Blog: short for Web-log. A personalized record of content you post on the web.
Web: a shortening of World-Wide Web. A global network of hypertext documents all linking to each other.
So then, why is it rare to find anyone actually doing this with their blog? š¤
Thereās a term in IndieWeb circles called Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere (or POSSE). It sort of captures an aspect of that ideaā¦basically you use your own blog to publish thoughts, link commentary, photos, videos, newsletters, etc., and then disseminate that content out to other services (YouTube, Twitter, mailing lists, your own RSS feed, etc.)
I tried POSSE in a previous incarnation of this site. I ended up not liking it. It doesnāt capture the workflows I instinctively prefer on a regular basis, nor how I wish the #openweb really functioned.
What I want to do is the exact opposite! IndieWeb also provides a term for this: Publish Elsewhere, Syndicate (to your) Own Site (or PESOS). They donāt recommend it, and the wiki page enumerates some of the reasons why. But I have come to realize I prefer PESOS for a lot of the content I produce, because itās generally way easier and the UX is way better.
I like āmicrobloggingā on Twitter. [11-2022 update: er, not anymore! š¤Ŗ]
I like uploading podcast episodes to Buzzsprout. (I donāt for this site, but I do use it for the Fullstack Ruby podcast.)
I like posting photos onā¦well, certainly not Instagram any more. š Glass is pretty rad, but I havenāt determined if I want to reserve it for the āfancyā photos I take with my āfancyā camera, or simply give up and flood it with on-the-go iPhone snaps.
I likereleasing music on Bandcamp. (Honestly, I donāt know of any indie musician who doesnāt use Bandcamp at this point!)
So the question then becomes: how do I post all this content elsewhere, then transparently pull in links and import content back to my own #website? Of course on a technical level, it means Iāll be writing lots of Ruby plugins for Bridgetown, the software I use to build my website. But Iām always musing on workflows that can be easily applied to the industry of blogging as a whole. I havenāt seen much evidence anyoneās truly cracked this nut. Also admittedly, dragging your own content in kicking and screaming from third-party silos is often less than straightforward (hence the notion of POSSE), because they have a vested interest not to let you feature your own content on your own website. (YouTube remains sort of a weird outlier here because they make it easy to embed videos anywhere, and youtube-dl is certainly a thing.)
Still, Iām motivated to figure this stuff out. Iāll let you know how it goes! āŗļø
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Stay in the Loop
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 youāre feeling curious, peruse the Creator Class archive. You might find something that resonates with you! Itās a great way to stay current with what Iām publishing, and newsletter recipients always get some extra insight just for them. So what are you waiting for? Letās roll!
I am what some folks might call Extremely Online. Iāve certainly wrestled with this at times, and there have been moments when I feel the need to pull back from incessantly scrolling through whatever timeline is in vogue (for me these days thatās Mastodon) and commenting with meme GIFs.
But Iāve come to accept my fate. Furthermore, this is something Iām good at. Yes that right, Iām good at internetting (for better or worse). What Iām not so good at is occasionally dipping my toe into the water of being Extremely Offline.
Intentionally going offline is vital to my mental health (and yours too). For some people that might not prove such a huge issue as they have family ties or other social commitments IRL to attend to. For me thoughāexcept for the times Iām actively involved in playing with/supervising/teaching/going on adventures with my kidsāIām basically a single (divorced) dude who remote works, quit attending church years ago, and whose extended family all live out-of-state.
If Iām going to have a social life apart from opening up yet another chat window, I need to wrangle my own support structure out of thin air.
And so thatās exactly what Iāve been doing this spring and summer. Iāve had to push myselfāforce myself some daysāto get out there and Meet Real People. It doesnāt always come naturally to me, but Iām always glad when I do it.
Shout out to Meetup whichādespite a rocky road these past few years first being acquired by WeWork and then being let go among all the zaniness thereāstill seems to be going strong and providing an excellent way of discovering groups of people IRL doing interesting things.
Iāve gone on hikes, focused on writing alongside fellow artists and creatives, laughed it up playing a wacky party game at a dinner event, and, yes, hung out with some local techies too. Iāve also been keeping an eye out for festivals or other fun community activities I might participate in. What will I be up to next? Who knows!
Having the sense of a local support structure apart from pixels on a screen, being able to look fellow humans in the eye and make a genuine emotional and intellectual connection, is something I simply donāt take for granted. Having lived through a pandemic and been Extremely-Extremely Online for weeks or even months at a time (most of 2020 is simply a blur to me, I canāt remember WTF I was even doing), a couple of hours of levity over a beer or walking along a forest path pointing out a grand vista or a word of encouragement from another creator in the roomā¦these are moments I treasure. And I canāt wait for more.
If you feel like you need more of a support structure where you live, whatās that single first step you might be able to take today?
As Reddit radically implodes (8000+ subreddits have gone dark as of the time of this writing!) due to the hubris and nearsightedness of its leaders, itās worth considering what really goes into the DNA of an online social platform.
I once worked on an industry-specific social platform of sorts at a (now defunct) startup. They came up with the brilliant strategy to invent a bunch of randomized nonsense visitor stats for āclaim this!ā profiles of various people in their industry (scraped from god knows which email/phone databases) to get people to join the platform. I pushed back on the idea of essentially bald-face lying to everyone as a wise marketing strategy, but I was overruled. If memory serves, I ended up building this feature. Yup, I just went along with it. Hey, a fella (and relatively new dad!) has to make a living! š«
It remains one of my biggest regrets of all time. I think about what I did often. I was one of them! One of āthose programmersā who produces bullshit at the behest of faulty biz dev asshattery. Never again.
Which is why this story about Reddit founders making hundreds of fake profiles so site looked popular from all the way back in 2012 is so enraging (and I rather wish Iād known about this already). Reddit quite literally faked its popularity in order to become popular. Yes, itās true that jumpstarting large online communities is super challenging, and one can be forgiven for giving into a certain bit of temptation to mask any whiff of appearing like a ghost town. Yet Iām certain Reddit could have found a more ethical route than simply seeding their database with fake usersā¦even all the way back 11 years ago. (And before a reply guy waltzes in to tell me that well actually all the big social platforms seeded their communities/content like this, I really donāt give a shit. Itās wrong when Reddit does it. Itās wrong when Facebook does it, or Twitter, or whoever. Donāt do it.)
Words matter. Intent matters. Artistry matters. Integrity matters. And karmaās a, well, you know. I think Redditās seeing the ācomes aroundā end of the cycle playing out right now, andāthough I wish otherwiseāI doubt weāll witness a sudden illumination and genuine display of repentance at Snoo HQ. Expect even more #enshittification in the days ahead.
I used to blog a ton about #freelancing and maximizing your productivity and success as a āfree agentā ā I even tried running a local meetup here in the #Portland area.
It just occurred to me I hadnāt done much of that in a long while. I do still talk about #creativity and time management on occasion in my Creator Class newsletter and in the podcast, but not specifically about working as a freelancer.
As I look ahead to some of the product-driven work Iām participating in this year, I think it may be a good time to start this up again. Juggling client projects and product efforts (including open source software) is always this intricate dance of managing energy levels and expectations (and income!). Takes a lot of practice. Iām not saying Iāve reached āexpert levelā or anythingā¦but itās a nice feeling to know Iām performing much better now than in years prior.
One might perhaps come to the conclusion after following me in recent times that Iām just a technology skeptic. I must believe all the tech bros are jerks, and I hate anything newfangled. Cue the Old Man Yells at Cloud memes.
But believe me when I say this: Iām not a technology skeptic. Iām a bad technology skeptic. If I think a technology is fundamentally poor and ill-thought out, destined to (maybe) benefit a select few at the expense of the many, Iām going to call it as I see it. And weāve had a bucketload of bad technology hype cycles lately.
But one major technology Iām actually extremely bullish on, one that I think does have tremendous potential, is the concept of the metaverse. And no, I donāt mean anything actually being built by Meta right now. I mean the initial conception of the term, which I understand to be a pervasive digital virtual reality where what you do matters.
Many of us use what I might call āproto-metaversesā all the time. My favorite is Minecraft. My kids and I have a handful of home servers we engage in regularly. And what we do there matters. If we build something today and come back a week later, itās still there. If somebody drops a TNT block next to the wall of my house and it detonates, my house is destroyed. If I decide to go off exploring and find an exciting new landscape to play in, I can write down the coordinates and teleport there again in the future. I have memories of things Iāve done in Minecraft, just like I have fond memories of playing the Myst series of gamesāas if I were actually there, in a real place. Thatās the magic of digital worlds.
The first metaverse I ever experienced was Second Life. (This was almost two decades ago!) I spent a lot of time there, built a lot of things, made friends. I ended up choosing to leave because I got really addicted. I was spending too much time in my āsecond lifeā and not enough time in my āfirst lifeā. Thatās the danger of this technology. The addiction.
Still, Iām an unabashed fan of metaverses, and Iām always excited to hear about and possibly try out new ones. What Iām ultimately hoping for is that the World-Wide Web evolves into a #metaverse platform. If I could easily invite a bunch of friends over to ājaredwhite.comā and we could hang out in VR, wouldnāt that be amazing? I like think so. But it needs to be a truly #openweb solution, built atop open specs and open protocols. The worst thing in the world would be if any one corporation ends up āowning the metaverse.ā We must resist that at all costs.
New technologies come along and inevitably we call them progress. And any detractors of said technologies are immediately labeled luddites.
(Which for some reason is a pejorative even though the history of terrible working conditions in early factories is undeniableāand with all of the benefits brought on by the Industrial Revolution, it was by no means a clear āwinā when it comes to ethics, humane treatment of labor, and corporate responsibility!)
Yes, new technologies arrive on the scene, and folks look at them all starry-eyed and imagine how stellar the future will be.
But we rarely take the opportunity to consider the costs of these additions. I donāt mean just monetary costs (although thatās legit). I mean ethical, cultural, sustainable, mental, spiritual costs. What do we gain, sure, but also, what do we lose?
Free things in life are rarely free.
I was once given a free hot tub. Free!! Incredible, right? Turned out to be a terrible mistake.
It was going to cost money to set the hot tub on a proper foundation. It was going to cost money to clean. It was going to cost money to hook it up to the necessary plumbing. So we never set it up. An unused hot tub sat there in our back yard for months. (Years?)
And that wasnāt the worst part of itā¦it ended up costing us real money to haul it away when it came time to move!
The free hot tubā¦wasnāt free at all.
Technology is rarely additive.
The philosophy of #minimalism has taught me to realize that every new thing I add to my lifeāwhether itās an object or a technology or a social network or a hobby or a job or even a friendshipā¦everything comes with a cost.
Sometimes those costs are well worth it. Few obvious downsides and the potential rewards are significant. Worth the effort. Worth the risk.
But thereās always a cost. And sometimes the cost is just too damn high.
Any time someone tells you about a mind-blowing new technology (web3) thatās going to revolutionize everything (#generativeAI) and change the world forever (self-driving cars), ask them what the costs are. If they canāt tell you, either they donāt know (because theyāre ignorant), or they donāt want you to know (because theyāre grifters).
Either way, do your due diligence. And inform the oncoming hordes shouting Luddites! Luddites! that their myopic view of history needs profound correction.
Iāve been thinking a lot about nostalgia lately. As an artist, to a certain extent you donāt want to lean on nostalgia. It feels lazy. You should always be pushing the envelope, trying to be edgy and provocative. Original in some sense.
But nostalgia can be a worthy muse if you let it. The moment you cross over from old & tired to retro & vibrant isnāt always easy to pin down, but itās absolutely real. And to master the subtle art of the throwback, the revival, the clever pasticheā¦well, thereās nothing lazy about that. #creativity
Fun fact: this is the first post Iāve made in quite some time using a CMS (Content Management System).
But wait! you say. Your #website is built with Bridgetown. Are you saying Bridgetown now has its own CMS?
Well, I could tell you, but then Iām afraid Iād have to kill you. š
A brief bit of context here: Iāve built a number of CMSes over the many years Iāve been a web developerāseveral just in the era of Jekyll. Because of that prior experience, I have deeply resisted building a CMS for Bridgetown because I know how incredibly āeasyā it seems at first and how incredibly hard it actually is in practice.
But I think I may have finally cracked this nut, and it has less to do with building a CMS per se and more to do with building a platform and a toolkit which lets developers build themselves a CMS. Thatās all I can say for now. Stay tuned. š
Over the years, Iāve settled on Bear as my note-taking Mac/iOS app of choice for most ābrain dumpsā / ādraft postsā / āfuture content ideasā purposes due to its understated minimalist design, excellent Markdown support, easy tagging, and rock-solid sync between all my Apple devices. (I also use Craft, but thatās reserved more for āknowledge baseā information like technical solutions, saved bookmarks, and other resources.) Most of the recent content on this blog, my newsletter, and my podcast all start life as #writing in Bear.
But donāt I feel like a dummy today! I only just learned that Bear features easy wiki-style links to other notes. Discovering this gave me a brilliant idea: I should create a Bear Home Page for housing an up-to-date presentation of my most relevant notes in a freeform setting. (To be clear on terminology, I donāt mean a āhomepage on the webāā¦Iām talking about a special note in Bear thatās pinned to the top for easy access.)
So thatās exactly what Iām working on today. By defining headings and sections, adding lists, linking to specific notes I want to focus on in the near-term, adding additional context, etc., I can create a living document which is easy to navigate and review.
I realize that for the note-taking/wiki-obsessed people out there, this may seem like a well, dāoh! moment, but Iāve never been terribly successful at managing my notes. Good at taking them, not so good at reviewing them. Iām hopeful this new āhome pageā will really help me stay focused in the new year. What do you think?
All right, this took me way too long to fix, but Iāve taken a page right out of Dave Winerās playbook (recent nudges here) and changed my feed output so ātitlelessā posts (like this one) are truly titleless. Any feed reader these days worth its salt should work with that just fine. Now I just need to get in the habit of microblogging more often here, rather than on Mastodon! (Even though I love Mastodonā¦) #website#writing