~hedy's blogroll - BlogFlock

Denote -> Obsidian - Baty.net

2026-04-16T13:59:32.000Z

Uh oh:

Matcha email TUI - Baty.net

2026-04-16T09:27:09.000Z

A beautiful and functional email client for your terminal, built with Go and the charming Bubble Tea TUI library. Never leave your command line to check your inbox or send an email again!

I'm a sucker for anything TUI. Matcha was easy enough to install and configure, but it doesn't feel ready quite yet. Something to keep an eye on if you're looking for a terminal-based email client. I'll stick with Mutt or Aerc for now, though.

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Nuances - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-04-16T09:15:00.000Z

I realised that the thing that bothered me the most about that stupid tabs discussion was the shallowness. Vertical vs horizontal tabs in a browser is not a deep philosophical topic worth of major explorations, that goes without saying, but you can still approach it with some nuances. And that’s the main issue with most of modern discourse: everything is—or tries to be—some sort of hot-take. Because being reasonable is boring. Being reasonable and working through a topic doesn’t generate strong reactions. And you don’t go viral for having a reasonable opinion.

Take this piece for example, titled “Vertical browser tabs are better and you should use them”. There’s an immediate question that needs to be answered there: better based on what? In David’s case, the argument boils down to essentially this:

It’s a simple matter of screen real estate. Virtually every modern computer display is widescreen, which is to say it’s wider than it is tall. Websites and web apps, meanwhile, are practically always vertical experiences.

This is as reasonable as it is wrong. I am staring at a 32-inch 4k monitor at this very moment. My browser window is almost always either square-ish or vertical. Because most sites are not designed to scale above a certain width in pixels, so there’s no point in wasting horizontal screen real estate. But it does make sense to use vertical space since I can read more text at once without having to scroll. So in my case, having tabs on the side makes absolutely no sense.

And mine is just one potential use case that throws the entire “vertical browser tabs are better” argument out the window. I’m sure there are plenty more. And this is not just true for this pointless “debate”. It’s true for most things. But modern discourse moves too fast to go deep into anything. Discussions tend to stay surface level with hot takes flying left and right. You see it in tech, you see it in politics—especially in politics—you see it everywhere.

There’s also people who think that taking nuances into consideration is a bad thing altogether, because the only reason why someone might want to drill down into a topic is to drag a discussion into the mud and stop progress, obviously. We can ignore the fact that complexity hides in the details, while agreeing on something at a surface level is as easy as it is pointless. But maybe that’s the goal sometimes: to agree on something at a surface level, feel all good about ourselves and achieve absolutely nothing in the process.

The overwhelming majority of ideas and opinions exist on a spectrum. And I am of the belief that sharing and debating where we should position ourselves, on that spectrum, is important. And if you disagree, you're wrong.

Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.

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Wednesday, April 15, 2026 - Baty.net

2026-04-15T08:51:30.000Z

Sitting in the car, eating Wendy's, watching Lake Michigan (2026). Leica MP.

There are a lot of things I should be doing today, but I don't feel like doing any of them.

Speaking of not feeling like doing something. Taxes are due today. I have a service take care of the heavy lifting, which is great. All I needed to do was write checks, put them in envelopes, and get them to the post office in time. I owed much more than expected, and the 2026 estimates are shocking. I felt blindsided, but looking through the documents I can see why. Then, while putting the paperwork away, I noticed that the copy of the check (yes, I still send them checks) was missing the dollar amount. I wrote the long form, just not the number in the box. That's going to come back and bite me. Time for some bourbon.

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Paul Ford - Inviting the Aliens - Baty.net

2026-04-15T08:41:02.000Z

Inviting the Aliens, by Paul Ford (Ftrain)

I’ve been vibe-coding proofs of concepts at work to help things along. I’ve never thought harder or more densely and to less effect.

I also have been vibe-coding a bunch of little utilites and whatnot. It can be exhilerating or exhausting, depending on the day. Most days it's both.

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Installing Linux on a ThinkPad is... - Baty.net

2026-04-15T08:23:53.000Z

mike: "Installing Linux on an old Thi…" - social.lol:

Installing Linux on an old Thinkpad is “middle aged dad decides to get fit by doing toe touches in his boxers” except you don’t get disgusted & give up. Instead you blog about how awesome it is until it’s not and then you stop blogging for six months in hopes everyone forgets.

That's not me. At all. Nope.

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Tuesday, April 14, 2026 - Baty.net

2026-04-14T17:32:39.000Z

Bulletin board status

I can't find my activation code for Davinci Resolve Studio and I'm furious with myself about it. I tried the new v21 beta with built-in RAW photo editing. It's a bit primitive now, but it will improve. If I were primarily a videographer, this would be a welcome addition. Also, it's one more option for photo editing on Linux, which is nice.

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Vertical Tabs - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-04-14T14:15:00.000Z

The other day, as I was driving home, I had the bad idea of listening to the most recent Waveform podcast, where they were discussing vertical vs horizontal tabs in browsers (and many other things). The whole discussion was truly painful to listen to, you’d hope people who talk tech for a living have some more elaborate takes on this kind of stuff, and yet, the whole discussion was very, very dumb.

I am not going to discuss the merits of vertical vs horizontal tabs, but I am going to say that if you are a fan of vertical tabs, you probably want to check out browser.horse, which has, in my opinion, the best take on vertical tabs I’ve seen so far.

It’s obviously not for everyone, especially because it’s a browser with a subscription—for what should probably be an add-on on top of your regular browser—but still, it is a clever idea, that goes beyond simply putting tabs on the side.

Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.

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SilverBullet+ - Baty.net

2026-04-14T13:23:51.000Z

SilverBullet+: The Programmable Personal Knowledge Management Platform

SilverBullet+ is a knowledge management platform (fancy term for a “notes app on steroids”) built on markdown files. It combines a live-preview editor with wiki-style linking, a built-in database and query language, and a fully integrated Lua scripting environment — turning your notes into a programmable system that grows with you. It is private by default: your data lives on your machine as plain markdown files, always portable, always yours.

SilverBullet is cool, and turning it into an app makes it more accessible to people who don't want to self-host a web app.

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Davinci Resolve for RAW photo editing - Baty.net

2026-04-14T09:46:23.000Z

Ewen Bell about Davinci Resolve as a photo editor:

This little bit of news is going to be a huge moment in digital photography, and another blow to Adobe.

Davinci is powerful and complex to learn. I think this will make it unwieldy for MOST photographers.

Pretty cool, but if I wanted to use something complex and unwieldy to edit photos, I already have Darktable. What slice of the market would use this? I can't imagine it being more than a sliver. You know I'll try it anyway.

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Some design improvements here at baty.net - Baty.net

2026-04-13T15:58:11.000Z

Before and after

⚠ Content warning I talk about using AI to do stuff in this post. I know some of you want nothing to do with that. The parts actually written by AI are indicated.

I worked with Claude Code, using the amazing Impeccable skills, to clean up the layout and typography here. We spent about an hour and a half and I'm pleased with the results. Things are cleaner and more consistent.

After asking Impeccable for a /critique, it presented a list of issues and suggestions. We spent a few rounds reviewing and trying things. Claude would edit templates and CSS on the fly and I'd watch the (11ty) page reload and update in real time. Impeccable is geared specifically toward design. It's "Design fluency for AI harnesses".

I found the entire process to be a delight. I was giddy at times. It makes me feel like I can do anything.

Here's what it came up with (copied and pasted as is). It's long, but damn:

Claude Code's critique...

Design Health Score

Visibility of System Status (Score: 3)
Pagination state is clear; nothing else needed
Match System / Real World (Score: 2)
"Permalink #" is developer-speak; content types not visually distinct
User Control and Freedom (Score: 3)
RSS, search, pagination all present
Consistency and Standards (Score: 2)
--color-muted and --font-size-md referenced but undefined; cover images lose styling outside .post-body
Error Prevention (Score: 3)
Static blog, minimal to prevent
Recognition Rather Than Recall (Score: 2)
Notes look like broken posts, not a distinct type
Flexibility and Efficiency (Score: 2)
Welcome block repeated on every page-1 visit for returning readers
Aesthetic and Minimalist Design (Score: 2)
Welcome header competes with content; uniform card treatment flattens everything
Error Recovery (Score: 3)
N/A mostly
Help and Documentation (Score: 3)
Social links and bio help new visitors

Anti-Patterns Verdict

Not AI slop. The page is clean and doesn't trigger the obvious AI tells — no gradient text, no glassmorphism, no hero metrics, no glowing dark cards. The problem is the opposite: too generic in the direction of "blog template" rather than a specific design with personality.

Automated scan flagged one issue — "single font family" — which is a false positive. It analyzed the .njk files, saw only Hanken Grotesk referenced explicitly, and missed that Vollkorn is applied via CSS classes. Both fonts are active.

Overall Impression

The page does what it needs to do, but it makes no choices about how the three content types feel differently from one another. Posts, journal entries, and notes all render in the same container with the same spacing and the same treatment. That works structurally, but misses the character of each type. The biggest win available here is giving notes especially a visual identity that's distinct from posts.

What's Working

The excerpt pattern. Using  to let the author control what shows in the feed is smart and produces a natural-feeling stream, not a wall of truncated cards.
Post meta. Date + tags at the top of each card is clean and well-weighted — it doesn't compete with the title.
Content routing. The three-way if/elif/elif in the template is handled correctly, including suppressing note titles on the feed. Good information architecture underneath.

/ end of Claude Code's critique

Then it listed what needed fixing and how we'd fix it. We decided to do the following:

Welcome header: removed entirely
Social links: relocated to footer (permanent, visible on all pages)
Footer: restructured to 3-column layout (copyright / social icons / nav links)
Notes: compact card — smaller meta (0.72rem, 70% opacity), smaller body (font-size-sm), narrower measure (52ch), tighter separator (space-md vs space-xl)

I mean, there's no way I could do this on my own. I wouldn't even try. And I would not have hired a professional to do it. It's just my blog. The world is different now. It's equal parts exhilerating and scary.

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What's scary about LLM use - Baty.net

2026-04-13T15:11:29.000Z

The thing that scares me about how good LLMs are getting, is that before long, everything is going to look good, and sound good. Everything will be well-written. The world is gonna be boring as hell.

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Monday, April 13, 2026 - Baty.net

2026-04-13T11:39:10.000Z

Contact sheets (2026).

I used Kevin's Boring Weather app instead of my janky shell script for annotating today's image. It's 90% of what I need. I might beg for the remaing 10%.

I'm a little ashamed to admit that I may have finally done it. I've been using Obsidian for notes/planning for a couple of weeks and it's working really well. I don't love the UI or editing a lot of text there, but the tooling around it makes it quicker and easier to get to useful than Emacs and Org mode. For me, anyway. Although I'm writing this in Emacs, so I'm obviously still working through the details :).

I'm testing MacWhisper for dictation and translations. Sometimes I don't feel like typing. You're soaking in it.

I really need to clean up some of the typography and layout around here. It feels off in a bunch of small ways. Remember that time like a week ago when I completely rebuilt this blog and then stopped posting here? That was pretty much the definition of me.

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Emacs: new modus-themes-exporter package live today @ 15:00 Europe/Athens - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-04-13T00:00:00.000Z

[ The stream will be recorded. You can watch it later. ]

Today, the 13th of April 2026, at 15:00 Europe/Athens I will do a live stream in which I will develop the new modus-themes-exporter package for Emacs.

The idea for this package is based on an old experiment of mine: to get the palette of a Modus theme and “export” it to another file format for use in supported terminal emulators or, potentially, other applications.

My focus today will be on writing the core functionality and testing it with at least one target application.

Prior work of mine from my pre-Emacs days is the tempus-themes-generator, which was written in Bash: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/tempus-themes-generator.

Sunday, April 12, 2026 - Baty.net

2026-04-12T11:40:38.000Z

Bamboo Sculpture (2026). Yashica-Mat LM / HP5

I guess I'm posting this here, today. The past few days have been all about Ghost over at Coping Mechanism so that's enough of that, right?

I don't suffer from burnout, but I might die from fizzle-out, though.

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Ghost theme editor - Baty.net

2026-04-12T10:47:52.000Z

synapsmedia/ghost-theme-editor:

Edit theme files directly inside Ghost Admin with a completely client-side editor.

This solves a real problem with running a Ghost blog and just wanting to make a few little tweaks to the theme.

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A lunch without alcohol - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-04-12T00:00:00.000Z

This is an entry from my journal. I describe a small part of life in the mountains as well as my experience at an Easter celebration.

On Sundays it is common for people here to prepare souvla (barbecued meat on a long skewer), if the weather is good enough. Other dishes are also available, so there is something for everyone. Though meat is the main serving. Winter in the mountains is usually too cold or rainy for souvla. But the other months provide ample opportunities.

Today was one such day. I was invited to attend a lunch not too far from my house. Nominally, it was about celebrating Easter. Though in practice we were all there for the food and the companionship. Few ever bring up religious topics on such occasions.

There were lots of people present, all of which I have met before in other gatherings. Last time I was there all the people around me consumed vast quantities of alcohol. Beer, wine, zivania, and whiskey. I abstain from alcohol, though I never tell anyone in person why. When somebody asks if I want some, I simply respond with something like “no, I quit long ago—thank you!”.

What helps my case is that the tone of my voice and body language communicate an unequivocal view. This is basically the opposite of how a shy person responds, where they say one thing while they invite others to tease out something else.

People are respectful when you draw clear boundaries. Those who are not qualify as bullies, which you can then deal with more forcefully. That I do with alacrity. But in the vast majority of cases everybody means well.

When someone appears pushy yet has no obvious bad intention, it is because they get mixed signals from you. They will nudge you to answer affirmatively, perhaps by appealing to your sense of camaraderie: “here, have a shot in the name of our newfound friendship”. And if you do not know how to respond firmly, you will eventually yield, thus positively reinforcing the original push.

I do not talk about my life choices. I am not interested in converting anyone to my views and the manner of my living. Why I abstain from alcohol is my own business: in short, I prioritise longer-term health over scoring meaningless points at the lunch table. Plus, I am perfectly sociable without pampers. If others choose to consume it, I respect their choices. I was a bartender for many years, after all.

The table today had all the usual offerings of alcoholic beverage. There were bottles of wine, cans of beer, a freezer packed with zivania, and plenty of ice cubes for those who wanted to blend whiskey with cola. Some folks who were sitting further away from me were drinking as usual. Though those around me chose to abstain for once. Someone remarked that “we are already having a good time, we do not need the drinks”. I nodded without saying a word.

My lifestyle can be summed up as “do, not tell” or, better, “master it first, teach it afterwards”.. If I believe in something, I embed it in my activities. And if it is benign, then I am the embodiment of its efficacy. I do not need to preach what is obvious. Others will notice the effects and try the same. And if they do not discern the pattern, then they are not ready for it, anyway. I find talk that is devoid of action to be disempowering. It inevitably devolves into a vicious cycle of overthinking and attendant restlessness.

There are no deep conversations at such gatherings. Topics range from political commentary, to one’s adventures at the hunt, to matters of farming, to some construction work that is being planned. Whatever lacunae are filled in by blanket generalisations. You learn to not take anything seriously. It is innocuous chit-chat. Its function is to strengthen the sense of trust among those present. Anyone who has a strong urge to be pedantic will suffer at such an event.

Even though I am on good terms with everyone here, I do not have any friends. Nobody knows exactly what my interests are and how much in-depth I am willing to go in any given exchange. They have a vague sense of what I do, but are otherwise not curious to learn more. I have long accepted that my interests lead me down the path of loneliness. It is virtually impossible to meet like-minded people in a sparsely populated region. This is partly why I spend more time hiking than mingling with the locals.

I am also dismayed to observe, time and again, that the local communities are dying of old age. There are no young people here and no prospect of there being any in the foreseeable future. The women I met an aeon ago gave me lectures about baby machines and the familiar talking points. To think of the greatest power of all, to birth a new form of life, in such demeaning terms… I remained silent and left.

Millenials in my part of the world grew up with the promise of the comfortable life, having been fed the tale of inexorably expanding economic prosperity. Well, except those of us who were already poor—we were earmarked for the meat-grinder. When the 2008+ financial crisis hit them, they joined the various Occupy/Indignados movements to announce to the world how angry they were for not getting what they thought was their birthright.

We are still reeling from that crisis. It was, at its core, a dismantling of the underlying value system and the expectations that went along with it. Many of those people never moved on. They were broken and defeated; a “lost generation” as the media was correctly portraying it.

I am a man of action. With severely limited means, yes, but with the attitude to fight until the bitter end. I like to make things happen and get bored when thinking leads to nowhere. In this case, however, I have no solution. Maybe I have not been daring or creative enough in my approach, in which case I shall change my ways and try anew.

There goes another Easter - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-04-11T00:00:00.000Z

This is an entry from my journal.

The church bells were ringing in the distance. The first explosions echo in the valley. It is almost Easter in this part of the world. In about ten minutes there will be fireworks. I finished a long day’s work and then went for the nightly hike with my dogs. Walking with my canine friends is among my favourite activities.

The season is pleasant in secular terms. We are at the tail end of winter in the mountains. It is still cold during daytime, though it starts to get sunnier. The last heavy rainfall was on Thursday. Another is expected next week, as days become more dry. Flowers are popping up everywhere, while the grass reaches its maximum height at about half a metre tall. Most trees need a few more weeks to blossom. The oak trees take their turn fairly late at around May.

In religious terms, however, we are asked to go through induced grief. All around us there is life yet our mental state revolves around death. The week of Easter is about pretending to suffer along with Jesus. “Pretending” is the operative term. If you are actually suffering, you do not have to wait for this time of the year to go through the torment. And, conversely, if you are not suffering, then you likely have the luxury to put on a show.

Unlike Christmas, Easter has always had a more religious undertone in my experience. Christmas is practically not a religious period. There is the myth of the flying grandpa who brings gifts galore, trolls that seek to cut down the tree of life only to be lured away from their mischief by treats, and children going around the neighbourhood singing songs in exchange for pocket money. In short, it is whimsical and fun. I love it!

As for the religious story, it essentially is about a child being born. Every stable family considers that a gift from the heavens. Theodoros and all such variations (Diodoros, Diogenis, Herodotos, Apollodoros, etc.) are ancient names, after all, describing the newborn as a gift from a certain deity or the divine at-large. This goes back millennia. We do not need to search much further than the gratitude of the parents to appreciate the symbolism of baby Jesus.

By comparison, Easter is the reign of darkness. The social pressure to behave in certain ways is much more pronounced. It starts fourty days in advance and culminates on this day. There is increased church-going or, at least, exhortations to that effect, and the emphasis is on doctrine. There exists the Easter bunny and such lighthearted elements but their role is marginal. The focus is on propriety and the correctness of the creed.

It must be nice to be part of a group. To not push back and simply go with the rest. You always have friends and attend all the parties. I cannot be that person. I tried it once and it almost broke me. Part of my personality is to not give in to social pressure. If I do not feel a certain way, and if the matter affects me personally, I will not do it solely to please others.

Fundamentally, nobody has control over me. This goes back to when I was a child, though a more poignant example comes from my teenage years. All my friends and virtually every boy my age was a smoker. I did not try it once. Not even out of curiosity. My mates never attempted to pressure me into smoking because they knew it was a lost cause.

I am the same with the performative aspects of religiosity. I will not pretend to feel pain when I am not. I cannot act like I am suffering when I am feeling as energetic as ever. And, more importantly, I do not check the calendar to decide when to do what I consider right: I just do it without exceptions.

I am, nevertheless, considerate enough to not argue for the sake of arguing. Intellectual matters require a level of commitment to the topic that the vast majority of people do not have. For those cases, I remain silent, wish everybody all the best, and mind my business.

My attention is on the here-and-now. The temperatures will rise next week before dropping back to normal for the foreseeable future. I have lots of plans for my land and am confident that my hard work will be fruitful. The only pain I feel is the one I bring unto myself by committing many hours of my day to manual labour. I find it empowering to witness the compounding effects of my industry; to know that I can rely on the infrastructure I have set up and to continuously build on top of what I already did.

I have done so much already and am eager to continue with the same intensity. However, the rapidly deteriorating economic situation has hindered my house-related initiatives. I will not do anything here at least for another year or two. It is a pity, though I must wait for the next opportunity. Such is life. We deal with the circumstances as they evolve. Our duty, in the meantime, is to retain our vitality and be poised to act.

As for Easter, everybody will revert to business as usual within a few hours. We all know it is a shadow play of spirituality, yet find it expedient to act as if something grand is happening.

Frank Meeuwsen - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-04-10T11:00:00.000Z

This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Frank Meeuwsen, whose blog can be found at blog.frankmeeuwsen.com.

Tired of RSS? Read this in your browser or sign up for the newsletter.

People and Blogs is supported by the "One a Month" club members.

If you enjoy P&B, consider becoming one for as little as 1 dollar a month.

Let's start from the basics: can you introduce yourself?

Hi, I'm Frank. A somewhat older, beardy, less grumpy digital Gen-X'er from Utrecht, the Netherlands. Since October 2025 I've been self-employed. I work as a trainer/coach/writer on using AI in a creative and responsible way and I help knowledge workers with their digital awareness, digital skills and personal knowledge management.

My whole career has been online. Since I stumbled on this internet-thing in 1993, graduated in 1996 and joined one of the first free Internet Service Providers in the Netherlands. We would now call it a startup. Back then we were cowboys doing crazy stuff.

In 1997 I started at an internet agency with two of my close friends. I left in 2009 to become self-employed, had some incredible adventures as a freelancer at the Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, telecom companies, publishing houses. An IoT startup brought me back into agency life, went bust in 2019, and I ended up back at my old agency for 6 years. In October 2025 I went solo again.

I live in Utrecht with my lovely wife and two kids. We are obedient to the true master of our family, Bowie the cat. We spend time reading, watching movies, visiting concerts, going on walks, playing D&D as a family and mostly just chilling through our lives.

I recently became a member of the Metal Business Club. A business club for anyone who also likes their music loud. Which gives you an idea of my musical taste.

What's the story behind your blog?

In 2000 I stumbled upon a Dutch site from a guy who was just describing his day-to-day life. Sharing links, publishing short posts. I worked at an internet agency where we made our own CMS but I had never seen this thing called a blog. I clicked through on an orange button with the word Blogger on it, signed up, made my first post of a site I just visited... and that was that. I was hooked. Even though we made CMS systems for our clients, it hadn't occurred to me I could do this myself. I didn't need an editorial team, a studio, a radio tower. I could just... blog. I named my first blog Punkey, which was my nickname on IRC in the years before. And that's how it all started.

I fully engaged in the Dutch blogosphere. Since it was so small, we all got to know each other pretty fast, also because of the meetups we organized at least once every six months or so. I got active in a Dutch online magazine called about:blank, where we wrote about the Dutch blogscene. We also hosted weblogawards called the Dutch Bloggies.

In 2010 I wrote a book "Bloghelden" (Blog Heroes) about the history of the Dutch blogosphere. You can still read it for free online if your Dutch is OK.

My first blog Punkey.com lasted only five years, from July 2000 to July 2005. But after that I had plenty of other blogs:

Frank-ly (2002 - 2009) was the first agency blog in the Netherlands. I started it, left the agency in 2009, the blog continued without me. It's no longer live. What does live on is my infamous post from 2006 where I write off Twitter as a fad. One of my better mistakes.

Whatsthenextaction (2004-2008) was my English-language blog on Getting Things Done. A forerunner in what later became the productivity blogging industry. At some point it got picked up by CNN and Time Magazine. Web Archive Link.

Lifehacking (2007-2015) is the one that still stings a little. With a growing group of authors we put this term on the Dutch map. I tried to turn it into a sustainable online and offline publication. That didn't work out the way I wanted. In 2015 the site and all the posts passed to new ownership.

Digging the Digital (2014-2023) is the longest running blog I had. I changed the plumbing a few times (Ghost, Jekyll, WordPress) and it's the blog where I wrote a lot about the indieweb and owning your own platform.

Digging the Digital (2023 - present) Same name but a different URL. No more difficult titles (for now), just my name in the URL. Simple. WordPress became too heavy and too much for me. I wanted to get back to the basics of blogging, writing. Simple pieces of typing and not too difficult with themes, plugins and formatting. So I run everything on the great Micro.blog service.

What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?

It is not a really strict set of rules I follow. Actually, it never was. I always have a swipe-file with ideas in Obsidian, I've collected through the years. But to be honest, that's a big pile of files I hardly look at. Since 2025 I use Sublime as an Idea Discovery Engine. Sublime is the lovechild of Pinterest and Obsidian. You can save links, texts, video, images, audio, podcast-snippets. Put them on a canvas, connect them, find related ideas from other Sublime users and mold your own thoughts. I love to use Sublime to find new ideas, connect them and use it as a jump-off point for my own writing.

Besides that, blogposts also appear when I just have a thought. Or something I see and want to respond to. So nothing fancy. Just writing.

Sometimes I have Claude Cowork interview me on a subject or idea and use Hex (open source speech to text tool) to talk it oud loud. The unfiltered mess that comes out goes into Obsidian, where I puzzle the pieces into an actual post. It's surprisingly effective for me.

I don't have AI write the post for me. I tried this in the past, it never worked out really well. The voice is off, the thinking isn't mine. AI helps me shape my thoughts, but I stay in the driver's seat to publish the finished post.

And then there's the post-publish ritual: Somewhere between 10 seconds and 10 hours later, I spot the typos. Every blogger does this. Don't let AI ruin that experience of post-publish-typo-spotting!

Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical space influences your creativity?

I need it to be quiet. That's it. I need to focus on what I write and how the story evolves on screen. It doesn't matter if I'm in my studio, in the living room or somewhere in a coworking space. A physical space doen't influence my creativity. I've been blogging for so long, I don't need a specific creative environment to get me started. Just the energy, time and half of an idea.

A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack?*

Right now, everything runs on Micro.blog. It's a Hugo based blog with some specifics for the Micro.blog service but that's it. Locally I use Obsidian to write, with the Micro.publish-plugin from Otávio. I also use Drafts for shorter posts sometimes, in which I use an action to publish directly on my site.

For images and screenshots, I use the Bulk MB Image Uploader MacOS Shortcut from Jarrod Blundy's Heydingus Shortcuts Library and tweaked it a bit. It's not a perfect setup but it works. I might vibecode a better setup in the near future with these building blocks. Maybe create my own editor with shortcuts and workflows that are tailored to my way of working.

Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?

I would definitely stay focused on one domain and one name. I've had so many different domain names for different types of blogs, because I thought I needed all these different platforms and focus. Sometimes it is useful, especially when I use blog software for commercial purposes. But my personal site, from the early 2000-days to now, I would try to keep it more focussed on the same domain. While changing weblog software on the background. You could say I'm Jack-Batying Light ;-) (all the love to Jack, he is pushing the possibilities of blogging software!)

Financial question since the Web is obsessed with money: how much does it cost to run your blog? Is it just a cost, or does it generate some revenue? And what's your position on people monetising personal blogs?

I only pay for my domains and hosting. I try to keep old domains as long as possible. The yearly costs of domains in total are €55. Micro.blog is $50 a year (€42). So give or take €100 a year. I don't create direct revenue from the blog. But because I've been around so long it gave me an extensive network of interesting people who want to work with me on digital fitness, AI and new technology. So there are indirect revenues, which I think is the best way in the long run. If people want to monetize their personal blog, go ahead! I don't mind you sell your zine, stickers, workshop and other stuff through your blog. Just don't put ads on them. Or do it the Dense Discovery way, with artisanal, value-aligned sponsors who fit in the format.

Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And also, who do you think I should be interviewing next?

I am so happy to see a renaissance of the personal internet. New search engines, cross-overs to digital gardens and personal knowledge management. That said, let me first drop some bloggers who have been around as long as the web.

Dave Winer's Scripting.com, the OG. The Blogfather. Without him, blogging, RSS and podcasting would not be as open as it is today.
Ton Zijlstra's Interdependent Thoughts, my dear friend who did keep his domain and blogging setup going for all those years.
Peter Rukavina's blog, whose posts I love to read because of his stories on Prince Edwards Island, printing, art, his family and just... life!

Some others worth recommending

Tracy Durnell's Mind Garden, I love her style of writing, her thinking and her weeknotes.
Felienne Hermans, her published newsletter with critical notes on AI and education. Scroll down in an edition for the English version
Austin Kleon, his books, blog and newsletter are interconnected. I love how Kleon works and publishes.
Mike Sass, his Shellshark Scrolls are a weekly roundup at the intersection of the indieweb and the fediverse.

Final question: is there anything you want to share with us?

I have been quiet on my blog lately, something that happens to most of us. For me, it is because of work and a sideproject I'm working on. This is called CreativeNotes, in which I interview creative professionals in the Netherlands about how they use paper notes in their creative process. I'm exploring that pivotal moment when creatives consciously choose an analog tool over a screen. I want to document how paper notes not only help bring focus and flow, but often serve as the essential building blocks of the final creative product.

By collecting stories and notebook images from a wide range of creators, I'm looking for patterns in how ideas develop on paper. What I find may be useful for anyone who thinks for a living.

You can learn more about the project (in Dutch) here: https://notes.frankmeeuwsen.com/over-creativenotes

Keep exploring

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Emacs modus-themes live stream today @ 14:00 Europe/Athens - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-04-10T00:00:00.000Z

[ The stream will be recorded. You can watch it later. ]

At 14:00 Europe/Athens I will hold a live stream about Emacs. Specifically, I will work on my modus-themes package.

The idea is to write more tests and refine the relevant functions along the way.

I am announcing this -45 minutes before I go live. I will keep the chat open in case there are any questions.