2026-06-12 19:00:00
This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Carl Barenbrug, whose blog can be found at carlbarenbrug.com.
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A native Scotsman, albeit half German, living in the beautiful, cosmopolitan, and windy city of Edinburgh. I live with my partner and two Burmese cats. I’m a digital product designer, founder, and aspiring entrepreneur with a long-standing love for minimalism and rock climbing. But I’m also interested in fashion, architecture, tennis, cycling, football, and, admittedly, experimenting with AI tools too. Right now, I’m working in the field of chat communication, creative tooling such as 3D mockup production, and a bit of consultation when I have the time. Slowly preparing for a probable life where my skills are surpassed by robot while trying to figure out how to independently survive and thrive.
I think I created my blog around 2011, which was pretty much focused on design curation. Predictably named after myself, I was simply sharing aesthetic things I liked and it helped shape my taste at the time. My personal site has taken on a few different forms and functions over the years, but since 2020 it’s been exclusively a blog — a digital space where I can think in public. The topics vary a bit, but typically I’ll be yapping about projects I’ve worked on, perspectives on procedural design, and the occasional lifestyle story or social experiment. I don’t write as often as I’d like or once did, and I think the main reason for this is that I’ve stopped reading and listening to books for the past year or so. Reading seems to fuel my writing, but I’m prioritising creative output over consumption right now. I reckon this will change next year though.
My writing process varies depending on the topic. If I’m blogging about work I’ve done, there’s very little research I need to do. It’s just a free-flowing explanation of what I’ve made. Yet, if it’s more of a thought-piece, then I’ll make a note of the topic and some references that have inspired the thought because I also like to cite those if I can. I’ll then start drafting in iA Writer. I’ll usually leave it a few days or weeks and come back to it. When I feel like I have a decent post, I’ll share it with robot to proof and get some feedback — mostly grammar, structure, and light shaping. I tend to take a bit more care in what I publish on my blog than when I journal offline.
I enjoy silence or natural sounds if I really need to use my head. It’s really the only way I can truly focus. But sometimes I love to write with instrumental music (house or techno) if I’m running with an idea that requires a little less attention. In terms of the physical environment, space matters, but I’m pretty flexible. Normally, it’s when I’m home in my office or stretched out on my sofa, locked in by my cats. And I’ll only ever write on my laptop — never on my phone.
The site is built on Kirby CMS, where all my posts are published as markdown. The domain is registered with Hover and is hosted by Hetzner. I tend to follow Manu’s advice when it comes to such things, even if he insists he has no clue what he’s doing.
I probably would have moved to Kirby sooner. It’s a fantastic CMS, even for a basic blog. But I also use it for my portfolio, so I feel like I get a lot out of it. And as it’s modular, it can be as light or as heavy as you need it to be. No built-in bloat. There are other super lightweight blog-specific solutions out there that I like the look of, but not enough to convince me to change. In terms of doing things differently from a writing perspective, I think we naturally express ourselves differently as life happens. Looking back, I think some of my posts might have tried too hard to be intellectual, but I think I’ve generally maintained a consistent tone of voice, which I like.
I don’t monetise my blog, so it earns nothing in a tangible sense. But if it helps me connect with people, whether sentimentally or collaboratively, that’s good enough for me. The domain is $19 per year, Kirby is a one-off payment of around $115, and hosting is on a shared server, so I don’t pay anything for that.
These are all worth a look:
There are a few projects I’ve worked on that I’d like to share:
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2026-06-09 00:40:00
A few weeks ago, I was at my brother’s place, watching NBA, and amongst other things, I was teasing him about the fact that he’s putting up weight. Which is just a fact. But he’s also in his 40s, so that’s understandable. He pointed out that I’m also gaining weight (but I’m not in my 40s), and since it was a long time since I weighed myself, I decided to hop on a scale, and the number that came out was 89.6kg. Now, I’m 190cm tall, so being almost 90kgs isn’t really a tragedy but I told him «I’m gonna get back into shape» just so that I can keep continue teasing him and he won’t be able to say shit back. Isn’t brotherly love wonderful?
I gave myself the “extended” whole summer (so till the end of September) to reach two goals. The first goal is to be lighter than I was 10 years ago. I had a smart scale for more than a decade, and the oldest measurement I have logged is 85.3kg, recorded on December 21st 2015. So I need to be below that by September 30th. The second goal is to be in better shape than I was 10 years ago. Now, this is a bit harder to quantify, but I’ll let my brother determine if I reached this goal or not.
I did take a “before” picture at the beginning of June. It’s my intention to take an “after” one on September 30th, and we’ll compare and see if I made any progress whatsoever.
Do I have a concrete plan for how to achieve these two goals? Absolutely not. Do I have a personal trainer guiding me through a training program? Hell no. Am I following a diet prepared by a nutritionist? Nah, what’s the fun in doing that! We’re in the “vibe” era, so I’m gonna vibe training and vibe dieting, meaning I’m doing things my way, trying random shit, going for silly walks, training however I want, and having fun in the process. Gonna be a fun summer.
And since we’re talking losing weight, I’m gonna mention two of my blogging pals here, one mr Kev and one mr Luigi, both of whom are going through a similar challenge (for more sane and normal reasons, unlike myself, who is fueled by spite). I believe in you guys!
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2026-06-05 19:00:00
This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Barry Hess, whose blog can be found at bjhess.com.
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I’m a programmer-type from rural Minnesota. I grew up on a farm near a small town. Now I live in a bustling city of 27,000 people…surrounded by farmland. In other words, I’m still in rural Minnesota.
I studied computer science at a small private college, which led to my 26-year career programming computers. First it was at an insurance company, then it was at a SaaS startup, and now it’s for myself at a little company I run with my business partner.
My hobbies are mostly typical: reading, watching movies, and the occasional video game (meaning Fortnite). My favorite sport is baseball, though I’ll watch the occasional other sport. I also try to do a little woodworking, cooking, and, well, blogging. Blogging is a hobby, yes?
I decided to start a blog in 2004. Personal blogs were popping up all over, and I was enjoying meeting new people through the comments section in these blogs. I also have a couple non-blogging friends that were doing their thing on Xanga. The blogs I followed were either friends, friends of friends, about the Minnesota Twins (baseball), or about U.S. news and politics.
Online I generally use the handle bjhess. That was what my college gave me for my first ever user account. Toward the end of college I was looking for a domain name, and unfortunately there was already a techy person with my first and last name who grabbed that obvious option. (They still have the domain to this day!) So bjhess.com it was, and the name stuck.
I blogged via b2evolution and WordPress in the early days, probably at Dreamhost. In the early 2010s I switched over to a self-hosted and customized install of Scanty, and I ran that for a long time. In 2022 I switched to an HTML-only site. That lasted about a year before I and my colleagues built Pika.
I don’t have a system or process for blogging. My inspiration is generally from interesting things happening in my life. That can be a vacation, a recent discovery, an experiment that I’m trying, or a feeling that I’m feeling.
Most of my posts are written in a single session, with a couple rounds of editing for grammar, tone, and flow. There’s only been one occasion where I asked others to read my writing before posting. I’ve recently tried the “weekly update” format of posts, which to this point has been me adding links and notes to a draft leading up to finalizing the post on Friday or Saturday. I’m toying with updating the draft post daily throughout the week before publishing, but then if I’m doing that I wonder if I should…just post those daily updates daily?
Inspiration comes and goes, but I generally prefer to have quiet while writing, whether that’s natural or simulated via headphones.
Aside from that basic need, I don’t strongly believe that physical spaces influence my creativity. However, I’ve been noticing that my office is in a state of constant clutter…and I’m starting to believe. Now the question is whether that clutter impacts the mind or whether the cluttered mind leads to a physical manifestation? A little of both, I think.
Today, and for the rest of my life, my blog is hosted at Pika. I write my posts directly in the web editor.
I would start my blog on Pika, naturally!
I believe pretty strongly that most bloggers probably would be better off not rolling their own static site generators or CMS installations. For those that want to play in that world, though, there’s nothing like it. For the rest of us there are a number of small, independent blogging platforms that make things quite a bit easier. They all tend to play nice together, offering exporting and importing options if you ever find a different platform to be a better fit for your style.
If I were paying for my Pika account, it would be $60 per year, and my domain is $13 per year. Not bad for a favorite hobby! I pay $9/month for Plausible analytics, though I’m not entirely sure why. As a programmer, I think it’s mainly that I want a place to look to see any weird happenings to make sure nothing is amiss. If traffic to my blog disappeared, I’d be curious if I did something wrong technically to cause it.
All’s fair for monetizing. I don’t do it, but I know affiliate links and such make sense in some contexts.
Let me dial up my feed reader here. Okay, for a selection…
I’m not sure how Chris Glass keeps his daily photo journal going, but it’s great. Rafał Pastuszak does fascinating things at Untested. Adam Keys is usually thinking. Since Luke moved away from my area, I like to read what’s going through his mind on recursion. I travel vicariously through MacPsych. Maique gives me all the photo inspiration. Holy cats, Jamie Todd Rubin is an avid reader. Brendon Bigley provides cool video game news. Annie lends me insight. Davey and Jamie share lives well lived. I also like to keep up with Derek Sivers, Hugh Howey, Craig Mod, and Cabel Sasser (I still need to read the 2025 snacks rundown). Oh, and, boy howdy, Mike Monteiro.
Any of the above who haven’t been interviewed would be a great option to interview next!
I won’t be shy–I’m working on Pika and I would greatly appreciate it if you gave Pika a look. Our biggest project at the moment is The Pika Pulse, which will be a great help to discover Pika blogs. I think that’s a good thing for the readers of People and Blogs!
Mostly, though, I’d like more people to blog. I want people of all ages and backgrounds sharing their experiences at their own domain online. Whether you do that via Pika or any other setup or service (yes, even WordPress), I’ll be excited! See you online!
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2026-06-04 19:00:00
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2026-05-31 21:35:00
Here we go again. Afternoon walk this time around. It’s almost 2pm, and I’m standing in the same parking spot where I got picked up last week. No breakfast in me, but I did have lunch before heading out. Compared to last week’s hike, this one’s gonna be way easier. We have a bit more than 20kms to walk, with roughly 650 meters of ascent and 1300 of descent. Gonna be fun.
Before we begin, I’ll have to apologise for the terrible photos I took, especially of the churches. Been a weird walk, and there was also non-ideal lighting most of the day and, I don’t know, I guess I was not very inspired today? I’ll hopefully do better next time around. Ok, down the mountain we go.
Compared to last week, today’s a lot cooler, and there’s a gentle breeze. Perfect conditions to walk down a mountain and into the forest.
The first part is a lot steeper than I thought. I did consider walking the whole loop in reverse, and this part would not be fun. I’m having a hard time going down, I can’t imagine going up from here, especially after a long walk.
Thankfully, the trail becomes a lot easier to walk after that initial steep part, and I’m now enjoying my time in the woods. There’s gonna be a lot of going in and out of the woods on this hike.
Down a few steps and I’m about to emerge next to Montemaggiore, the last town you encounter on your way up to Mount Matajur. I saw these concrete stairs many times before, while driving up this road. Always wanted to walk this trail, and I’m glad I’m finally doing it.
The trail goes through the buildings, neat! So many old and abandoned buildings. Makes me kinda sad. But I get it, life up here ain’t exactly easy, or practical.
And on the other side? A big, and frankly quite ugly, Jesus. This is relatively modern, and I’ll be honest, I’m not a fan.
The trail continues in and around the town, down a few sets of stairs, and through some overgrown grass. So far, this one’s the worst-maintained trail I have walked. But I can imagine that doing maintenance is not exactly easy over here. So kudos to everyone who does it.
I’m now back on one of those service roads, and it’s a very enjoyable walk. We’re slowly going down, the weather is lovely, and I’m very much enjoying my time outside. It’s not an incredibly varied walk so far, the scenery is mostly the same, but still, this is not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
This small football field made me smile. I have no idea who comes up here to use it, but it’s fun to see it’s still there. I’d have loved to have something like this available to me as a kid. But now there’s nobody around, these valleys are slowly getting abandoned, which is sad but also understandable.
Time to take a left turn, leave the service road behind me and go up into the woods again. I’m not too distant from the first of the three churches I’ll visit today.
Was not expecting to find myself in this open area with a view of the valley underneath. This is a lovely spot, and there’s also a cabin nearby. Probably used by the hunters, like most of the cabins scattered around the valleys.
Into the woods again, and I now need to leave the trail behind me because the first church is some 100 or so meters off the path. So down I go and to reach the church of Sant’Ulderico in Monte (15/44).
The area around the church is quite neglected, and the overall scenery is really not the best. The only good thing about this one is that one of the windows was open, and I finally managed to take a decent picture of the inside of one of the churches. It’s very barebones, but the altar is nice. I still think it’s sad that these are all locked; they could become awesome shelters for the night. I should probably learn lock picking…
Time to hike back up to where I left the trail earlier and keep moving on through the woods. Next stop is gonna be where the trail splits and the variant starts. I hate these variants. They make no sense, and this one in particular is almost as long as the main path, only to touch one more church, one that is not even all that nice or unique. But I guess there’s no point in complaining; nobody is forcing me to walk these trails after all.
After another hour of uneventful walking into the woods, we have finally reached the location of the church of Santi Primo e Feliciano
(16/44), which I didn’t even bother visit closely and only took this photo of it.
The only nice thing about this church is the location, since it has a great view, but the building itself is incredibly uninspiring, especially because it has probably been restructured in modern times. There are a couple of pictures on the link above if you want to see more of it. That said, though, there are a couple of way more interesting things to see around here. Starting from this throwback sign.
What a blast from the past. Do you even remember the time when not everyone had a phone, and you could use phones in public places to make phone calls? What a time!
The other unusual sight is a Thai temple?!? That was very unexpected. I was aware that there’s a Buddhist one in the area (that I might actually see during a future walk), but knew nothing about this one. Neat!
And right in front of it? A small chapel to remember the people who have died during the two World Wars. I told you these things are everywhere and that it’s impossible to forget what happened during those times if you live here.
I’m about to start going back up, and my watch vibrates to alert me that there’s a “severe weather storm alert” which is always great to see when you’re half way through a long walk, and you’re in the middle of nowhere, a couple of hours from your car. I was contemplating stopping for a quick break, but the opposite happened: I started going! As a result, I took very few pictures of the next chunk of the walk but was mostly the same, going in and out of the woods.
An hour later, I connected back with the main path and was close to the third and final church of this walk, the church of San Michele Arcangelo (17/44), which is by far the best one of the three I visited today.
Very small and in an elevated position with a nice view of the valley. Like many others, it was reconstructed after the quakes of the sixteenth century, and you can clearly see that there are parts missing in the front. Still, I much prefer to see churches in this condition; at least they feel like they have a history behind them.
Almost 4 hours in, still 7 kms left to walk, which means there’s no time to waste. I leave the church behind me, go through the small village, into the woods, and some 20 or so minutes later, I’m back on a paved road.
My legs would love to go right and downhill, but I need to go left and uphill, the direction our grandparents used to take to go to school back in the day. But I’m quite happy for this because I get the chance to see a church I've always wanted to visit.
That’s the church of Sant'Andrea Apostolo and every time I drive up to Mount Matajur, I can see it from my car. Has this very characteristic twisty road going up to it from the small village underneath and I always wanted to drive there.
And I have to say, the location is very nice. Living up here must be a nightmare because there’s only one way down, and the road is very narrow. Plus, the closest anything must be 30 to 40 minutes away by car. But if you’re looking for peace and quiet, this is the place for you.
Another point scored by team Mary on my way out of the town.
There’s less than 5kms left now, I’m starting to feel a bit tired, my feet hurt, I need better shoes, I want to take a quick break, but I also don’t want to stop because I know I’m only an hour or so from my car. And stopping at this point makes no sense. So into the forest I go again for the final stretch of this walk.
Found a bunch of sheep chilling in the forest right at the end of the walk. These animals are so fun. If I had the space, I’d totally get a few, just to see them play with the crazy dog I have. I wonder what he would do. Maybe one day I’ll find out.
Final descent into the forest, couple of turns, and here we are, back at the parking spot where I left my car some 5 hours ago. Thankfully, it’s still there because walking home from here would not be fun. Doable, sure. But not fun.
So far, my least favourite walk and the churches were mostly uninspiring, but hey, that’s part of the fun. Next up, we have another long descent, but I very much look forward to doing the walk after that, number 6, since that has the potential to be the most tiring yet fun and interesting walk of the entire series. I’ll definitely need to buy a better pair of shoes by then. There's a new folder on the shared Drive folder with all the pictures I took on the walk. And yes, I have moved from iCloud to Drive because apparently iCloud doesn't like huge albums. And there's also the link to the data recorded by my watch, if you want to get more info on the hike itself.
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2026-05-30 15:10:00
Rishabh emailed me the other day, asking me to answer the 7 questions of his new blog challenge, and who am I to say no to such a request? So here we go.
I assume by AI models we mean the current crop of LLMs, and not AI models in general, because I’m old enough to remember when “Machine Learning” was a thing. What even is AI anyway at this point, since everything is lumped together into one useless definition? Anyway, I believe my first experience was trying out chagpt back when it first came out. I don’t think I spent more than 10 or 15 minutes using it at the time. It was impressive tech, but was also completely useless for me at the time, and that’s why I didn’t bother spending more time using it.
This is an interesting question. Do I use AI? Well, I guess the answer is yes since it’s almost impossible to avoid using it if you use the web at this point. Pretty much all tools and services are integrating some sort of AI-powered functionalities, and it’s become harder and harder not to use them. If, instead, the question is do I use one of the various LLMs directly to do stuff, then the answer is still yes, but the amount of usage is so low that some people might consider that to be the same as not using them at all.
I don’t directly pay for any of the models, but my work email has been powered by Google for more than a decade, and so I do get access to Gemini Pro. Workspace has usage data for everything, and I just looked it up: In the last 90 days, the only AI-related feature I used was the Gemini App (that’s not surprising considering I turned off everything else), and I have apparently used it 62 times.
I’m now looking at the history of those chats, and pretty much all of them are single-question queries related to something web dev I was doing. Things like how to do a specific thing inside Kirby, or how to achieve something using a particular JS library. This is stuff one should be able to find inside documentation websites, but the search there is often awful and so after a google search, I try my luck with AI.
And as I wrote somewhere else, I never copy-paste. I ask very narrow questions so that I can be pointed towards the correct answer. And once I have that, I do the coding and I re-implement everything myself.
Am I against using AI? As a generative tool, yes. I refuse to ask AI to do something for me or to generate content from scratch. As a tech in general? I think it has some potentially useful applications in narrow contexts. As always, the answer is not cut-and-dry, and it can be yes or no depending on the framing and the scope.
Nope.
The only aspect I appreciate is the ability to ask questions in natural language. Because sometimes you have a problem or an answer you’re looking for that can’t be described in a more structured way.
As for what I don’t like, how anthropomorphised these stupid tools are is definitely high on my list. I don’t want my computer to talk back or to make jokes or to say «I’m sorry». If I input a question, I want an answer back, and that’s it. I don’t want follow up questions, I don’t want some pointless preamble. I get why this happens, but I fucking hate it. This is software. I don't want my software to have a personality. I want it to perform a task and get out of my way.
I also don’t like the lying, the gaslighting, and all the other crap, and I also don’t like what the AI industry is doing as a whole, but that’s a separate issue.
Again, another question that has different answers depending on the scope. The idea of being able to generate images, in general, is neutral to me. It all comes down to what you use it for. There are some potential use cases that are totally fine, others are completely insane. As a whole, I think the ability to generate slop is bad, but that’s because humanity can’t be trusted to do anything the right way.
As for their use in blog posts, I think stock images were useless, and I don’t see images generated with AI to be any different. Unless you have generated an image as part of the content to explain or visualise something. That’s fine, label it as a generated image and move on. That’s no different than including a render, or a sketch on paper, from a content perspective.
My consumption of online content these days is so limited that I don’t have this issue. I read very few blogs, and I know they are not AI generated because I emailed the people behind them more than once, and I know what their stance is. I watch almost no YouTube, and I only read a few news sites. My strategy is to simply stay away from the digital world as much as possible, and I’m at the point where I’m considering dropping my digital consumption down to zero and quit the internet as a place for content.
I have zero hope. And that is because I have zero hope in anything that’s in the hands of mega corporations. The incentives are totally skewed, and they’d do everything they can in order to keep the line go up. I don’t see people with strong morals in positions of power and so unless we decide to go full French Revolution, I see no reason for things to improve.
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