Expressively publishing on the open web since 1996. Entranced by Portland, Oregon since 2017.
Hello and Welcome!
I’m Jared, an award-winning essayist, Rubyist, and podcaster who’s been commenting on and building for the web since Mosaic was a thing. (Yup, it’s true! 😆)
In my spare time I travel around Portland 🌲 and the Pacific Northwest and shoot cinematic-yet-quirky vlogs. 📹 📺 In addition, I compose and produce 80s-flavored retro electronica. 🎹 🎶
This is my home base on the internet. I hope you enjoy browsing around! 📍
It would seem I’m always but one step away from reaching for an endeavor to occupy my time with at any given moment. Besides what’s obviously available on this website…from Bridgetown, a Ruby-powered site generator, to Yarred, my musical alter-ego, there’s something for…well…somebody.
February 2024 kicked me, and then kicked me again while I was down. 😡 I have not been a happy camper. Yet hope springs eternal, and I want to acknowledge a few things I’m currently grateful for:
Good Coffee. No, I don’t mean coffee that’s good, I mean the local chain of coffee shops which seems to have taken over some of the best locations in central Portland and even in the ’burbs (hello Cedar Hills!). I’m currently partaking of a particularly tasty blueberry muffin.
Bridgetown. No, I don’t mean Portland (though yes it’s rad), I mean the Ruby website framework I develop. After a long dry spell, I’m finally feeling pumped to be working on it again—even the small maintainer-y things that only people who tinker in open source know what I’m talking about.
The Tourist. No, I don’t mean a traveler I happened to strike up a conversation with, I mean the Netflix show starring Jamie Dornan and Danielle Macdonald whose first season was truly whacked-out and whose upcoming second season is set in Ireland (woohoo!). I’m a huge fan of Jamie Dornan, but I wasn’t sure if this was the sort of show that would get bogged down under the weight of its rather absurd premise. Thankfully it proved adept indeed, and I can’t wait for the next season.
Thoughts. No, I don’t mean simply things I contemplate in my brain, I mean this specific type of blog post which in my content system is any #writing which sits between microblogging and long-form essays. Most of my “thoughts” over the years are safely ensconced in my Day One diary, but I like having a space where more publicly-appropriate musings can see the light of day. After all, what is a personal blog for if not that, am I right? 😊
My relationship with my city changed when I came to #Portland. Before that, I always had the general impression that I lived in my “house” and that house merely happened to be located in a city/town/countryside/etc. But upon moving to Portland, Oregon and really embracing an urban lifestyle, my perspective changed. Now I live in Portland. My house is nothing more than the residence I am physically placed in at various times for sleep, recreation, and remote work. But I also regularly engage in both work and recreation elsewhere in the city, and those places mean every bit as much to me as anywhere I might lay my head at night.
I suppose that may sound quite strange to someone who is very emotionally and nostalgically attached to their literal dwelling. Maybe it’s a personality thing… All I can tell you—as someone who is currently a renter—I have owned my own home in the past and…I ended up hating it. Resenting it.
My allegiance is to a city…MY city…not any particular residential unit within it.
There are been substantial changes to these products over the decades, but the DNA at the heart of them all—creativity, whimsy, user-friendliness, and consistency—remains ever present.
It’s hard to look back fondly on the Twitter algorithm in the days when it was still considered a “cool” platform to use. I routinely saw how links to blog posts would get far less engagement than content Twitter deemed worthy of promotion like photos, topical tweets, etc. The whole “post a photo and also a link” instead of just having the link’s graph image come through hack was just that, a hack. (Same issue on Facebook as well.) Perhaps in the early days of the platform this was much less so, but…well, #enshittification.
Blogging and social media algorithms ended up on a collision course last decade, and sadly blogs lost. Thankfully we now have the rare opportunity to correct the mistakes of the past. #OpenWeb#Fediverse#writing
Look, I get it. You already subscribe to too many newsletters. So much to keep up with. But guess what? I only send out a newsletter once a week. And if you‘re feeling curious, peruse the Creator Class archive. You might find something that resonates with you! It’s a great way to stay current with what I’m publishing, and newsletter recipients always get some extra insight just for them. So what are you waiting for? Let’s roll!
Podcast
A weekly show where we discuss the business, the art, the ethics of content creation on the open web. Hosted by Jared White.
Folks have been talking about different terminology and ways of describing this brave new world of decentralized social networking. But with Threads’ staggering growth to 150 million MAU (Monthly Active Users), combined with its embrace of the colloquial term “fediverse”, I make the case that fediverse is here to stay. I also touch on the recent news around Google’s flailing leadership causing Googlers to get real grumpy real fast.
You can rarely go wrong visiting the tallest mountain in Oregon and a true jewel of the Cascades: Mt. Hood. This time, I visited in August 2023, taking the ski lifts up the slope from Timberline Lodge and then hiking back down while enjoying the epic views. Then I dropped by Trillium Lake for the first time. Wow! This location was definitely worth the hype. Gotta go back…
For Father's Day, the kids "treated" me to a wonderful excursion to Lan Su Chinese Garden, a treasure of downtown Portland which exhibits one of the most authentic gardens outside of China itself. Enjoy the magnificent sights!
This year I want to make a bold statement with what I do and how I live—only this time not as a desperate attempt to appease a deity, but as a way of expressing the core values that make me Me.
There was a time not long ago when my life was in a major upheaval. Signs of online success were slim to none. I wasn’t sure if anyone out there would really care if I were suddenly Thanos-snapped out of existence. Yet the valuable lesson I came to learn during that dreadful time was how to become intrinsically motivated, the significance of value creation, and the trick of cultivating T-shaped skills.
It's taken a global pandemic for many of us to realize something profound about the web. It isn't just a technology which helps the world go around. Today, on a certain level, is IS the world.
I needed to take some time off work to think, to dream. Instead I listened to the advice of family and friends and charged into a new business opportunity. Was it successful? Was it an utter disaster? Read my story to find out.
When we have difficulties helping our children learn new skills or cope with the tumult of everyday life, it's tempting to want to blame ourselves. But we can choose to see the learning opportunity inherent in every emotional moment.
Living daily as if everything around you is representative of constant warfare is a recipe for emotional and mental disaster. Trust me, I've been there.
If you think as I did a couple years ago, you probably assume that people who struggle with depression must be sad a lot and just need to be cheered up or adopt a more positive attitude. Well, as I came to discover, that notion is dead wrong.
