media. So once you reach that point, your phone can’t possibly be a distraction because there’s nothing in there. And that’s great.
I also LOVE that the author consider the options of shutting down all push notifications the “nuclear option”. That made me laugh quite a bit. So there, go read the article, it’s a quick read and a fun one. And try the experiment if you’re one of those people who is constantly dealing with hundreds of notifications.
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2018-08-19 06:00:00
Yesterday I came across this article from Khoi Vinh in which he referenced and old article of his as well as this longer article (essay?) from the UX Collective. Both very interesting read, I definitely recommend you reading both if you’re into the topic. Anyway I was thinking about the outlined problem and I still think that people should simply stop caring about stats and numbers. I’m talking about stats and numbers in general: the likes, page views, subscriptions to your newsletter, claps, retweets, whatever. If you write for the claps, you’ll be slowly pushed towards writing “claps worthy” articles and that may or may not be what you’re really interested in. Maybe you want to explore other topics but those don’t generate enough traffic and you let them go and that’s stupid. This won’t happen if you simply stop caring about metrics. Write whatever you like, explore topics, wonder around and get lost in thoughts. Who cares. Maybe that weird and out of place article will be extremely helpful to a small number of people. Who knows.
I personally still don’t know if people are reading these posts. And I don’t really care. This site/blog/thing is a weird mess of different topics and content and that’s great. Because that’s me, that's who I am.
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2018-08-14 06:00:00
Yesterday I was thinking about sharing. Must be because I randomly stumbled upon this App (which I highly recommend). I must premise this by saying that I’m not the most sociable person on earth, at least not in terms of social media.
Every now and then I come across something I think I should share with someone. That someone is always a specific person. It never occurred to me the idea of sharing something to everyone, just for the sake of sharing it. The act of sharing, for me, is always tied to a person and to something I have in common with him or her. Which is why my love for emails is growing with time. To me, emails are one of the best forms of communications in the digital age. And that’s because they:
Private because it’s between myself and the person on the other side of @ddress. There’s no crowd involved, no one can peak through the conversation. No one can jump between myself and the person I’m communicating with. And that’s also why they are intimate. Emails can be pretty much everything we want them to be.
Emails are also deliberate. Sharing something requires a quick tap. You find something, tap on a button on your phone and that’s it. Emails on the other hand, require a deliberate effort. You must open your email client, fill in the to field, add the link and probably write a line or two. These are extra steps that require an effort. And that’s good.
Lastly, emails are asynchronous. Your email is not gonna be lost in some endless Twitter or Instagram feed. Your email will sit there, in the inbox folder of the person you sent it to. And that person will probably have to do something about it.
This is a long way to say that if you want to get in touch, please do it via email. I LOVE to receive emails and engage in conversations with pretty much everyone on every topic. And if you find something interesting, try sharing it via email with someone specific rather than with the entire world.
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2018-08-13 06:00:00
What does a quiet website look like? For some reason I found myself asking this question repeatedly lately. A quick search for quiet web on Google doesn’t bring up a lot of content. I honestly can’t believe I’m one of the few people to have ever thought about a quiet web. I’m obviously talking about this notion of quietness as a response to the ever increasing amount of noise the web seems to be filled with. The idea of a quiet web in the context of the current attention economy seems a bit paradoxical but I’m not worried about that. I’m more interested in the question itself: what does a quiet website look like?
Can a site be memorable and quiet at the same time? And what makes a site noisy? Those are interesting questions, at least for me. Plenty of people have written about the current state of the web, about the problems with the advertising model, about privacy, about the impact of social media. Those are all important aspects of the web. But are not what I am personally interested in.
Websites are the building blocks of the web experience and that is why I’m interested in individual websites rather than the web as a whole. What can each site do to make the web a quieter place? What can I, as a web designer and developer, do to help? It’s a fascinating question.
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2018-07-29 06:00:00
As a web developer I have a love & hate relationship with browsers. On one side, I need them to function properly in order to do my job, on the other I want them to be as minimal as possible. At the same time I’m trying to spend less and more meaningful time on the browser which is why I decided to minimize it. I’m on a Mac and I decided to use Safari as my primary browser. Now, before you start screaming at the screen, I know what you’re thinking: Safari is awful. And I don’t disagree with that. Being awful is a plus. I don’t want to be comfortable, I want my browser to behave badly which is why Safari, with all its weird and stupid bugs is perfect. My safari looks like this:
Here’s how the taskbar is set up if you’re curious and want to do it yourself.
As you can see, I removed pretty much everything. Only thing left is the search bar at the center. I can use gestures and the keyboard to navigate through tabs and go back and forth through the history so I don’t need any button at the top. I’m also trying to have as fewer tabs open as possible. This is something that’s part of my commitment to be digitally minimal.
In addition to the minimal taskbar, there are a couple of extra steps I took in order to have a more minimalist browser.
Both new windows and tabs open on a blank page. That’s because I don’t want to get distracted by icons. If I open the browser I want to stay focused on the current task and not browse mindlessly.
I’m also loading a custom css file, which I use to hide stuff from websites I use somewhat regularly. It’s used primarily to hide parts of the sites, change the typography or the colors. Nothing super crazy but definitely helpful.
A yes, the other browsers. We’re talking about Firefox and Chrome right? Chrome is my dev browser because Safari’s webtools are frankly a pile of hot garbage. My Chrome looks like this:
The new tab is a custom extension I coded months ago. It’s available for free on the Chrome App store or whatever is called. You can’t really remove many things from Chrome. All the extensions are hidden, home icon is obviously gone but other than that it looks pretty much like a normal Chrome installation.
Firefox is a bit more interesting. I don’t use Firefox a lot to be honest with you even though has got much better lately and I quite like it as a browser. Still, if it’s your primary browser and you want to minimize it, this is what you can do. My Firefox looks like this:
As you can see, almost everything is gone from the sidebar. Only things you can’t remove are the two arrows but I moved one of the two on the opposite side in order to have a less busy left corner. Only other thing left is the search bar.
I’m also using the dark color scheme. You can change the theme down at the bottom of the customization page.
As for the settings, like I did for Safari, an empty page is shown every time I open a new tab or window. This is super helpful to cut down distractions.
Another thing you can do is turn off those obnoxious notifications requests. To do that you need to go in the Privacy & Security section inside the settings and click on the Settings... button next to Notifications.
Then, at the bottom of the new window, you’ll find a checkbox to disable all new requests. Toggle that and you’ll be good to go. This is something you can do in Safari as well btw. You can find the same option under Settings > Websites > Notifications.
And that’s it. Enjoy your simpler browser. And let me know if you think there’s something else that could be done to improve the browsing experience.
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2018-07-25 06:00:00
We live in a (digital) world where everything is curated. Sometimes by other people, mostly by AI. And that’s a good thing right? I mean, I like to have a site where I can go to get suggestions for the next book to read and I love to have always new playlists to listen to. All this is great.
Except, it’s really not.
Here’s my issue with curation and before I start, I must admit that I am part of the problem. I curate a couple of sites, mostly because I need them and also because I like to do it but I realize I’m not helping the cause.
My problem with curation is that you inevitably get stuck in a loop. I’ll give you an example. I have Spotify open pretty much all the time. As soon as I get in front of my Mac I hit play on one of the playlists Spotify has made for me and I get on with my day. Recently I listened to a lot of very relaxing electronic music and now my playlists are just that: relaxing playlists. Which is ok but sometimes you want something different and there’s no way for me to tell Spotify that I want to listen to something different. I obviously can go and look for something else to listen to, there are plenty of playlists I can chose from, but what I’m saying is that now the curated pert of Spotify, for me, is broken. I need to actively fight against it in order to get something new to listen to.
This is clearly not a really big deal when it comes to music but it’s a big deal when it comes to other aspects of our lives. Think about news or Twitter profiles or YouTube channels. If you get stuck in a loop of a certain type of news sources for example it’s hard to get out of it. You start following a few people on Twitter and without realizing your Twitter feed is a distillation of a tiny amount of what’s really out there.
The only antidote to curation is awareness. You need to be aware of what’s going on in your digital life. You need to pay attention to what’s happening and react to it in an active way. Tell YouTube to stop suggesting you certain types of videos, go find different people to follow on Twitter, read news from a different source.
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2018-07-23 06:00:00
This morning, Rob sent me his latest Coffee Vlog, which I’ll embed down below if you want to watch it.
I’m not gonna comment on the video itself since that’s not the point of this post. What I am going to talk about, is the feeling I had while watching it. Contrary to his Yo! videos, in this one, he felt genuinely authentic to me. Let me explain what I mean by that.
These days, everyone online is, or tries to be, a product. People generally try to sell themselves to an audience in an attempt to earn something back. That “something” is, more often than not, money. This is (mostly) true for youtubers, bloggers, twitchers (is that even a word?) and instagrammers. The audience doesn’t like you because of the whole package, it likes you because of the persona you showcase while you’re online. Which is ok, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. What’s lost in this social dynamic though, is the concept of authenticity. And that’s because authenticity is sadly not entertaining. People don’t want to see the 24 drafts of your latest blog posts or the 15 attempts to record that video intro. They want to see you being out in the world snapping awesome pictures of architecture or cats or cars and not at the grocery store buying toilet paper. Because who cares about that right?
That’s probably one of the saddest byproducts of this social media age: the death of true authenticity.
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2018-07-09 06:00:00
I’ve been running thegallery.io for more than 3 years now and received hundreds of emails and if there’s one thing that is guaranteed to put me in the wrong mood is an email like this:
Luckily, emails like this one are the minority. Most of the emails I get are great and the people I met are all awesome people. Still, every new and then, I get these emails in my inbox.
A link. No signature, no ”Hi”, no smile emoji. Just a link. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for minimalism and keep things short. But these emails push all the wrong buttons. If you’re submitting something somewhere online, remember that there are people on the other side.
And if you’re submitting something to thegallery, an email like that is the fastest way to get archived without even getting a reply. And unless your site is really, REALLY good, you won’t get published either.
So don't be a dick, remember that there's a human being on the other side of that email. And it doesn't cost much to write just a few words. Keep that in mind.
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2018-07-07 06:00:00
Yes, I’m asking that to you. The you that’s reading this on his computer or tablet or phone (or maybe fridge or who knows where else). Who are you? You’re probably not that person who just yelled something obscene on Twitter nor that person who just ate a beautiful pancake, perfectly placed on a plate. Or maybe you are, but I highly doubt it. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I call the digital me these days and I find it an intriguing topic. If you’re reading this, you probably have a vague idea of who I am as a person but I’m pretty sure that that idea is not really close to who I really am.
So who am I really? I honestly don’t know. Sure, all these weird posts collected here are part of who I am, they’re a manifestation of some aspects of my personality. But are not the full package. Back when I was on Instagram, my profile was a collection of pictures of cats, cloudy skies, and trees. There were very few people in there. Does that mean I don’t like people? Does that mean I don’t have friends? Ok I’m not the biggest fan of people, so there’s that but I also spend most of my time online and the majority of the people I consider friends live in other countries. Which means that when I’m not online, I’m probably alone doing things like walking in the woods or reading a book. Or maybe playing video games. That’s one thing that doesn’t come up here very often for example: I really love video games. Bet you didn’t know that.
So who are you, really? Think about that for a second. Forget all the tweets, posts, likes, selfies and all that shit for a moment and really ask yourself “Who am I really?”.
What’s interesting in this digital world of 2018 is that you can be pretty much whoever and whatever you want, the digital you is probably more important than your real you. Because the digital you is the only you that counts online. Think about that. If you have a perfectly curated Instagram feed and a “verified” badge on Twitter you’re set. You can be a complete asshole and people will probably never know.
And that’s one of the reasons why I decided to shut down my social media accounts. I don’t care about all that world anymore. And that’s also why I’m getting more and more into writing these silly blog posts. Because they are more deeply tied to who I really am. They’re chaotic and all over the place and that’s the great thing about them.
This is my site, and my content. Everything in here is an expression of who I am and that’s the beauty of having a personal site. I encourage you to do the same. Buy a domain, get yourself a site and start creating a more authentic digital you. Sure, it will still be a digital image of who you really are, but it’s a start.
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2018-07-06 06:00:00
PSA: If you’re here for my posts about life and minimalism you can skip this one.
If there’s one thing that I really love to do while I code websites it's to come up with new solutions to handle spacing and typography. My designs are usually quite simple and I like to build simple frameworks for my projects. I’ve never been a fan of Bootstrap and the other CSS frameworks because they usually have way more stuff than I normally need for any given site.
One of the topics that intrigues me the most is the idea of responsive typography. Plenty of good posts on the web on the subject if you’re interested. The concept is pretty simple: you have a minimum font size at a certain viewport width, a maximum at another viewport width and in between you scale the font in relation to the current viewport size. Something like this:
html {
font-size: 16px;
}
@media screen and (min-width: 320px) {
html {
font-size: calc(16px + 6 * ((100vw - 320px) / 680));
}
}
@media screen and (min-width: 1000px) {
html {
font-size: 22px;
}
}This one is from a CSS Tricks article and uses media queries to fix the font size. One day I started messing around with SASS to find a solution that worked without the media queries and I came up with this monstrosity
calc((#{$min-font-size} + ((100vw - #{$min-screen-size}) / (#{pure($max-screen-size)} - #{pure($min-screen-size)}) * (#{pure($max-font-size)} - #{pure($min-font-size)})))Yes, I agree. That’s ugly. And probably stupid. But hey, I was having fun. This one uses a few variables to set the min and max values for both font size and screen size and as ugly as it was, it was doing its job. Needless to say, it wasn’t easy to use especially if you want to combine it with a typographic scale, another of the things I like to use.
This is when my AKU framework comes in. I named it AKU because I was looking for a short word that started with A to have the folder at the top of the list and AKU was a good candidate. Anyway, names aside, AKU is a very simple framework I use in pretty much every project these days. It’s written in SASS and right now includes just 4 files:
aku/
typography/
settings.sass
type.sass
reset.sass
variables.sassThis is a custom version of one of the main reset files. There’s nothing noteworthy in there, it’s just to reset the styles and not have to deal with browsers’ inconsistencies.
This is where I store all the variables I use in a project. I never use more that 15 of 20 of them and that includes colors, z-index values, animations settings and font families.
This is where things get interesting. The two files in the typography folder are arguably the most important files in my CSS setup. The settings.sassfile contains the main typography settings and, in its simplest form, looks like this:
\:root
font-size : 25px
font-family : "Iowan" , serif
font-weight : 400I wrote “simplest form” because depending on the site I can have multiple media queries to adjust the typography based on the viewport but the concept is the same. As for the other file, type.sass, it contains 2 SASS Mixins. One is a simple utility mixin to set the correct antialias when I have light text on dark background and it looks like this:
@mixin aku-alias
-webkit-font-smoothing : antialiased
-moz-osx-font-smoothing : grayscale The other is my main typography mixin.
@mixin aku-type($size : "normal")
$baseSize : 0.6rem // Base Font Size 15/25
$baseRatio : .8 , 1 , 1.25 , 1.563 , 1.953 , 2.441
// Normal Font Size
@if ($size == "normal")
font-size : $baseSize * nth($baseRatio , 2)
font-family : inherit
line-height : 1rem This is a compact version, the complete mixin has 6 identical @if rules, one for each ratio but they all look pretty much the same. In some of them I can have extra padding to reach a full height value, based on my typography settings. Now you might be thinking ”What the hell does that even mean?”.
To explain that, let’s go back to the setting.sass file. In there, as you can see, I set the font-size for the :root. But actually, this has nothing to do with the font size. This is the base value for the line-height that in turn will establish the height of my typographic grid. If you wanna read more about typographic grids these two are very good articles.
Why not just using line-height you ask? Because by using font-size on the root element I can also fix the value of the rem unit. Which means that 1rem is equal to 1 baseline unit, no matter how much a base line unit actually is. So if I write this...
h1
+aku-type(large)
margin-bottom : 1rem...I know I’ll have 1 baseline unit of space from the title to whatever comes after it. To work with baselines I use a great Chrome Extension called Baseliner. It a simple tool that does an excellent job.
You’re probably thinking why even waste time doing all this. Well for start because it’s fun. But also because it allows me to quickly change the aspect of the site by simply tweaking a few values inside the main sass files rather than going through the entire project. If, for example, I want to use a different typographic scale, with a different ration, I can simply update this one line inside type.sass
$baseRatio : .8 , 1 , 1.25 , 1.563 , 1.953 , 2.441Do I want to increase the font size across the entire site after a certain viewport width? Easy...
@media (min-width : 600px)
font-size : 28pxAnd this will not only increase the font size but it will also increase all the spaces since everything is set using rem and rems are tied to the font-size.
As every framework, there are tradeoffs. You’re tying together layout and typography and not everyone likes that. I’m big fan because I like minimalist layout but it’s not always ideal. You’re also limited to one type scale because right now there’s no way to change that on the fly. It can be done but that’s not something I personally need.
So there, that’s how I’m currently dealing with typography in CSS. I’m not used to write this kind of posts so if you have questions feel free to ask and I’ll get back to you hopefully with a decent answer.
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2018-07-05 06:00:00
I started messing with websites back in 2010, which doesn’t seem that long ago. I consider myself quite lucky because I entered the web world at the beginning of the HTML5 & CSS3 era and I skipped the “good old days” when there were no rounded corners, no shadows, no animations and no web fonts. And yes, Flash was still a thing. Anyway, back then I didn’t have a personal site because I though it was cool to use a fancy and mysterious domain name. And that’s why I bought niuenso.com, a domain I still own and it’s currently unused. Niuenso was a playground and for that site I designed and coded a couple of fun onepage websites.
After a couple of years I decided to leave Niuenso behind and bought my current domain because I realized that it was quite silly to hide behind a brand. One of the first site I coded for the new manuelmoreale.com was this one:
I had the idea for this design while watching a Japanese anime. I think it was Ghost In The Shell but I could be wrong. Anyway this one stayed online for quite a while and got featured in a bunch of different places which at the time I thought it was pretty cool.
From there I moved to an even weirder and more minimal site. This one was also a fun one, the site was a slow presentation of myself. I remember being into slow websites back then.
For a few months I had this guy right here as my personal site. I thought it was a fun idea to list friends on my site in addition to the usual informations.
And we’re back on the light side. This is when I switched to Maison Neue as my personal font. The font is awesome, especially on small sizes. I really like this one because it was simple yet unique. IMO it had the right amount of informations and by the overall tone you could get a sense of what type of person I was (am?).
But on new year’s eve, I realized I wanted something more that a simple one page website and that’s why I coded a weird mix of a blog and a personal site. It was the first time I used a CMS for my personal site because up until this point, all my sites has been simple html websites.
So I coded that, kept it online for a month I think and then said to myself “What the hell I’m doing here? I don’t want to keep writing” and went back to a super minimal site.
It was a list. Couple of projects, books and a few other things. That’s it. It lasted I think a week only to then being quickly replaced by a very similar version of the same layout.
Visually was very similar but I re-integrated static pages for blog posts because I had a few things I wanted to write. And it’s at this point that I realized I needed and I wanted a blog and that’s what I coded next.
From this point on, the site is pretty much what you’re seeing right now. I started with a sans serif version because everything was sans serif on the web at the time..
Then moved to a different serif font...
...only to go back to the previous one but with a slight different typography.
And finally, here we are, with the current version. This is actually the 3rd iteration. I already tweaked the layout a couple of times, added a few things here and there, improved the typography and removed sections.
Will this current version last? Who knows, only time will tell. So far is working great and I’m loving the font so we’ll see. Feel free to borrow the design of my old sites if you want. I don’t think I have the source files anymore though.
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2018-07-04 06:00:00
A couple of years ago my friend Matt coded watchingtheworldcup.com, while he was working at Enjoythis. The site was and still is great. That’s the kind of sites I personally like, simple in structure and with awesome content. Fast forward to 2018 and here I am, working on something related to that awesome project.
The site is becoming a book and the book needed a website, like pretty much everything else these days. Matt was busy fixing antennas and being famous (just kidding) so he didn’t have time to help Jane, the photographer, with this project. And you know how these things work: he asked me and I said yes because I love to help friends and friends’ friends. Plus I’m a fan of this type of projects because are generally quick and fun to work on.
The site couldn’t be any simpler. It’s a static html site with just a bit of JavaScript. Just to be clear, I’m the least important part of this project. The design is not mine, credit for that goes to Patrick Fry and Jane took the photos obviously. Site is set in Work Sans. I used Flickity for the slider and the big image gallery is custom made.
There’s not much else to say really. This was just me trying to be helpful. Go buy the book if you’re into football and photography. It’s a limited edition and the price is excellent. And let me know if you find bugs on the site. If you like the photos and the design, send @janestockdale and @MrPatrickFry some love. Last but not least, you can have a look at the site at watchingtheworldcup.com/thebook.
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2018-07-02 06:00:00
The site is no longer up but mnmll.ist has been relaunched.
I have honestly no idea what’s going on with all these random side projects. But hey, at least I’m doing something “productive” with my time. Anyway, this one has been in the back of my mind for a couple of weeks now and yesterday I decided to code it. If you like good quotes from books and blogs you’re in the right place
The site is as simple as it gets: a quote, an author and a couple of links. Right now there are just a dozen of quotes but the number will grow quickly because one thing that’s definitely not missing in this world is good quotes. I try to link the quote to the original source this way you can either buy the book where the quote is from or read the blog post if it’s from a blog or a site. And I’m also linking to the author’s site or wiki page if you want to know more about him or her.
Boy these are getting repetitive quickly: runs on Kirby, font is Sofia Pro, hosted by WebFaction. You know what? If you have tech questions write me an email and I’ll get back to you.
Good question. For start, I like a good quote. I usually have quotes as wallpapers on both my phone and mac. Plus, since I try to find these mostly in books, it’s another excuse to read more. Also it was a fun little site project and I have a few things I want to do with it in the hopefully not so distant future.
And that’s it. The site is live at qts.mnmll.ist. If you have a good quote to suggest feel free tor each out via email.
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2018-06-21 06:00:00
Ok this whole side projects thing is getting out of control. I said at the beginning of the year that I wasn’t going to start new side projects. And things went well for a couple of months. Then I launched TTRO and now mnmllist is online. But hey, at least I’m having fun.
Allow me to introduce you mnmllist, a place where you’ll find plenty of minimal things, neatly organized in lists. This time I’m not running this thing by myself, I have Carl as a partner in crime. This project went from zero to live incredibly quickly. We started chatting about the concept less than a week ago and the majority of the time was spent finding a good combination of name and domain name.
With that done, Carl sketched a quick design of what he had in mind and then I coded the first version of mnmllist which is the one you can see live.
Boooooring! Ok ok, I’ll be quick: runs on Kirby, hosted, as always, on Webfaction, domain provided by Hover, font (Sofia Pro) by fonts.com. No JS involved, just some php and css.
The site has an awful browser compatibility. I use css grid which is not supported that well and css variables. And that’s because I like to have fun and don’t care about old browsers. If you don’t like that, feel free to leave a comment down below... Another fun fact is the color scheme. If you visited the site you may have noticed that uses a light scheme. Carl likes that and it’s the default one. But you may have also noticed that there’s a dark version in the screens here. So what’s going on? Well, they say you can’t make everyone happy but apparently sometimes you can. There’s a sneaky way to activate the dark version. If you really, really want to use that write me an email and maybe I’ll tell you. Or maybe not.
Now that the site is out Carl will take over and do most of the job. He’s way better at picking items that I am. I’ll probably jump in and add just a few things here and there. So if you think the curation sucks definitely blame him and not me. Blame me if you find bugs though. And let me know about them please.
You can visit the site at mnmll.ist and there's also a Twitter account you can follow @mnmllist. The Twitter feed is completely automated so it's just another way to know when the site gets updated.
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2018-06-14 06:00:00
The shop is live!!!! Hurrah! Honestly can’t believe it took this much time. As always, was mostly my fault because I’m a stupid mix of a developer and a tedious designer and I’m never happy with what I do. But hey, what can I do.
This is version 1 of the official Mimo shop where you can buy a curated selection of minimal and cool objects. Right now are all made by selected brands but Carl has a ton of ideas for the future of the shop so stay tuned. Plus I want a Minimalissimo mug so...
Shop runs on WooCommerce. I thought about using Shopify but since this is a V1 it was easier to use Woo. But Shopify is definitely a possibility if the shop grows. As for the rest, there’s nothing fancy going on. At the end of the day it’s just a WordPress site. Colors, typography and overall style are in line with the main Minimalissimo site. Black and white, big font size, Avenir all over the place.
Shops are a ton of work. There are way too many moving parts and things you need to take care of. You probably already knew that. I didn’t. So I learned that, and that’s good. But since I was working with Carl I had a ton of fun so I can’t really complain.
We tried to keep the shop as simple as possible. It’s just a home, a product page, a checkout page and a couple of boring legal pages. I don’t think you can have a shop simpler than that. And that’s great, it’s perfectly in line with the Mimo philosophy.
No need to say that Carl is the guy running the show here. If you have a company and want to collaborate with the shop get in touch with him. I'm only here to provide comic relief and dev skills. Plus I'm constantly throwing ideas at Carl who'll probably nuke my home at some point. Again, if at some point in the future you'll see a Mimo mug on the shop you can thank me.
Who knows! I have honestly no idea what to expect next and that’s awesome. But now’s time to stop reading. Go check the site at minimalissimo.shop and let me and Carl know what you think. Also let us know if you find any bug. And buy stuff. Even if you don't need anything, buy it anyway. Ok maybe not but still, go check the shop and let us know what you think.
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2018-06-11 06:00:00
If you’re like me, in the past couple of weeks you received a ton of emails from all the services you are (or were) signed up to. And if you’re like me you used that as a reminder that you have a ton of crap laying around in your digital life that doesn’t need to be there.
My digital cleanup was already underway, 2017 has been a good year on that front but there’s always something else you can throw away, especially when it comes to digital stuff.
In the process of shutting down accounts and unsubscribing from newsletters I started thinking about the way we interact with the digital world. We tend to sign up to newsletters on a whim, we give away our emails in exchange for what’s usually a meaningless digital freebie we probably don’t need and will never use. And that’s mostly because the digital life rarely feels cluttered. But it is. At least mine is, or was.
I’m currently subscribed to two newsletters. I want to receive both. I want to read them both and I wait for them to arrive in my inbox. This is something you don’t normally feel about a newsletter. The feeling is usually goddamn another newsletter... and not YES! Craig’s newsletter is in my inbox. Newsletters live in my inbox but I have a separate Paper Doc where I save the urls of everything I'm subscribed to. I don’t need to do it but it’s an extra step I impose to myself. It’s my attempt to be deliberate and mindful in this digital world.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, take 5 minutes to unsubscribe from a bunch of newsletters, shut down a few accounts you don’t use. You’ll instantly feel better.
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2018-06-10 06:00:00
This morning I was clicking through OM’s Twitter feed, looking for interesting links to quality blogs to include in TTRO and in the process I stumbled upon this Tweet from Peter Sciretta.
I have to admit that I have not followed the latest WWDC so I don’t know what he’s talking about in regard to the Apple announcement. But that’s not really important for this conversation. Personally I think less tracking and more privacy is a good thing but at the same time I understand his point. My real issue here is with this part:
In a few years when most of our favorite websites either go out of business, become horrible clickbait, or get filled with advertorials looking like content, I think you’ll feel differently about protecting our cookies.
My first issue is with the concept of protecting our cookies. Cookies are not the problem, I think we’ll all agree on that. The problem is never the technology itself, is the use we make of that technology the main issue. And the issues are pretty clear: tech company are ruthless when it comes to data collection and that’s something we can’t ignore.
My second issue is with this notion that the only possible outcome is a descent into clickbait hell, where most of the content is either trash or paid for. As if that’s the only possibility.
Om in his post We are all trapped in the "Feed" writes:
Whether we like or not, for now, advertising is the only accepted currency of the web. The modern Internet, thanks to the duopoly of Facebook and Google, has become an advertising-monetized attention economy. The core tenet of this philosophy: “most” attention is “more” valuable.
And I agree. But I don’t necessarily think that’s the only possibility. We’re seeing platform like Patreon growing precisely because ads can’t be the future long term. Not for everyone at least.
Then there’s this notion that less publications on the web is a bad thing. I personally disagree on that. If you’re a person and want to express your opinion on the web you can easily do it. I’m doing it right now. There are no financial plans here nor ads. I pay for this site and I’m fine with that. If I want to turn this into a job (not gonna happen) then yes, I’d probably need to work out a way. And if I don’t generate enough traffic and people are not willing to pay for my content (and why should they, it’s not that great...) then I need to find a “proper job” and keep doing this as a hobby.
I think this is true for business in general, not only for the web: if you have a good product and an audience who wants that product, you should be able to figure out a way to make it work. You’ll probably need to charge some amount of money and that’s a good thing. If you can’t then you’ll inevitably need to shut down. And that’s ok.
Does this mean we’ll have fewer good site to read? Probably. Does that also mean that less people are going to be able to make a living this way? That’s also quite likely.
But hey, maybe that’s just me, maybe I’m wrong, maybe you have a different opinion. If you do, let me know.
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2018-06-10 06:00:00
This site is no longer live.
One of the things I’m try to do these days, is wasting less time on social media, news and youtube, and spend more time reading instead. I’m obviously reading books but I’m also reading and following blogs. As you may know, internet is a big place and there are all sorts of interesting people doing interesting things. One thing I realized though, is that is not easy to discover those people which is why I decided to start collecting good blog and that’s how TTRO came about.
Unsurprisingly, the site runs on Kirby like most of my projects. It’s essentially a big list so there’s nothing fancy going on under the hood. Design wise the site is also pretty simple since it uses only 1 font family (Calling Code) and 3 colors. Only interesting technical aspect is that there are both a classic RSS and a JSON Feed available. Other than that it’s a very simple site. Cool thing about a site this simple is the load time. TTRO is super fast and that’s great.
Hoenstly, I couldn’t care less about monetizing this project.
The goal is to help myself and other people discover good things to read. I don’t want the site to be nothing more than that. I’m currently not planning to add features, I want it to be just a list with links and a short description. One thing I’d love to add though are collaborators. The site is ready to accomodate other users who are willing to help me so if that person is you, please, get in touch.
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2018-06-06 06:00:00
Yesterday I launched a new project, simply called Thing To Read Online. It lives at this url, thingstoread.online. I know, last year I said that one of the resolutions for this 2018 was to not start another side project. But what can you do. Let me tell you why I decided to code and ultimately push online this project.
At the beginning of 2017, I found myself sitting in the kitchen, at 5am, drinking a coffee and coding a new website. I have an history of silly one page websites but this time I decided to code something different. It wasn’t really a blog, but rather a self hosted, twitter like, personal feed. The idea was to let people know about my current projects and ideas. Why? Who knows. Needles to say, that didn’t last very long. I quickly binned that site and went back to something smaller, a list of links and call it a day. But then, this idea of putting into words thoughts I had in my head came back, and so I started tweaking that design again. Fast forward to today and my site is a blog. I’m late to the blog party, I’m well aware of that. Many people say that blogs are dead, that the future belongs to vlogs and video. Others say the exact opposite. Personally, I think that both have their place in this bizarre digital world. Written words are here to stay and so are blogs.
One of the main problems I was personally facing was how to find good content to consume. These days most people use social media as a funnel for their digital consumption. Which is ok, I guess, but I’m currently out of the social media world, I don’t have a facebook account, I suspended both twitter and instagram and I don’t use any other social media platform. So that wasn’t really an option for me personally. What was left was to use the internet as it was originally intended: start from point A and click my way through it, exploring the content in an organic way. And this is exactly what I’m doing right now. But in the process I’m also collecting these sites to help other people.
This project is my attempt to do something different with my time, to consume content that’s meaningful and thought provoking. To help connect people who create good content to people who are looking for that great content. Because sadly great content is not always trendy and viral. Good content is, more often than not, very long and challenging. It requires time and time is a precious resource in 2018 World Wide Web.
The web that many connected to years ago is not what new users will find today. What was once a rich selection of blogs and websites has been compressed under the powerful weight of a few dominant platforms. This concentration of power creates a new set of gatekeepers, allowing a handful of platforms to control which ideas and opinions are seen and shared.
So what can you do? Well you can check the site and click on those links. I’m trying to add links to both the site and the RSS feed. If you don’t know what an RSS feed don’t worry, I’ll blog about RSS soon but you can find plenty of resources on the web if you want to know more right now. If you have blogs worth reading please, send them my way. And if you want to simply chat about the topic my email is always available.
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2018-06-03 06:00:00
It’s June and that means it’s time for my monthly recap. Last month was my month with water as my only beverage of choice. It went well for the most part. I scheduled this one for May because I thought that if I had to go with water only it needed to be during a month with nice and hot weather. Because you can’t function properly during the winter without a hot beverage in the morning. Or at least I can’t.
And the plan worked for the first couple of weeks. Drinking water in the morning for breakfast is quite weird but I got used to it pretty quickly. But then, nature got in the way. It started raining, temperatures dropped and the winter was suddenly back. I tried to resist but a couple of times I had to make myself a coffee because was a zombie and I had stuff to do.
But yeah, overall was a nice month and a good experiment. It’s quite refreshing. I don’t consume that many beverages in general, so it wasn’t super challenging. I can definitely see myself adopt a lighter version of this month in my life with coffee in the morning as the only exception.
Coming up next is month without pleasure foods. This is also going to be quite fun.
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2018-05-16 06:00:00
Hi there. Quick warning before I dive into this one: this is probably not going to be a very interesting posts so feel free to skip it if you find it boring (and do let me know if you find it boring, always nice to hear from you).
Decided to write this quick post to let you know about a few things and mostly to clear up my head about what I’m currently doing and what needs to be done.
I shipped a new version of The Gallery a few weeks back. I remember saying to myself that I wasn’t going to code a new one till next year but couldn’t resist and so I coded this new version during a weekend. Nothing major, just a quick font change and minor layout tweaks. If you’re into web design definitely go check it out and let me know what you think. Also feel free to contribute.
I also managed to give Is Invisible away. That’s also very nice because the site was eventually going to die since neither I nor my brother had the time to keep it going. Glad someone was willing to pick it up and keep it going.
And finally, I coded two new things for this very site/blog/thing. The first one is a portfolio and I know what you’re thinking but I decided to give it a go. The second is a collection of photos. I’m not really that into photography but I don’t mind taking one every now and then and since I shut down Instagram months ago I decided to have some of my pictures here.
In the past few months I also shipped a couple of simple websites for friends and clients. Studio Malisan finally has some of their amazing projects online. This is not a complete site by any stretch of imagination but still better than having nothing. Also coded a fun site for a mountain hut since mom asked me to do it as a favor and you don’t say no to mom. Site is only in Italian for the moment but I’ll add both English and German in the not so distant future. And finally I finished a very fun site for a young architect. The site is not online yet but it will be soon. I had a blast working on it and he’s a very fun guy.
In addition to all this I’m almost done working on a super fun project with Carl of Minimalissimo fame. Can’t wait to have it online. And almost forgot, there’s a new post up on DS, you should go read it before it’s too late and Mike gets tired of all this and decides to shut everything down (just kidding Mike).
Bonus point: I decided to give Buy Me a Coffee a try and see if it’s something that can work for me. Monetization of content online is a fascinating topic, one I explored more than I probably should in the past. I don’t really want to add ads anywhere on my projects. I don’t really care about monetizing what I do especially because I don’t think it has good quality. But still, if you want to throw some support this way, now you can do it.
I also appreciate if you spend a minute or two to write an email and share something with me. I’m always happy to read what you have to say because at the end of the day human connections is what I appreciate the most in this weird web world (ironic I know).
And that’s it for this quick update. If you make it this far thank you and have a good one.
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2018-05-11 06:00:00
Sometimes the most interesting questions come at the most unexpected times.
You don’t seem to have many preferences. Is that useful?
This is one of them. I’m fascinated by many thing in life, I appreciate music, design, architecture, nature, books and countless other things. But if you ask me What’s your favorite... I’d probably don’t have a straight answer to give you. And honestly, I don’t even think it’s that useful to have an answer to those questions in the first place. Why do I even need to have a favorite color, or a favorite food, or drink, or friend, or star? Why do I need to pick between the countless movies out there and elevate one as my favorite? How do you even make such choice? How do you pick your favorite food? How can you choose a favorite among hundreds of great books? How do you compare Hesse’s Siddhartha with Bostrom’s Superintelligence? Where do you even start?
There’s something perverse in all this, our tendency to compile lists, to try to find some sort of order in our lives. Don’t even know why it matters or what’s the point.
What’s the point in having a favorite star if I then don’t have the time to lay down and admire them? And if I do have the time, what’s the point in having a favorite, when the whole sky is a unique spectacle? What’s the point in having a favorite book when there are thousands out there, waiting to be read? Isn’t more important to spend the time looking for the next one rather than picking one from the ones you have already read?
And the same is true for almost everything else. Best friend? Simply glad to have friends. Favorite color? Grateful to don’t have Achromatopsia and being able to see colors at all.
So, to you, who asked the question, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry to don’t have an answer for you.
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2018-05-05 06:00:00
April was my month without surfing the internet, except for strictly work related stuff. I know, it’s not exactly the most strict rule but I can’t really go without internet entirely right now. I’d love to though, and that’s definitely something I’ll try in the future as soon as I can take an entire month off.
Regardless, it was an interesting month. I realized how much I need the internet and at the same time how much I don’t need the web. It’s surprising (ok not really that surprising) how many things need an internet connection these days. And I’m not an IOT person by any means so I’m nowhere near as connected as I could be. And that’s a good thing.
It’s quite funny, I’m realizing how I’m slowing drifting away from the web while working as a web developer at the same time. Ironic. But probably not surprising. In a world that’s always connected, the offline time is getting more and more valuable. And rare.
We always talk about work life balance but to me, the on and off line life balance is way more interesting. Is going to be interesting to observe how this particular aspect of my life will evolve in the future. Anyway as a direct result of this month I decided to add a new rule to my life: I’m not going to read news or watch videos unless someone send them directly to me. I’ll use other people as my personal web filter. If something is worth it, I’m sure it will find its way to me. Also, I decided I’m only going to open Twitter when I post something on The Gallery. My personal account is already shut down, so that’s not a concern but I still check the Gallery one every now and then.
And that’s it for April. May’s here already and life drinking only water is quite tough. But I’m glad to be back here.
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2018-04-01 06:00:00
April fools everyone! It’s April 1st and it’s time to recap my March with no sweets. It went fairly well, I managed to stay away from them for the most part and it wasn’t really that hard. That was a bit surprising, I thought it would have been harder to keep my desire for sweets under control but it wasn’t really that hard. There has been only a couple of occasions where I really wanted to eat something sweet but other than that it was a pretty normal month. I’ll probably keep this low sweets diet as a part of my life.
Coming up next is my April with no Internet (except for work related stuff) which you could say I already failed since it’s April and I’m writing this post that’s not work related. Don’t expect any new post on this blog during April. And unless my brother decides to do that for me, don’t expect new posts published on The Gallery either. See you in a couple of weeks.
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2018-03-28 06:00:00
Quick summary before we get lost: this is Ale’s new portfolio. It’s a static html website, no fancy frameworks or technology. It’s just a bunch of css and some lines of js. Font is Sporting Grotesque, hosted on Digital Ocean, domain served by Hover.
My history with Ale and his portfolios goes a long way. I still remember the first one I coded for him. Which thanks to the power of the mighty wayback machine I can show you.
Back then I simply made his old website responsive so it wasn’t really a new portfolio. But that didn’t last long. One thing you should know about Ale is that he absolutely loves to change his portfolio. A lot.
Which is why that portfolio didn’t last long and in the following 5 years we have designed more than a few variations of his site. I’m not gonna mention all of them here, those deserve a separate post which will happen at some point.
Every time Ale asks me to make him a new portfolio I start to cry inside. I can feel the pain coming... Just kidding Ale. You know it’s always fun to work on these. Especially because now are super simple and I can code them in a day.
First shocking thing is the new font. That was unexpected. Sporting is unusual, with those weirdly shaped “a”. Probably not a font you want to sue for long texts but works magnificently for a site like this one.
Colors are black and white. That wasn’t shocking at all. As for the animations, those are a nice little touch. I’m not a massive fan of animations in general but in this case they work well.
There’s not much else to say about the intro and the links section. They’re quite minimal as you can see and there isn’t anything fancy going on. What was interesting though, it’s the new portfolio part.
As you may or may not know, Ale’s no longer a freelancer. Which also means that he no longer needs a full portfolio online. That’s why he decided to not have a traditional projects section and instead adopt this showreel approach. This is clearly not the best way to show people what you do but it’s a nice solution if you only want to give them a glimpse of the kind of work you produce.
So that’s Ale new website. If you have something nice to say about it, please send me an email. If you don’t like it and you think it’s trash then please get in touch with Ale. Almost forgot, the site is alessandroscarpellini.it.
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2018-03-22 07:00:00
A couple of days ago I published the latest version Ale’s portfolio. And that got me thinking about the importance of having a portfolio.
I’ve been freelancing for the past 6 years and I never had a proper portfolio. I had more than a few different personal websites, all super minimal, all one page. Why I never designed and coded a portfolio for myself is a good question. The main reason is that most of my projects aren’t designed by me. 90% of my time is spent working on websites designed by other studios and so having those in my portfolio feels wrong for some reason. I know it’s not wrong, but it feels wrong to me.
Also, websites come and go very quickly, and in addition to that, once my job is done, clients take over and what started as a clean and organized website quickly becomes a mess. Those are the main reasons why I don’t have a portfolio. But I’m aware that that’s not the case for everyone, and it’s especially not true if you work in other fields that are less volatile than the web. Also, a portfolio can’t tell you much about the behind the scenes of a project. What you see is the final result and, if you’re lucky, some informations about the process.
What you don’t see is all the personal details about the collaboration. Maybe the studio you worked with was a nightmare, maybe the client was a total pain in the ass or maybe the materials were awful. We all know how these things go. A good example of this are the two current projects I’m involved with, DS and Mimo. Both Carl and Mike are awesome guys and the collaboration with them is a total pleasure. But what you see online is only the final result of a process that in the case of DS has going on for quite some time (Sorry Mike). You can’t obviously see the discussions, all the experiments, the extra work. That’s the real value in a project in my opinion and it’s something you can’t really communicate in a portfolio. Or at least I can’t.
But still, I enjoy working on portfolios, especially for designers and architects and illustrators. They’re always fun projects. So if you need help for your portfolio get in touch 😉
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2018-03-18 07:00:00
Like you I have a phone. And yes, it’s an iPhone. Just to be clear, I’m not a huge fan of the iPhone but it does the job so I can’t complain too much about it. As you can imagine, my phone set up is quite minimal. My home screen looks like this:
I have no idea how I managed to have an empty first screen. Normally you use a blank icon or something like that. I have no icons at all. Must be a bug but since is an useful one I’ll leave it there. As you can see I only have two apps in the dock: Spotify because I can’t stay without music apparently and WhatsApp for quick communications with friends.
On the second screen I have the rest of the apps. I don’t have that many apps installed on my phone as you can see. I removed all the iOS apps except for those that you can’t remove. Only one I kept is the calculator.
As for 3rd party apps right now on my phone there’s Dropbox, 1Password, 1Blocker and the home banking app. No I have no games installed on my phone and no I don’t have social apps. I never go to the second screen, if I need an app I simply swipe down and use the search.
Another thing you might have noticed is that the phone is in airplane mode. I keep the phone like that when I’m at home since it’s connected to the wifi and I only use the mobile connection when I’m outside. Now you might be thinking “How do you receive phone calls when you’re at home if the phone is in airplane mode?”. Here’s the answer: I don’t. People don’t call me because my phone can’t receive phone calls. Well technically you can call me but every incoming call goes to my voicemail, voicemail that I don’t check. I can still make phone calls if I need it but it’s something that happens at most 2 or 3 times a year. In addition to that, my phone is always in do not disturb mode, no vibration and no sounds. And most of the time is not in the same room with me.
So there you have it, that's my weird phone setup. A bit on the extreme side I have to admit but works for me. And almost forgot, my lock screen looks like this:
How do you deal with your phone? Let me know.
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2018-03-13 07:00:00
In a world filled with chats and forums and apps, emails are still one of the most useful tools to communicate with people. I’m not an email power user by any means. My volume of emails is very low so this blog post may not be for you if you’re one of those people who receives hundreds of emails every day and uses dozens of smart folders and filters. If instead you’re looking for a simple way to handle emails this post could be a useful one.
Few premises: I’m on Mac and this post is Mac oriented. So if you’re on Windows or Linux, sorry. You could maybe achieve something similar using a different email clients though. Also, both my emails are hosted by Google. I have one traditional Gmail account for personal stuff and one GSuite account for work related things. Which means the two inboxes are 15 and 30GB respectively and I don’t have to worry about space. With that in mind let’s get started.
I tried a bunch of different clients during the years. I went through Sparrow before it was bought and killed by Google, I tried AirMail, Polymail, Unibox and Spark. To be honest with you, I wasn’t happy with any of those clients. Don’t get me wrong, they were ok and did the job but I’m a weird person and I like simplicity. Sometimes I want a tool that does one thing and nothing more. Smart inbox is nice, filters are great but I don’t want to use them. I want to get my emails, read them, reply to them and archive them. And that’s it.
My current inbox looks like this
Yes, it’s quite minimal. I want my inbox empty. If there’s something in there, it means I have to do something about it. And that something is either archive it or reply to it. But before I dive into the ins and outs of this set up let’s see how you can set it up.
The first thing you wanna do is set up Mail as your default client and turn off all notifications. I hate notifications. I don’t want my mac to ding or ring at random. Plus, no email is really urgent in my world. You can adjust this according to your preference though. That’s up to you.
As for the font, I like to use San Francisco but that’s also a personal preference. Size is also up to you. 14 is the sweet spot in my opinion.
Next up we have viewing options. A couple of things here. You don’t want to use the classic layout because it need too much horizontal space. You can however turn on the contact photos as well as the list preview.
I have both turned off because I don’t need to see pictures and I don’t need to have a preview of the message. I want to open the email to see what’s inside and then decide what to do.
Next you want to set Archive as the default action to the discard move. This will allow you to swipe left on the message to show the archive icon. As I said at the beginning, I archive everything since I have plenty of space available in my inbox.
You also want to have the most recent message at the top. As for the option when you’re composing a new message, I’m not a fan of quoting the entire message every time so I turned off that option.
With the settings done, we can now move into the View options and hide everything that’s not necessary. You want to hide the tab bar, sort the messages by date and have the most recent at the top, hide the Mailbox list, disable the Message Filter and hide the Favorites Bar.
You do want to to keep the Toolbar though because that’s where the search fields lives. We can now move to the toolbar. If you right click on it you can customize it. As you can see from the picture below, I deleted everything and the only thing left is the search field. And in order to have the search field centered inside the window I added two spacer on each side of the search field.
Also make sure to display the icon only. As for the message window, things there are pretty straightforward.
Each message opens in a new window and as you can see from the picture, the only button left in the toolbar is the reply button. I’m not a fan of replying all but you can tweak that based on your needs.
And that’s pretty much it. You should now have an uber minimal email client. I particularly like it because it’s super focused. If something is in my inbox I need to act on it. And I have only two options available: reply and archive. If I need to get an old email I have a handy search bar always available at the top.
If you decide to give this setup a go let me know. Also let me know if you have ideas about how to improve it. I'm always happy to try new things.
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2018-03-01 07:00:00
February is over. Winter’s still here and there’s still snow outside. Can we get some spring already? This month was a total success. Did I fail? Yes. Big time.
I managed to go without podcasts, that wasn’t too hard. I didn’t feel the slightest temptation to even check if there were new episodes to listen to. What surprised me was how hard it is to live and work without music. That was really unexpected. I was discussing this with my friend Carl a few days ago and as I said to him, I can probably go without music easily during the summer when I can spend more time outside doing stuff. But in February, when most of my time is spent inside, in front of my computer it’s really tough. Particularly hard because not much is going on outside since we’re in the middle of winter and nature is still at sleep.
Anyway, very interesting experiment, glad I did it. Next up is my month with no sweets, cookies and cakes.
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2018-02-15 07:00:00
I’m talking about life. Mine, as well as yours.
You’re probably reading this on your computer or your phone, you might be sitting at your desk, or at a table in a coffee shop. Or maybe you’re on your way to somewhere and you’re reading as you walk. Whatever you’re doing, wherever you are, this is it. This is your life. So pay attention to it. Every sensation, every sound, every color. Don’t take anything for granted.
Memories are important, dreams are necessary, but this, this present moment you’re in, this is your life. You’ll not get this moment back. You’ll never get any moment back. Get the best out of every single one of those moment. Be present and every now and then, remind to yourself that this is it, this is your life.
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2018-02-03 07:00:00
It’s Saturday night and I’m waiting for dinner to be ready so why not use this time to write about this past January. The no computer before lunch experiment was a success. Only once I had to open the email and that was because I pushed a client site live the day before and I needed to check if everything was ok. I spent all the other days meditating and reading books. I meditated every single day in January and I read 4 books which is great. I think this is something I’m gonna keep as part of my life because it’s a really good habit and an important piece of a healthy daily routine. February is no music and no podcasts and I already know it’s gonna be hard.
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2018-01-31 07:00:00
I’m not going to shock you if I say that analytics and numbers are everywhere on the web these days. We live at a time where everything is and must be quantifiable. It’s as if the value of what you create is based on the number of clicks, likes, views, claps, hearts or poop emojis you gain. And to me, all this, is extremely sad.
Don’t get me wrong, I used to be as guilty as everyone else. I was happy to reach a thousand followers on a stupid Twitter profile, “proud” of the numbers of followers I had on my Tumblr blog and excited by the number of page views in my Google Analytics dashboard. But then I realized that all this is absolutely meaningless. Not in absolute terms obviously. There are plenty of situations where you need numbers to “quantify” (justify?) the quality or the value of a project. But are totally useless in the context of side projects. If you’re building something because it’s your passion, stats are not important.
Right now I have no idea how many people read this blog, I have no idea how many people use my gallery daily or how many people follow me on twitter. And frankly I don’t care.
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2018-01-21 07:00:00
Meditation is a very interesting subject. You sit there, close your eyes and pay attention to your breath. Easier said than done. A few weeks ago, while I was fighting my crazy mind, trying to bring my attention back to the breath, one thought appeared in my head: what if, instead of fighting to bring my attention back to the breath, I guide it towards something I want spend my mental energies on? And that’s how I discovered that meditation is an incredible design and problem solving tool.
Instead of wasting hours browsing the internet looking for a solution or an idea, I sit in my room, close my eyes and simply think about the problem. It’s an incredibly useful exercise and more often than not, I come up with solutions faster that I’d do by browsing randomly the internet. Especially because there’s no twitter or facebook or any other possible distraction on the meditation cushion. It’s just you and the problem you’re trying to solve.
Plus it’s a relaxing exercise, and that’s always a good thing.
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2018-01-15 07:00:00
Brief summary for you if you don’t wanna waste time reading all this stuff. The Gallery is my personal web gallery. Currently in it’s 4th year of existence, runs on top of the awesome Kirby CMS. Font is Iowan Old Style provided by fonts.com. Hosted on Digital Ocean, domain provided by Hover.
This is the 6th iteration of my gallery which started back I think in 2013. For some reason I wanted to build a gallery of websites, because, as you know, no one has coded one before... I think I still have some of the early designs somewhere. Anyway, the idea was to code a super duper fancy website, where all the posts would have been tagged properly and everything was organized neatly. That didn’t turn out well did it.
The Gallery is the simplest gallery I can think of, even though there are some fancy things here and there. It’s a grid. You scroll and scroll and scroll (shout out to Dave Metafizzy DeSandro for the Infinite Scroll) and when you click on a thumb, the site opens up. And that’s it. There’s no categories menu, no single page you need to go through, no popups, no newsletters. If you’re browsing a site like this you’re probably a designer and you’re probably looking for inspirations. That’s what you get.
Full page search is back and with that the search button is also back. Search has always been part of the gallery but on the previous 2 versions of the site the only way to activate it was to simply start typing on the keyboard. The search backend is nothing fancy and still quite buggy. I need to make some improvements but does its job decently. The live suggestions are powered by Awesomplete (thanks Lea) and the script uses a JSON generated by a simple API integrated into the site.
Single pages are still there mainly because I need something to share on Twitter and to make search engines happy. These pages are not really that important for The Gallery. I want people to browse the archive and go look at the awesome websites live and not spend time looking at pictures of them.
The site is also completely un-optimized for stats. I don’t care about page views or bounce rate and all that stuff. I want you to find good websites. That’s the goal. With V6 I finally convinced myself to add a way for people to support the site financially. If you want to help me cover hosting expenses you can throw a dollar or two. That’s always appreciated. Submissions are still obviously free, site is ads free.
And this is Gallery V6. Go have a look at the live site. Link is thegallery.io and let me know if you have suggestions or find any bug.
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2018-01-03 07:00:00
I own a smartphone.
It’s quite a neat piece of technology.
Can do many things.
Most of them are pretty useless but still...
I own a phone.
People never call me.
That’s because my phone doesn’t receive phone calls.
It doesn’t because I don’t want to get disturbed.
So I own a phone.
A phone that's everything but a phone.
It’s time for me to accept this simple fact: I hate my phone.
This damn piece of glass and metal is nothing but a time waster.
I own a phone.
But one day I’ll no longer own a phone.
That day is not today.
Sadly.
But that day will arrive.
And I’ll be happy.
Without a phone.
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2018-01-01 07:00:00
It’s January 1st, December has come to an end and with it my month with no WiFi is over. I have to admit, this was an interesting experiment and it went way better than I thought. The goal was to keep my internet usage under control and not to cap the speed (which is hard considering my phone connection is way faster than my home wifi). After roughly 10 days I noticed a problem called Spotify.
I’m constantly streaming music and I hadn’t thought about that while I wrote down my challenges. I solved the problem by doing something different for the rest of the month. I downloaded an awesome app called TripMode which is a utility app you can use to block internet access to certain apps.
I then went back to my home wifi but I used TripMode as a intermediate step every time I need to connect to the internet. When I was using my phone as a hotspot, every time I need the internet I had to go and manually connect using the wifi settings on my Mac. This constant act of connecting and disconnecting was forcing me to be mindful about what I need to achieve online and that was the whole purpose of this monthly challenge. TripMode also has a counter so I could keep my total internet usage under control and stay below the 10GB I have available on my phone. I finished the month using roughly 8GB (Spotify excluded) so it was a success.
Now it’s time to move to the next challenge, not using my mac (and probably my phone as well) in the morning. I’m gonna replace that time with more reading and meditation. This is going to be fun. And yes, I’m writing this in the afternoon.
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2017-12-29 07:00:00
There’s only a few days left before the end of the year an this seems the right time to look back at 2017. I labeled 2017 as the year of declutter. This was not something I decided to do back in January but I found myself focusing on getting rid of a ton of things both physically and digitally. And I was happy to have my friend Rob as a partner in crime in this endeavor. Half way through this almost became a game and was quite fun to go through my stuff and see what I could throw away.
On the physical side of things there weren’t that many things I could get rid of since my life is already quite minimal and I don’t own that much stuff. Biggest thing I gave away was my old PC and some other tech related stuff.
On the digital side things were much more interesting. I closed a ton of accounts, cancelled a bunch of subscriptions and got rid of a ton of domains. I’m very happy with that especially because right now my yearly fixed expenses (and I’m talking about everything web and work related) are below 1000€ while before were more than 3000.
In the last few months I also decided to close or give away almost all my side projects. I realized I was spreading too thin and found myself way too distracted most of the time. And that’s something I want to fix.
I finally passed everything related to the Visual Journal to my friend Ale since that’s his blog, I’m in the process of giving away my space Tumblr blog and I’m shutting down everything else except The Gallery. Is Invisible is the only project I still don’t know what to do with. I’ll come up with something next year.
The declutter will continue in 2018 but I decided that 2018 is gonna be the year of getting my focus back. And in order to achieve that I already suspended the only social account I was using (Instagram and Twitter) which is a great first step. I also stopped reading news and I’m slowly cutting down on every form of distraction.
And lastly but not least, I’m meditating more often and more consistently which is great. So there, that was my 2017. Not a particularly exciting year but a useful one nonetheless.
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2017-12-12 07:00:00
I've had a few interesting discussions lately and that got me thinking that it’s ok to not have an opinion on a topic. Opinions are everywhere these days (including on this very site...) but it’s perfectly fine to don’t have one on a specific topic.
You don’t need to take a position on every issue and it’s ok to simply be neutral and go on with your life. Just wanted to put it out there.
And if you have the time, go read this post. Absolutely worth it.
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2017-12-10 07:00:00
Another week, another episode of the Controversial Opinions series. This time I’m expressing my frustration with the whole concept of personal branding. Let me be very clear: I’m not a fan of social networks and not a fan of the concept of internet fame.
I have nothing against the concept of being famous which is quite a normal thing but I do have a problem with the idea of wanting to become famous just for the sake of it. And treating yourself as a brand, curating your internate image doesn’t change the fact that you’re still a normal person like everybody else. You can have your verified badge on Twitter and have a perfectly curated Instagram profile but this won’t change the fact that you have flaws like every other human being on this damn planet. And not posting a picture because it will ruin your profile or not expressing an opinion because it will ruin your image is an awful way to live if you ask me.
You’re not a brand, you’re a bag of meat and blood like all the other 7 billion people on this damn planet (and the 10 on orbit) so stop thinking at followers and engagement stats and likes.
What you and me really are, is just a dash between two dates. Keep that in mind.
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2017-12-08 07:00:00
My friend Mike asked me to blog about my new iPad setup after I showed a few pictures to him so here we are. I think he requested this article mainly to show how crazy a person I am when it comes to these kind of things. Ok, let’s get started from what my iPad looks like now. Here’s a picture of my current homescreen:
I can safely say I achieved my goal of having a minimal iPad. How did I end up with an iPad like this? Glad you asked.
I used to have a “normal” iPad. This is an Air 2 WiFi + Cellular and with time has become essentially my book collection.
Almost all my books are stored in my iBooks library and I read almost exclusively on my iPad. Why? Because I hate objects and I don’t want to waste paper. The problem with this setup is that the iPad also does a lot of other things and more often than not I was finding myself browsing the internet rather than reading my book. So I decided to go down the minimalist path and strip my iPad from everything that wasn’t absolutely essential.
I deleted all the apps and I end up with an iPad with just a few of the default Apple apps. Those apps were Messages, Settings, Find iPhone (on an iPad...) Clock, Photos, Safari, App Store and iBooks. The iBooks app is the only thing I care about so I wasn’t going to delete that. In order to remove the rest I had to be creative. First step was to lock Safari and the app Store and that can be done easily using the restrictions setting. I asked my brother to set up a password this way I can’t go and unlock it and by doing that we’re now left with just 5 icons on my home screen.
I could stop there but this is where my minimalist OCD kicked in. I didn’t like the new doc on iOS 11. It’s ugly, has big rounded corners and has an awful gray background. Plus, Apple is clever and the color of the background is determined by the color of the wallpaper underneath. But this is only true if you have transparencies turned on and transparencies can be turned off using the options found under accessibility. Now the dock is a plain gray and, more importantly, it’s always the same gray, R212, G212 and B212.
So I made a background with the same color and there you have it, that ugly dock is now gone. We still had the 5 useless icons left though and this is where the madness really began. See, right now, in the top left corner, there’s actually a folder. Has no name and no icon which is why you didn’t see it.
With transparencies turned off, the folder icon also has a solid gray background which is slightly different from the doc one. It’s R205, G205 and B205. So I made a new background which is no longer a solid gray but it’s a gradient instead. Slightly darker on top, to match the folder background color. Now we only need to find a way to hide the tiny tiny icons inside the folder preview. In order to achieve that, I coded a website with no content in it, an empty title and a gray favicon, same gray as the folder background. I visited the site, saved the link on my homepage and there you have it, now I have a stealth icon I can use to create a first blank page inside my folder.
This way the folder preview looks completely empty and all the remaining icons are hidden in the second page of the folder.
And there you have it, my iPad is now uber minimal and I'm a happy person. If you wanna go down the minimalist iPad route and need help give me a shout on Twitter or send me an email. I'll be happy to help you.
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2017-12-01 07:00:00
Another month, another spectacular failure. Ok maybe failure is not the right word here since I learned a few very valuable lessons so in the scope of my experiment this was actually a success. I didn’t manage to go the entire month without digital entertainment. And to be honest with you, I wasn’t even close.
Which is ok because as I said, I learned a useful things about myself. First takeaway from my November experiment is that I need to keep my phone and iPad out my bedroom. If I have one or the other at arms reach while in bed I end up watching videos or reading news. Neither of the two are useful thing to do with my time. So from now on I’ll leave both on my desk.
The other lesson learned is that my self discipline sucks. I was already partly aware of that but I never realized how much I need to work on that aspect of my person. And that’s a very good thing to know about myself. So from now on I’ll try to tweak a few aspects of my life in order to improve my digital consumption.
December is my month without wifi which means I’ll only access the internet using my phone as an hotspot which has a very limited amount of traffic available. So I’ll need to be extremely careful about what I want to do online.
I also decided to start another little experiment to improve my digital life and it’s related to news consumption. In December I must read every article or blog post I open. This is an attempt to force myself to be more aware about what I click on and what content I actually consume and also a training to increase the attention span which I noticed is going down with time. And that’s not ok.
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2017-11-29 07:00:00
This one has been on the back of my mind for quite some time, probably since I last discuss it with my friend Mattia. Even though I approve the overall idea behind this whole digital nomad thing, I really don’t think is that cool.
For start, if you’re constantly travel someplace new, you don’t have time to learn about the places you stay. And that's bad if you ask me. Second, going around saying you’re a digital nomad has become trendy. It’s just another way to rub it in someone’s face by let them know you’re cool. I don’t care you can work wherever you want and are not “forced” into a 9 to 5 job. Plus, we can all agree, that’s a douchy move.
Finally, by constantly moving you’re not really contributing to a local community. You’re not really becoming part of anything and you’re simply using what’s around you for your benefit. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against people who decide to live that way. If you’re happy being a digital nomad cool, not gonna try to convince you otherwise. But don’t come to me trying to show me how cool it is as a lifestyle. Without local people you’d probably be unable to live that way, keep that in mind.
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2017-11-20 07:00:00
Oh boy, where do I even start with this one. So back in November 2015 I received an email from my now friend Mike. Back then it was a random guy on the internet. He saw my work with Ale and his Visual Journal and got in touch because he needed help with the new version of Designed Space.
Just to be clear, I know nothing about the history of what was designedspace.net and wasn’t aware of its existence. I even think the domain was expired. Anyway, Mike was looking for help. He had a design and was looking for a developer.
I’m quite familiar with Wordpress and so I would love to keep the site on that platform
I still find this absolutely hilarious. Mike now hates WordPress and I almost entirely stopped using it. Needless to say, DS doesn’t run on WordPress. It uses my beloved Kirby CMS.
Since we’re talking tech, here’s a quick rundown of what’s used on the site. As I said, the site runs on Kirby. It’s currently hosted on Bluehost Cloud but this will change in the not too distant future. Fonts are Classic Grotesque and Ysobel, both provided by Fonts.com. The site also uses barba.js, flickity and LazyLoad.
So after that first email I started working on the site probably a month later. That’s end of 2015. The final v1 went live in November 2017. Now you might be asking What the hell did you guys do in those two years?. Well let me tell you about those two years...
For start, Mike is an absolute pain. Yeah I said it. Never happy with the design of the site (and he's the designer), has always new ideas for things he wants me to code and add to the site. And he loves lists. Lists! Who the hell loves lists?? Anyway he kept changing ideas during those two years and I was somewhat dragged into this vortex of chaos and failed creativity and was going insane.
Ok actually, nothing of that is true. It’s my fault if the site took two years to go live. I started coding the site based on his design on WordPress. The first Alpha was almost ready when I, for some reason I don’t remember, showed Kirby to Mike. he liked it and we decided to use it (or maybe I forced him to use it, I don’t remember).
So the Alpha got trashed and I started coding a new site on a new platform. And, you see, once I get involved with a project, I really get involved. I can’t simply code a site based on a design. I feel compelled to give feedbacks and suggestions. And that’s why the site took 2 years to see the light. So yes, that's entirely my fault.
In those two years we added and removed sections, coded 3 or 4 different homepage layouts, changed the entire idea behind the site and countless other things. But at some point the site needed to go live and so we said enough is enough, let’s finish this thing and hit the publish button.
Right now, the version you see live is v1.5. The goal has always been to have a site 100% focused on the spaces which is the main topic. But interviews are pretty cool and have good value so we decided to create a separate page for them. Initially we had them in a slide-in section, inside the space post page. That wasn’t ideal even though Mike loved that. I still think the current solution is way better.
The site is not really complex, Kirby is flexible enough to make it run very smoothly. Mike writes all the posts in Markdown, I coded a bunch of custom helpers to make the layout possible but other than that it’s a pretty straightforward website.
This current version will hopefully last for at least a year. Right now we’re focused on growing our audience and get studios on board. We want to share as much good content as we can. By the way, if you have a nice space, please get in touch.
And yes, I said our audience, because in those two years Mike and I have become good friends and we’re now working on this together. He’s the one who runs the show, writes everything, updates the site and the social. I’m taking care of the site and trying my best to get Mike the next headache.
If you want to read something nice go browse the site designed.space. As I said earlier, if you work in a nice space get in touch. We’re always looking for spaces to feature and people to interview. Feedbacks and comments are, as always, much appreciated. You can reach out at mailto:[email protected].
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2017-11-13 07:00:00
I’m not enjoying my work these days, that’s not a news. I do enjoy to collaborate with people on side projects though.
And that’s the case with Mike and his Designed Space. This thing took ages to design and code and before Mike kills me, yes, I’m the one to be blamed for that.
But I’m very happy with the result. The site is lovely and the content is great. Definitely go check it out if you want to read good articles and interviews.
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2017-11-06 07:00:00
It’s Monday morning. 6.04am. I see nothing outside my window and everything is dark. Also wet since it’s raining. I’ve been struggling quite a bit lately for a variety of different reasons and I decided one thing I could do is go back to my morning routine.
There’s something relaxing in waking up at 5am that I can’t quite explain to you. We’ll see if that make a difference.
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2017-11-01 07:00:00
It’s November’s first morning and I can now say I failed October spectacularly. Which is ok since this is not a challenge but more an exploration and an experiment. I started the month well, went without both my iPhone and iPad for the first, I’d say 10 days without much problems.
But then a series of unfortunate events occurred and my self discipline took a serious hit. I got the flu so I was stuck in bed for a few days, work has been terrible in October and that didn’t help either. So I ended up finishing the month using both my devices more often than not. Which, as I said, it’s ok and is something now I’m aware of.
I’m not a heavy user by all means, my phone is not even in the same room where I am most of the time and I use my iPad mainly to watch videos at certain moment of the day (during lunch/dinner and later at night mostly) but the fact that was so hard to stick with this habit tells me something and I’m happy with the result.
I think I’ll try to do this again. But we’re in November now and that means the month without entertainment has begun. No videos, no movies, no podcasts, no books. 2 exceptions: music because I need it when I work and video games, since I already done my month without games and I don’t have anything I want to play anyway. Gonna be fun.
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2017-10-25 06:00:00
I’m not a huge podcast listener but I do listen to a few of them.
In the past few days I listened to a bunch of episodes of Stuff You Should Know and are great (listen to the one about decapitation, absolutely worth it) and I just finished episode 003 of On Margins, Craig Mod’s podcast, and is a very interesting episode.
I’ve been a fan of Craig’s work for quite some time and his podcast is very well made and covers a topic that’s fascinating. Plus he's a very well spoken guy which helps when you host a podcast.
So there you have it, my two recommendations, Stuff You Should Know and On Margins.
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2017-10-18 06:00:00
Sometimes you receive the perfect advice when you least expect it and from the most unexpected source. Right now I’m struggling a bit with my life and I got reminded to not take it too seriously. Which is an excellent advice.
Because it’s easy to get dragged down into the spiral of life but at the same time is also important to remind ourselves that all this, is not to be taken too seriously. At the end of the day, my current problems are not very serious problems and it could be much worse. So have fun.
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2017-10-08 06:00:00
It’s amazing how well these two suckers go along. It’s also amazing how something we completely made up can affect our life in such a profound way. There’s something profoundly stupid about all this.
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2017-09-30 06:00:00
The first month of my year of living without is over. I admit I’m cheating a bit since September is not technically over but tomorrow I’ll be busy and that’s why I’m writing this today.
As I said in my earlier post, I’m by no means a serious gamer. I’m a fan of video games, I enjoy play them but I’m absolutely not addicted to them. As I thought, going the entire month without gaming wasn’t that hard. I only had a couple of night, while in full nostalgia mode, when I felt a bit of temptation to play but I managed to keep it under control. Overall it was a nice experiment. I now know I can easily exclude that from my life and still be perfectly happy with my life. And that's a good thing to know.
Coming up next up is my month without coffee... except I already done that. It just so happened that for the first 5 or 6 days of the month I did not have a single coffee. So I said to myself, why not just stick with that and go without coffee as well? And that’s what I did. I went without coffee for the entire month and no, I didn’t use tea as a substitute. I was actually surprised to discover that coffee has no impact on my life. I drink it out of habit and not because I particularly enjoy it or need it. Which is good. I’ll probably keep going without it and only drink it every now and then when I really want to drink one.
It's funny how I drank something every day, twice a day just because I was used to and not because I enjoyed it. That's so bizarre and also quite stupid if you ask me.
Anyway, this leaves me with the question, what am I going to give up in October? I think I’ll do a month without using both my iPad and my iPhone. Gonna be fun.
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2017-09-21 06:00:00
Sometimes, when you’re caught in the bustle of daily life, you forget to appreciate what’s around you and what really matters. I often forget how lucky I am to live in a wonderful and quiet place, where there aren’t any real problems expect the ones we create for ourselves.
So if you’re reading this, then you’re probably a person like me, one who has the luxury to take 10 minutes out of his day to write a blog post while drinking tea, looking at a beautiful view outside his window. And I should be more grateful for all this.
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2017-09-17 06:00:00
Right now I’m in a declutter frenzy and with my friend Rob we’re getting rid of a ton of things both physical and digital. There’s something refreshing in all this.
The more I free up space in my life, the more I become focused on what’s left and what really matters.
It’s also a fun game to play, to push the boundaries of your life and see with how many things you can live and how many you really need to be happy and productive.
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2017-09-08 06:00:00
I always admired people committed to a craft. There’s something inspiring in seeing people pouring hours after hours of work, perfecting their skills in order to produce better and better products. One thing they don’t do though, is spending countless hours changing the tools they use to do their job.
That’s a think we web developers, sadly do way too often. It’s very hard to find the balance between perfecting your skills and stay up to date with what’s new and useful. And that’s something I got better at over time, probably because I care less and less about the new things and I just want to learn how to properly use the tools I already have available.
At the end of the day I think what matters is what you make with a tool, not the tool itself.
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2017-09-07 06:00:00
I remember reading about Leo’s year of living without and thinking “That seems like a lot of fun”. That was more that a few years ago. Now, the time has come for my year of living without, which will follow the same rules but I’ll add a twist.
As Leo did, I’ll give up one thing each month and see if that makes a difference in my life or not. I’m still not 100% sure about what those 12 things will be but I have a few items on my list already.
September : Videogames
My main “distractions” when it comes to media consumptions are youtube and video games. I’m by no means an addicted to either of the two but it will be nice to see what happens when you don’t have a game to play in your spare time.
(Read the September recap)
October : Coffee
I drink more than a few coffees per day. It’s just a routine and I’m not sure if I really need it (or if I enjoy it to be honest with you). So it’s gonna be interesting to see if a month without coffee feels any different.
(Read the October recap)
November : Entertainment
I’ll give up any form of entertainment, so no youtube videos, books, podcasts, audiobooks, films, tv series, you name it.
(Read the November recap. Spoiler alert: I failed big time)
December : WiFi
This is an experiment I though about doing more than once. I’ll try to do a month without WiFi. I have an iPad and an iPhone and I can use both as an hotspot but I’m capped at around 15GB of traffic per month so I’ll need to be mindful of my internet usage.
(Read the December recap)
January : Computer in the morning
I’m gonna give up using my mac from the moment I wake up till after lunch. That means I’ll spend my mornings doing something else.
February : Music and Podcasts
I have Spotify open most of the time and if I’m not listening to music for sure there’s a new podcast episode to listen to. I’ll give up both of those things in February.
March : Sugar
I’m definitely not a sugar addict but I’m sure I can cut those sweets I eat every now and then.
April : The Internet (kind of)
Ok I can’t really give up the internet entirely since I’m a freelance web developer and I need the internet to work. But, what I’m gonna do is give up the internet that’s not work related. Social, blogs, news and everything else.
May : Drinks that are not water
Only allowed to drink water for the entire month. No coffee, no tea, no juice or any other kind of drink. An entire month of just water.
June : Pleasure Foods
I’ll try to only eat regular meals for the entire month and never eat any of those things we eat just for pleasure (sweets, chips, ice-cream, you get the idea)
As for the last few months I’m still not sure what else I can give up. If you have ideas let me know. In addition to all this I’ll also give up 2 things for the whole year. Those 2 things are buying new things (unless strictly necessary) and start new side projects.
The second one is pretty straightforward and, as I wrote already, I already have way too many side projects going in my life.
As for the first one, the rules are simple: I’m only allowed to buy things that are necessary. For example, I need to buy a new pair of basketball shoes because my current ones are completely destroyed and if I keep playing with those I’ll end up hurting myself. This is gonna be fun and I’ll let you know how it goes.
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2017-09-06 06:00:00
All these have been archived or given away.
As a part of my big declutter of 2017 I now have only two side projects left. The Gallery and Is Invisible. Everything else has been either discontinued or given to other people to continue.
If there’s one problem I share with my good friend Rob is the tendency to generate way too many ideas for side projects. I lost track of how many ideas I had in the past few years, ideas for which I bought domains, created emails and Twitter accounts only to then shut down everything 3 months later because the idea was a terrible one. I’m trying to get my shit together on that front and these days I have very few things going on on the side projects front.
The Gallery is probably my most successful side project. Or at least I think it is, I don’t have stats for the site since I removed Analytics more than a year ago and I have no idea how many people visit it on a daily basis.
The Beauty of Space is a hobby more that a side projects. It’s just a Tumblr blog where I post space related images but is doing great and requires very little work which is ideal.
I also made a series of space themed wallpapers for my iPhone and put them up for sale. If you’re interested you can get them for less than 1USD.
DeOwnIt was a fun game I played for a few months with my friend Mattia. We listed all the objects we owned in an attempt to become more aware of the amount of useless crap we all have and we don’t need and use.
In addition to all this I’m helping my friend Mike with his Designed Space.
Mike I promise you the site will go live at some point.
The site is now LIVE! Finally. Go check it out here. And that’s it, these are my current side projects.
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2017-09-05 06:00:00
My relationship with books is a weird one. I’m not a crazy reader, I don’t read tons of books especially because I don’t read fiction. I think I read less than 5 fiction books in my entire life (I’m 28 btw). I tend to read mostly about psychology and philosophy, and if you want a nice list of books I read in the past few years or so you can go to my Goodreads profile. I don’t really have a way to chose what to read next, most of the time I discover books randomly through podcasts, videos or blog posts.
Right now I’m going through “Scale: The Universal Laws of Life and Death in Organisms, Cities and Companies” by Geoffrey West and is a really fascinating book. Growth is a topic that is buzzing in my mind a lot lately and I’ll probably write a few lines about it.
I’m open to suggestions about what to read next so if you have a book you think I should read let me know. Also happy to discuss books in general so if that’s a topic of interest to you feel free to get in touch.
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2017-08-16 06:00:00
My alarm is currently set up to ring at 4.45am. Not because I need to, I’m a freelancer and I work from home so there’s no reason to wake up that early, nor because I particularly enjoy being awake before the sun rises. It is because even though I live in a very small place, that’s one of the few moments of the day when there’s real silence.
Silence is an under appreciated component of life. And I’m not only talking about silence in the traditional sense. I’m talking about being away from the noise of life in general. All the pings, and dings of modern technology. All the people to stay in contact with, all the new podcasts to listen to, all the new tv series to binge watch. Also all the promotions and sales and newsletters and all the other people around you living their lives.
Now, more than ever, we passively participate in other people’s lives by looking at what they share, reading what they write, listening to what they say. And we also read news, we listen to news, we watch news. We know about places, and stories, and people, and events, and tragedies and all sorts of other stuff and it’s not surprising that we no longer have time to listen to ourselves. Because for that, we need silence. I need it and you probably need it as well.
And that’s why my alarm will sound again at 4.45am tomorrow morning, to drink my coffee in solitude while listening to the silence and watching the sun rising.
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2017-08-15 06:00:00
It's a question I'm training my brain to ask itself every time I'm about to do something I might regret later. For example, when I'm about to buy something, watch a video or click on a link.
It's incredible how many times this simple question prevents me from doing things that won't add any value to my life.
These are clearly not major things, but are just drops in the sea of tiny, insignificant interactions. This question makes my daily life more pleasant, enjoyable and in some ways more meaningful.
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2017-07-20 06:00:00
As for most things in life, I got involved with Minimalissimo thanks to human connections. Back in 2015, Carl, Minimalissimo Mega CEO and overall nice guy approached my friend Ale to rebrand Minimalissimo.
You can read more about the redesign here if you’re curious. Anyway, Ale designed a new logo and logotype, changed the font (goodbye serif 😢) and the new Mimo was born. After the new identity came the new website. Not the one I co-designed and coded. I’m talking about the old new website.
I don’t remember what I was doing at the time, I was probably busy with some other client website and couldn’t help Ale with that project. That’s why Six got involved and they designed and coded the new site.
Fast forward a couple of years. Carl got in touch with me on Twitter to see if I was interested to work on the new version of the site. I obviously said yes. I had no idea what I was getting into at the time ahah.
Minimalissimo has been around for quite some time. And as you can imagine, every site more than a couple of years old must have a ton of content. Especially if it’s an image heavy site. That was exactly the case with Mimo. There were a ton of images on the server. And if you know anything about how WordPress works (the site runs on WordPress), you know that WP is more than happy to take your already numerous uploads and make countless crops if you’re not careful.
That’s what happened to Mimo during the years. All the different themes used generated an insane amount of images, most of which were not even used by the current site. The cleanup process took a lot of time. Ask Carl if you don’t believe me.
In addition to that, there were other problems on both the site and the server but I'll not go into details because those problems are now part of the oast and were not that interesting to begin with.
The idea was not to make a full redesign but rather to improve on top of the existing design. Well we ended up changing quite a lot.
The new site has way more whitespace and less text. Images are bigger and we switched the previous 3 columns system in favor to a 2 columns one. Two columns are kept almost everywhere on the site. A ton of less js, more structured and simple code overall.
The main 8 categories have been restructured (both on the front and backend) and have more importance in the homepage.
Since we were putting our hands on the site we took the opportunity to implement a couple of new things one of which is the new dark theme you saw above. That’s a tiny little thing but makes the site a bit unique.
Another thing we added was a brand new interviews section, which, if you ask me, it’s a great addition to the site. I’m a big fan of knowing the process behind the design of almost everything, and interviews are probably the best way to explore that particular aspect.
The rest of the site also received a makeover. The articles now feature a big, two columns gallery as well as a more robust text section. In addition to that, the article now sits on his own and there's more focus put on the text. Minimalissimo is slowing transitioning from a simple blog about minimalism to a more mature magazine about minimalism in design and we needed a structure to reflect that change.
What else? Oh yes, each archive page now has a lovely quote at the top which is a nice touch. There’s also a new Reading Minimalism section, if you’re into books definitely go check that out. The magazine page has been restructured, and most of the backend has also been revamped. We removed most of the plugins in order to make the site more easily maintainable and everything now sits in custom post types. This gives the site a ton more flexibility going forward.
Is this version gonna last? Hell no. Carl has a lot in mind for Minimalissimo and the future will be bright. This version was a nice improvement and a needed cleanup after years online. Now Mimo has the perfect ground to move forward and evolve.
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2017-03-19 07:00:00
I should visit this place more often. There's plenty of trees and mountains in my life but not enough water.
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2017-02-26 07:00:00
Another month is gone and finally March is here. Damn this has been a loooong winter.
A bad weather is not helpful when you’re dealing with a lot of other things in your life. I’m struggling to keep up with all the projects but I’m happy we, my friend Ale and myself, managed to push live his new site. At least I can cross that off the list.
I also have an idea for a project that I’m constantly pushing back because I want to start working on it but there are other things I know I need to do first but damn if it’s hard.
The work has also found a way to disrupt my routines again: my morning routine is all over the place at the moment but things are going to get better as soon as I close a few projects.
As for the books, I’m finishing another few of them. I’ll probably write about those in the next week update.
How’s your week?
Cheers,
Manu
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2017-02-19 07:00:00
Get rid of the book you haven’t pick up in years instead of buying a new, beautifully designed pair of shoes.
Take care of the scarf you use every day and don’t buy the new jacket.
Learn how to saw and fix the perfectly serviceable t-shirt you have in the closet.
Learn how to don’t get bothered by what other people think about your clothes, your hair, your home.
If you like minimalism, embrace the lifestyle, not the style.
Having only 30 items in your closet is useless if you spend the day worrying about how to combine them to look good.
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2017-02-12 07:00:00
Why am I doing this? Is a question I find myself asking increasingly often.
This must be part of the duality of the life I’m living. On one side I’m aware of things I should do, details I should improve, and on the other I have very little control over what’s going on in my brain.
I’m working on something and all of a sudden I’m reading a thread on twitter where people are yelling each other about a subject I really don’t care about that much.
Why am I doing this? Why am I reading this thread? what good can come out of all this?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy about this. The fact that I’m constantly asking myself these questions is a sign of progress. It’s a sign that a part of me is noticing these moments and is trying to correct and improve the situation.
And that’s good.
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2017-02-05 07:00:00
I guess this is this week’s lesson.
Sometimes you just have to deal with the fact that you live a life where very few things are under your control.
So what can you do when things are not under your control? I think you can adapt and try to follow the flow and see if you can find a way around the obstacles because there aren’t other viable options really.
So sometimes the weather gets in the way, or health gets in the way, or money gets in the way or some other improbable events gets in the way and there’s nothing you can do really.
But hey, this is why life is exciting and never boring.
Managed to finish two books in the past two weeks. I listened to Trevor Noah’s book and is great. Highly recommend this one if you’re looking for an entertaining book to read or listen. The audio book is read by Noah and the guy is amazing. On being uncertain is an interesting one but is not super great.
Starts really well but once the author hits the topic of religion things start to get a bit weird and the logic of the book falls apart. But the first chunk of the book is really good and there are quite a few interesting ideas in it.
I’m working on a v1.1 of this site because I like the idea of having a blog and not a weird in-between mix and I’m also working on a bunch of client things all at once which will probably go live in the upcoming weeks and months.
Catch you next week.
Cheers,
Manu
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2017-01-28 07:00:00
So this week got derailed by the flu. I was almost done with the current book but then I got stuck in bed and reading on an iPad is not the best when you have a damn headache.
Anyway, nothing tragic.
Weather is also quite terrible. Started raining, is all gray outside, humidity at 5000% and that is not helpful.
Need to bounce back though. Lots to do.
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2017-01-21 07:00:00
3 weeks have passed since I started to read in a more systematic way but I have already learned an important lesson about how my brain works and how I can improve myself.
Two lessons actually.
Small chunks are easier to handle and you need to find what works best for you and you only.
I’m not gonna try to argue in favor of my current approach because, well because it’s MY approach. Works for me and this is the only thing that matters.
I realized in this past three weeks that if I’m facing one big task such as reading an entire book or code a site, I tend to go all over the place and my mind finds all the possible ways to get distracted in order to avoid the task. But if instead I divide the task into small chunks I can easily tackle each and every one of them quite easily.
With the current book I know that if I read 9 pages every morning, afternoon and evening I’ll be done by the end of the week. 9 pages are nothing if you think about it.
Also by doing this I keep my brain in a constant state of having accomplished something which is good because this way I feel great and I get the extra motivation needed to keep going and maybe do some extra work.
So if you’re like me and you’re in a constant struggle to find the motivation to do what you need to do maybe you can give this technique a try.
Managed to read the 3rd book of the year. Really happy about this new reading habit. Another tough week for my early wake up. Need to tweak some knob and see if I can fix it.
Ciao,
M.
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2017-01-14 07:00:00
Wake up early when outside is dark and cold is damn hard.
I hate you winter.
Tough week for one of my habits. Woke up at 5 only 3 out of 7 days. The fact that I went to bed way past midnight on Wednesday didn’t help. I need to find a solution.
I’m probably gonna try some sort of compromise because I don’t want to force myself to wake up after just 4 or 5 hours of sleep but at the same time I don’t want to stay in bed past 8.
I can maybe set the clock around 6.30, we’ll see.
My other habit is perfectly on track though. This morning I finished The Dictator’s Handbook and I’m almost done with my second audiobook of the year (I think I have a few hours left).
The book is great. I’ve never been a huge fan of politics but this book is really interesting. It managed to make me feel even less optimistic when it comes to government which is quite the achievement since my levels of optimism were already very, very low.
Already purchased my next book: An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield.
Boring week from a work stand point. Haven’t shipped anything which is quite disappointing but I started working on a new client project and that’s good. I also got asked to work on a very exciting new site and I can’t wait to start.
I think that’s it for this week. I have a few topics in mind I need to find the time to write about. One is self questioning and the other is meditation as a design tool.
I’ll try to find the time to write down a few thought about these two in the upcoming days.
That's it, have a good one,
M.
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2017-01-07 07:00:00
As the title says, so far so good.
This first 7 days of 2017 have been quite good and I’m really pleased with the result so far.
How was your first week of the year by the way?
Done anything noteworthy? Really curious to know what you’re up to in this 2017. It’s always inspiring to see what other people are doing with their lives so, please, let me know if you feel like.
Ok where were we? Oh yes, the first week.
My goal of waking up at 5am every day is perfectly on track. Woke up at 5 all week and I feel great. It’s incredible how productive can you be when you have plenty of time in the morning. This habit is gonna be harder to maintain once I’ll be back on the basketball court because I tend to go to bed really late on Wednesday and get up at 5 the next morning is gonna be quite a challenge but we’ll see.
I also finished reading and listening the first book and audiobook of the year.
The book I finished is Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom and the audiobook is Why Information Grows by César Hidalgo.
Both quite good, both on very interesting topics. The AI problem is a challenging one and it is fascinating and a bit frightening at the same time. Had Superintelligence on my reading list for about a year (😱) and I’m really happy that I finally found the time to finish it.
Already started reading The Dictator’s Handbook and listening to The Undoing Project.
I’m adopting a nice approach with the books. I divide the total number of pages in small chunks (I know books come in chapters but those are not neatly divided), 21 chunks to be precise.
Why 21? 7 days a week, 3 times a day. I’m trying to read something in the morning, at lunch and late at night, before going to sleep.
If I don’t skip a single one of those 21 chunks I can ready a book every week which is really great.
As for the blog, well as you can see I managed to find the time to write the post number 1 so I’m on track.
From a work perspective has been a good week. Not amazing but for sure a positive one.
I coded my new site, finished the landing page for the Designed Space project I’m working on with my friend Mike, and shipped the new site for Fabio Lamanna. Also coded my blog and made progress on another few side projects.
So I guess that’s it for this first week of 2017. I have a few thought in mind I’ll probably share with you next week.
Ciao,
M.
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2017-01-01 07:00:00
3... 2... 1...
BOOM!
We made it! We're in 2017. This damn 2016 is finally over and that means we just reached another of those totally arbitrary milestones in the human calendar.
Human psychology is weird and for some reason, new year's eve feels like the right time to throw the bad and old habits out the window and start fresh as soon as the clock pass midnight.
That’s plain stupid you might think and I’ll agree with you on that.
But this year I thought, you know what? I might start something on January 1st and see if I can stick to it for the next 365 days.
And, since I’m quite an idiot and well aware that you can barely manage to introduce one change in your life at the time, I decided to introduce a bunch of them.
That’s probably because in this way I can blame that and not myself for failing for the 120th time ahah.
Anyway, here’s the list of things I decided to introduce (or reintroduce in some case) in my life:
I used to wake up at 5am and was a great habit. Then, you know, winter comes, it gets cold, you wake up and is basically still night outside and that habits is quickly gone.
I’ll try to force myself to wake up at 5 again. Don’t care if it’s dark outside or cold or whatever.
I thought about this for quite some time now and this seems a good moment to start a blog. Why? Don’t know.
I’m well aware that my English is far from perfect decent but this is a nice way to improve on that as well.
Also I thing it’s a nice way to force myself to reflect on what’s going on in my life and that’s a nice thing to do.
In the last few months of 2016 I come to the conclusion that I must cut down distractions. And by distractions I mean things like news sites, youtube, twitter and all the rest of the internet noise.
And what better way to achieve that by replacing those moments with a book. I’ll try to read at least 1 book every month and also try to listen to 1 audiobook.
Lastly I’ll try to push the declutter I started in 2016 even further by getting rid of as many physical stuff as I can.
How about you? Are you gonna do anything special in this 2017?
Ciao,
M.
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