~hedy's blogroll - BlogFlock

Software Design Meetup [Feb. 11th] - James' Coffee Blog

2026-02-05T16:11:24.000Z

On Wednesday, February 11th at 7pm - 8:30pm UK time I am hosting an event I’m calling the “Software Design Meetup” online.

This meetup is for anyone interested in the design of software and technology. In particular, if you are fascinated by the question "How do we design better software?", this meetup is for you.

We’ll start with an opening question:

What is one software feature or application you think is exceptionally well designed, and why?

Through this question, I hope we can spend time thinking about:

What do we value in software, and why?
What design considerations make a piece of software more pleasant, and in what contexts?
Where do we wish software will be in ten years?
What interfaces do we wish existed in software?
And anything else that comes up!

I hope that by the end of the participants will have learned something new about designing technology, or about how technology is designed.

No programming or professional experience is required. Discussions about coding will be discouraged so more room can be left to talk about the how and why behind the software we want. All you need is an interest in technology to come along!

If you are interested in attending, please email me at readers@jamesg.blog and I will send you a calendar invite.

I'll be running this meetup under the IndieWeb Code of Conduct. While this isn't explicitly an IndieWeb event, the code of conduct on their website reflects how I will be running the event.

Adblocking ≠ Piracy - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-02-05T12:10:00.000Z

I told Kevin I was going to write this post since we were discussing this topic the other day. This is my half of the argument; maybe he’ll write an “Adblocking = Piracy” post on his site if he finds the time between one meeting and the other.

I am not the first person to write this post; I am sure I won’t be the last. Plenty of people have expressed their opinion on this subject, and so far, no consensus has been reached (and I suspect never will).

For me, the reason why the two are not the same is very simple. When I pirate something (a game, a TV show, a movie, music, you name it), the original, legal, implied agreement was pretty straightforward: someone created something and put it up for sale, and if you want that something, you have to exchange money in order to get access to said something. There are no ambiguities here, and it’s a fairly simple transaction. That’s how most of society works. There’s a more complex discussion we can have to figure out if piracy = stealing, but that’s a separate discussion, and it’s not relevant here.

With adblocking, on the other hand, the implied agreement is more complex. To start, while browsing the web, I don’t know upfront if the link I’m about to click on has ads or not. So the argument that you shouldn’t use adblockers because you have accepted to be served ads while consuming a specific piece of content is shaky at best in my view. I could see that argument being more valid if ads weren’t displayed straight away, and I was given the option to leave the site before ads were displayed to me, but this is not what’s happening on the web.

Then there’s the issue of what being served an ad means. Do I have to watch the ad? Does it have to be displayed on my screen? If ads are displayed on the sidebar of your website, and I keep that portion of the browser outside my screen on purpose, is that adblocking? I’m literally not allowing the ads on my screen after all. If the ads load and I have a script that, after 100ms, replaces them with pictures of cats, is that ok? If I design an adblocker that grabs all the ads on your page and moves them all to the bottom of the page, and I never reach that portion of the site, is that ok?

The moment your data has reached my computer, I should be free to interact with it however I see fit. And if I decide to strip away most of the junk you sent my way, it’s my right to do so, the same way it was my right to stand up and walk away or change channel when TV ads were running.

Adblocking is not piracy. And actually, I think more people should run adblockers. Actually, all people should run adblockers and force businesses to reconsider how they monetise their content.

But I’ll be curious to hear from the people who are in the “adblocking is piracy” camp. Kevin, go write that blog post.

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Global org-capture shortcut in KDE - Baty.net

2026-02-05T10:29:52.000Z

I like being able to create new Org mode tasks from anywhere, via a simple keyboard shortcut. This probably doesn’t justify a whole post, but here’s how I did it.

Create a script at ~/.local/bin/orgcapture.sh

Here’s the script:

#!/bin/bash
emacsclient -c -F '((name . "capture") (width . 80) (height . 34))' -e '(progn (org-capture) (delete-other-windows))'

In my Emacs config, I have a hook that tidies up the new frame:

(defun my/org-capture-finalize-hook ()
  "Close frame after org-capture if it was opened for capture."
  (when (and (> (length (frame-list)) 1)  ; More than one frame
             (frame-parameter nil 'client)) ; Frame created by emacsclient
    (delete-frame)))

(add-hook 'org-capture-after-finalize-hook 'my/org-capture-finalize-hook)

In KDE’s Settings, I added a new command in the Shortcuts settings that point to that script. I assigned it to F3.

Now I hit F3 any time and a small capture buffer pops up in a new frame. That’s it. If there’s a better method for doing this, let me know.

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Ad Blockers didn’t help kill the open web - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-02-04T17:20:00.000Z

In the spirit of the open web, I’m writing this post to disagree with something someone else has posted on their own site. Specifically, a post titled “Ad Blockers helped kill the open web” by Christian Heilmann.

I 100% agree with Christian when he writes that:

The experience for users who don’t employ [ad blockers] is different, though, to the extend that the web is becoming unusable.

What I disagree with is what follows:

Here’s the thing: I am 100% sure these things are connected. The more people block ads, the more aggressive advertising became. To the extend that a newspaper site of today reminds you of illegal download or porn sites of the early 2000s.

This is a generalization that’s maybe true in some cases. Maybe. Maybe if we’re only talking newspapers and other news sites, maybe that’s true. Again, maybe. I suspect there are other factors at play in the newspaper landscape, and it’s not just a matter of people blocking ads therefore, we need more ads.

But the title of the post isn’t “Ad Blockers helped kill newspapers” but rather “Ad Blockers helped kill the open web”. That’s a much different claim, one that I strongly disagree with.

The argument about not wanting to be tracked, I agree, is debatable. Some people don’t want to be tracked but are happy to do the tracking on their own sites. Still, I do think it should be my right not to be tracked around, and if the only way to do that is run tracker blockers, then so be it.

But there is a difference between tracking prevention and blocking ads. Not every ad is predatory and designed to record your actions

There probably is a difference, but honestly, the burden shouldn’t be on the user to figure it out. And so blocking everything seems to be the best course of action. Also, you can totally still run ads even when people have adblockers. They can’t be programmatic ads, sure. And they might be less effective (debatable), but that’s not a problem for the users to deal with. It’s a business issue.

I agree that the web platform failed at figuring out a way to deal with monetisation. Everything ultimately falls back on Ads because it’s the only idea that “works”. But to me, the issue is that we have an overabundance of content, and most content is not worth paying for. Most content is not worth anything.

This post is worth nothing. Before the web, nobody was going to pay anything to read something like this. At best, I could write it and send it to a newspaper as an opinion piece, and maybe they’d be interested in publishing it. But for some reason, the web has morphed our perception of content to the point where everything needs to generate money because everything is considered valuable.

Well, it isn’t. The vast majority of sites on the web don’t need to make money. The vast majority of sites on the web cost very little to keep going. Adblockers have not killed those sites because there are no ads to be blocked there.

To circle back to the topic of payments, Flattr was a good idea. Funnily enough, I even had the same idea years ago before discovering that someone had already built it (obviously). But that’s also not really a solution. Because the reality of the web is that if you provide something for free, most people are not going to pay for it.

A physical paper I also skim at the store before purchasing it to see if it is worth it.

This is also an already solved problem. Sites can have paywalls or limited free content previews. It doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing approach.

The problem with the web is that for years, corporations and individuals, who were running big and small sites, were happy to slap Google ads on their sites and cash in on the money while simultaneously helping make Google the dominant force it is today. And then enshittification kicked in, and Google started fucking those people over. This is the classic case of a shortsighted move from a previous generation that is screwing the subsequent ones.

All that said, the open web is not dead. Maybe a small subset of sites whose business depended on publishing content for free is dying. And maybe it's a good thing. But I’m not gonna feel sorry for running dual adblockers both at the browser and the network level. Surveillance capitalism fucking sucks, and we should maybe start fixing that before we worry about adblockers.

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Wednesday, February 04, 2026 - Baty.net

2026-02-04T11:57:43.000Z

STATUS: Linux, today, I think
TODO: Work on friend’s website. Grocery shopping. Maybe car wash.
READING: Continued “Dungeon Crawler Carl”
LISTENING: Led Zeppelin, “Physical Graffiti”

I woke up thinking about why using Linux makes me feel good. It isn’t really an ethics thing or a Tim Cook’s Bad Behavior thing or even a Liquid Glass Sucks thing. It’s just a feeling I get with Linux that I no longer feel on macOS. It feels quieter. I feel like it’s just me and the computer. Like it’s mine, you know? It’s a Linux kind of day, today.

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Installing Fedora Workstation on the laptop - Baty.net

2026-02-03T17:01:27.000Z

My laptop has been running Fedora’s KDE spin. I first tried the stock Fedora with Gnome, but since my desktop was running KDE, I figured I should standardize on that.

Standardization is boring. :)

I installed Fedora Workstation this morning. I’d taken notes from the last time, and those helped speed things along. Still, it was 2 hours from installer to a fully functional system. I’m typing this post in Emacs and will deploy using Hugo shortly.

For the record, here are my raw notes from the installation. I need to work on the order in which I do things, but this wasn’t bad.

Installing Gnome on the Framework 2026-02-03

- sudo dnf install syncthing
- Settings
    - Trackpad -> Disable tap to click
- Install Gnome Tweaks
    - set caps lock to control
    - Emacs Input on
- sudo dnf install -y stow just fzf zoxide ripgrep
- Install Extension Manager (Flatpak)
- Installed Dash to Dock extension (via Extension Manager)
- Installed Clipboard Indicator extension (via Extension Manager)
- Installed starship curl -sS https://starship.rs/install.sh | sh
- stow bash
- stow pandoc
- sudo dnf install pandoc
- sudo dnf install texlive-scheme-full
- sudo dnf install neovim
- sudo dnf install rust cargo # (for eza, since eza is no longer in fedora repos)
- Build and install eza
    git clone https://github.com/eza-community/eza.git
    cd eza/
    cargo install --path .
- Add berkely-mono to ~/.local/share/fonts/berkeley-mono
- sudo dnf copr enable dejan/lazygit
- sudo dnf install lazygit
- Install Signal (Flatpak)
- stow auth
- stow git
- stow gnupg
- stow jrnl
- stow pass
- stow ssh
- stow aerc
- sudo dnf install aerc
- sudo dnf install emacs
- Configure emacs
    - git clone https://github.com/jamescherti/minimal-emacs.d.git ~/.config/emacs
    - git clone [my dotemacs repo] to ~/.config/emacs-mine
    - cp ~/.config/emacs-mine/pre-early-init.el ~/.config/emacs/
    - ln -s ~/Sync/emacs/manual-packages ~/.config/emacs-mine/
- sudo dnf install fastfetch
- Add "Start Syncthing" to Startup Applications in Gnome Tweaks app
- Install FireCode Nerd Font
- ...a nearly infinite number of little tweaks that I didn't record.

Since the laptop is meant to be a sort of satellite computer orbiting my desktop Mac Mini, I don’t need everything installed. The above covers just the basics.

One day I should write a script that takes care of this for me.

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A moment with a message from the past - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-02-03T08:20:00.000Z

Visited Palmanova plenty of times in my life but never paid attention the writings at the center of main square.

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IndieWeb Book Club: The Art of Explanation - James' Coffee Blog

2026-02-01T19:36:12.000Z

I am hosting the IndieWeb Book Club for this month, in which everyone interested is invited to read and write a blog post about The Art of Explanation: How to Communicate with Clarity and Confidence [Goodreads link]. The book was authored by Ros Atkins, a BBC journalist whose career has spanned radio on the BBC World Service and television on BBC News.

I read this book toward the end of last year and loved that the advice given was tactical, engaging, and interspersed with stories. I’d highly recommend it to anyone interested in refining their communication or explanation skills.

The Art of Explanation is quite a long read, and may not be easy to fit into a month. I’d highly recommend reading the introduction and a chapter or two that looks most interesting to you – this will be enough to both give you a feel for the book, (hopefully) many insights, and what you need to write a blog post for the Carnival. If you have time and the motivation, keep reading! I wanted to add the caveat that you don’t need to finish the book because I know how hard it can be to finish a book in a month. I still want you to feel encouraged to pick up this book and read a bit!

If you read any of The Art of Explanation and write a blog post about the book this month, please email me at readers [at] jamesg [dot] blog and I will add your submission to the round-up at the end of the month.

Nikita Prokopov - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-01-30T12:00:00.000Z

This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Nikita Prokopov, whose blog can be found at tonsky.me.

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

The People and Blogs series is supported by Coinciding Narratives and the other 122 members of my "One a Month" club.

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?

I am from Siberia. I studied CS there, got my first job in IT, and moved to Germany in 2018. Apart from programming, I am passionate about movies and filmmaking, UI design, experimented with standup, play badminton.

What's the story behind your blog?

I started writing in LiveJournal when I was still in uni, found a very nice Russian-speaking FP community there. Had a lot of eye-opening and often very heated discussions. Experimented with publishing in collaborative blogs (Habr, approximately Russian dev.to) but felt that author’s identity gets lost there.

Personal blog was my attempt at reaching a wider English-speaking community. Livejournal was already dying by then, and I was smart (lucky?) enough to not choose Medium (TBH, it looked very promising in 2014).

I am pretty happy with that decision. The older you get, the less you believe any startup has your best interests at heart. This leads to the only possible conclusion: self-hosting. It is hard to start but once you get your core audience there’s no limit to your growth.

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

I usually collect ideas for a while (pictures, phrases, links, thoughts). This happens in the background and can take years. Once it reaches critical mass, I sit down to organize it all in a coherent whole.

I don’t do separate drafts; it’s more like a pile of ideas — first pass — reflection — reorganization/cleanup — review — publish.

A mandatory part of the reflection phase is questioning myself: why am I writing this, nobody is going to read it, this is stupid/silly/trivial/too complicated. That’s how you know you are writing something truly great.

I usually ask a friend or two for feedback, Grammarly/ChatGPT/built-in Apple AI to do proofreading.

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

I can only write in Sublime Text because it’s a tool I use daily for coding and it has become second nature to me. I feel very uncomfortable in any other tool when some minor detail behaves slightly different from what I am used to. iA Writer is fantastic and I tried to reproduce it as close as possible, its only downside being not being Sublime Text.

I recently bought a NuPhy keyboard (Air60 v2 Cowberry) for my PC because of its compact size and cute looks, but was surprised that it sounds amazing and now I am addicted to typing on it.

Apart from that, no: any place, any time, any device. No sounds, no music, as I find both distracting.

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

I used to use Github pages but got tired of Ruby/Jekyll local installation breaking on macOS every year or so. I don’t blog often, so it’s the worst: you come back to your blog once every few months, completely without context, and you need to spend hours just restoring it to the status quo. Wrote my own engine in Clojure and has been happy ever since.

For some reason I didn’t go with the static generator route. I do a good old CGI style approach, with an actual server rendering your pages. It’s more fun that way, and allows for more interactivity, although I didn’t explore it much yet.

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

No, I am totally happy with where I am.

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?

Server costs €35/mo, but I co-host a lot of other projects there. Domain is €25/year.

I used to have Patreon, but it was not just for blog, also for my open-source projects. I never tried monetizing writing, not sure how well that would go, but I have nothing against it.

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

Off the top of my RSS feed:

Jamie Brandon https://www.scattered-thoughts.net/log/
Rakhim Davletkaliyev https://rakhim.exotext.com/
Marcin Wichary https://aresluna.org/
Ilya Birman https://ilyabirman.net/meanwhile/

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

Fira Code is a nice programming font you might like.

Keep exploring

Now that you're done reading the interview, go check the blog and subscribe to the RSS feed.

If you're looking for more content, go read one of the previous 126 interviews.

Make sure to also say thank you to Coinciding Narratives and the other 122 supporters for making this series possible.

Digital resistance - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-01-28T13:00:00.000Z

One of the blogs I’ve been paying closer attention to over the past few weeks is patrickrhone.net since he’s doing a great job in commenting and sharing both the awful things that are happening in Minnesota, where he’s based, but also some of the positives that are coming out from a moment this tragic.

Reading through his posts made me appreciate how important it is, in moments like these, that we still have the ability to share snippets of reality directly with each other.

Most people will likely remember when mainstream social media could be used as a force for change at a societal level. The Arab Spring is an obvious example. But that was more than a decade ago, and the social media landscape is very different right now, different to the point where I suspect something like that would not be allowed to happen again.

But the existence of personal sites, run by people who are willing to live and share their experience of what’s happening around them, remains an incredibly valuable tool in the context of digital resistance.

Judging by the reports I saw, there are attempts to crack down on Signal groups and the other ways people use to communicate and organize, so I think the more spread out, the more distributed, the more decentralized these movements are, the harder it becomes to keep them under control.

And maybe this is probably the best use case for something like Mastodon, where a multitude of instances can go online easily and make it very hard to censor them all. It might not have the same reach as the mainstream platforms, but I think it’s a lot more resilient and harder to silence.

Countries always have the option to go nuclear and block the entire Internet; we’ve all seen that happening before, but I suspect that’s harder to do in places where most of society needs the Internet to function properly.

And related to this, the other day Seth shared on his blog a link to macrowave and the first thought I had was that this—or similar ones—could become another incredibly useful tools in the context of organized resistance.

All this to say that if you have enough knowledge to set up a personal site, a forum, a Mastodon instance, or any other way to help people share what's happening and connect with each other, that’s probably something worth doing at this point in time.

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Sharing is caring - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-01-27T16:40:00.000Z

Even though he again misrepresented the point I made in a previous post and he also attributed me things I never said, I'm still going to share this post by Baldur Bjarnason, because he touches on many important topics worth thinking and talking about, especially at this specific moment in time, considering all the shit that's happening in the world.

I'm not gonna attempt to correct him, because I don't think it matters at this point. He's free to think I'm a nazi apologist, or sympathizer, or whatever else he thinks I am (and since I'm Italian, you should also assume I'm a Fascist while you're there). I’m not gonna lose sleep over that, but I will point out something that is important to me:

Not assuming ≠ tolerating. Not assuming ≠ excusing. Not assuming ≠ allowing something.

And one more note:

Because you absolutely should judge people based on the books they like. That’s what talking about books is for.

Why they like a book is as important, if not more important, than what book they like. That was the whole point of my post. And by knowing what book one likes you don’t also know why they like it, unless you engage in a conversation. As you said, that’s why we talk about books and why we talk about things in general. Because if we don’t talk, then we just assume.

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A Leica Q2 again - Baty.net

2026-01-25T14:25:00.000Z

Well the entire Leica SL2 kit has been sold, which left me with the GRIII as my only digital camera. I love the little Ricoh, but it doesn’t scratch my “Go out and take photos” itch.

I’ve gone back to a Leica Q2. I have previously owned a Q, Q2, and Q2 Monochrom, but eventually sold them due to other urges (mostly for digital M cameras).

Lately I’ve been wanting something smaller for carrying everywhere. The SL2 is ginormous and heavy. The Q2 isn’t exactly tiny, but it’s much easier to have with me than the SL2. I could have gone smaller with something like a Fuji, or even the GRIII, but I decided to stick with the Leica. I’ll still have the GRIII for when I don’t feel like carrying a camera, but the Leica goes everywhere else.

28mm is challenging for me, but I’m unashamed to crop when needed, and the 47MP sensor gives me plenty of leeway. The 1.7 Summilux is a great lens. The clever macro switch is a joy to use. It’s easy and intuitive to switch to manual focusing, which I do a lot. I can live with 28mm.

Add weather sealing, IBS, and super simple button/menu layouts, and it really is a great combination.

I admit being tempated by the newer Q3, but new ones cost $7,000, and even used copies are still twice what I paid for the Q2. I got a very good deal on my camera, so I’m happy with that.

I like not having to decide which digital camera or which lenses to bring every time I leave the house.

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A follow-up on a follow-up - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-01-25T09:50:00.000Z

I already wrote a follow up to my previous post but while that was happening Bix wrote something on their site and in there there’s a perfect passage which illustrates way better the point I was attempting to make (not hard to do, considering I am not a great writer) and I’ll quote it down below:

The real example to use here more naturally would be people still liking the Harry Potter franchise despite J.K. Rowling being a fetid, rancid TERF. In that actual situation, there are nuances. For example, if the books (or movies) meant a lot to you and you still own them and you still revisit them, you aren’t actually giving Rowling any more money or visible support as a human being. If you’re continuing to buy, rent, or attend any of her work, you actively are supporting a fetid, rancid TERF. It’s valid for people to judge you on that.

For the sake of this discussion, (and this is a hypothetical, Baldur), let’s pretend I tell you that my favorite book is Harry Potter. Now, you tell me, based on that information you have just received, how do you determine in which one of the two camps proposed by Bix do I fit in?

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IndieWeb Carnival: Host Interview - James' Coffee Blog

2026-01-25T09:44:02.000Z

Zachary kindly invited me to answer a few questions about hosting the IndieWeb Carnival. Running for three years now, the IndieWeb Carnival has been the source of endless inspiration for me, sparking both long periods of thinking as well as writing blog posts. Even when I have not written an entry for a given month, the topic has always been interesting.

I have hosted the indieWeb Carnival twice, first on the topic “Moments of Joy” and then on the topic of “Tools.” I am going to tailor my answers to the latter topic since it is the most recent one. I will also be hosting in March 2026 – stay tuned!

What drew you to this theme?

When I was first learning to code, I thought about coding as a pursuit in itself. With that said, as the years have passed, I find myself more interested in how software is designed. What tools do we most rely on? How do tools enable or interfere with creativity? What affordances do our favourite tools have that make them so compatible with how we want to work? What makes a tool delightful? What principles should we consider when we design new tools?

When I hosted the carnival in July 2024 on “Tools,” I was thinking a lot about tools but knew that others’ perspectives were invaluable. Part of me was interested in what attributes I like in software, but a bigger part of me was interested in what others thought and liked about the tools they use. As part of that intention, looking back I didn’t limit the carnival to software, or even mention the word “software” in the announcement blog post. Indeed, while I am fascinated by software, I think we have much to learn from all tools when it comes to making interfaces.

Did you consider any other prompts before settling?

I can’t remember whether I thought about any other prompts, but if I recall correctly the topic of tools was one I was thinking a lot about so it felt like a good choice. I wanted to choose a topic that would be appealing to others, that was as open-ended as possible, and that didn’t require any special knowledge to respond to. One thing I really love about the IndieWeb Carnival is that the prompts are open-ended, which encourages more voices and perspectives.

How did you decide on your prompt's wording?

For reference, my prompt was:

Over the next month, I invite you to write a blog post about tools and how they do, or have, influenced your creative process. You can write about tools in the context of any creative practice you have: writing, acting, drawing, painting, woodworking, cooking, coding, singing, VTubing, or whatever is applicable to you.

I also included a list of questions to help direct readers.

I wanted to encourage people to talk not only about tools, but how they affect creativity. I wanted to hear about tools in many different contexts and creative pursuits. I am fascinated by how people make things.

Did hosting change how you think about the theme?

Looking back, the topic of tools is just as present in my thinking as it was back when I chose the theme – even though the carnival was over a year and a half ago! Like all reading, I think I soaked in the responses when I read them, each one moving my thinking forward.

But, really, the most exciting part of the carnival is not how my thinking changes but how, at the end, there are a dozen or more thoughtfully-written perspectives on an idea that anyone can read. Who knows how many people are inspired in a given month by the responses people write on their blogs.

Since the carnival, there has been a specific subtle and growing thought in my mind that I have not yet written down but should share somewhere: that if we think out of the box in terms of software design, we might come up with something brilliant.

I keep thinking about software tools because I can contribute to those – software is a place where I can make a difference. But also because software touches so many parts of our lives that I think continuous discourse on how we make software the best it can be for everyone is essential.

Did the submissions surprise you in any way?

One of the things I look back on with joy is that, to the extent I can see, I had never interacted with several of the participants. They found the challenge and wrote something as part of the challenge. I love the grassroots nature of the carnival. All it takes to participate is a place to write on the web.

Kind software - James' Coffee Blog

2026-01-25T08:26:20.000Z

At EdinburghJS this week, Colin mentioned the idea of “kind software.” This got me thinking. What would make software kind? As I write, I notice the word “kind” reminds me of the term “user friendly,” which has associations with software being simple to use in the context of completing a given task or set of tasks.

I think kind software extends the notion of “user friendly” to discuss more explicitly all of the affordances that a piece of software makes to a user.

When I think of user-friendly, I think of interface design. For instance, confirmation pop ups before taking irreversible actions, offering an undo button for as many actions as possible, having a strong navigation structure, offering large click areas where possible, being accessible, and more all both make a piece of software user-friendly and, by extension, “kind” in some sense. I think “kind” software would encompass more, like:

Offering different data formats so people can use the data in the software in the way they want.
Being explicit and transparent on how information is being used, without the use of dark patterns or ambiguous language to instruct people on how information is used.
Minimising distractions so a user can focus on a task.
Helping users pick up where they left off as they shift contexts to different tools, or if and when they have not been using the tool for a while.
Collects and uses only the data it absolutely needs.

The more I think about it, the closer the ideas of user-friendliness and kind software look. With that said, there is something about the term “kind software” that appeals. I don’t know who would ever say a piece of software is “kind”, but that feels like the kind of goal it is worth striving toward when it comes to software design.

Shortly after the meetup, I took out my pencil and paper and started taking notes. I wrote down a few words and phrases that embody the kind of ideas I like to see in software. Here are a few of them:

Forgiving
Personal as in really for you (aka: no opaque algorithms), in the case of social software
Calm
Does one thing really well
Gives people time to think
Friendly
Artistic
For all
Customisable and extensible
Collaborative
Private
Freedom to go at your own pace

What attributes would you like to see in software? Are there any pieces of software that you think are particularly good in an aspect of design that you wish was more discussed? Feel free to send me an email at readers [at] jamesg [dot] blog. I’d love to hear from more people on this topic!

This week - James' Coffee Blog

2026-01-24T17:36:42.000Z

This has been a busy week!

Earlier in the week, I attended my first EdinburghJS Meetup, at which I met many wonderful people. As always, I am a bit nervous before going to events. What if I can’t find the location? What will I say? Those fears usually leave my system after arriving and getting settled into an event, after which point I love talking with people. I especially love meeting new people.

EdinburghJS made me aware of how large the Scottish technology community is. I am especially appreciative of the Scottish Technology Club project which is aggregating events and resources. It feels great to know not only that there is a technology community, but that there is so much going on.

On another note, in two days I start my degree in art history. This week has been full of events prior to studying. I was thinking earlier today about how I am already getting out of my comfort zone – talking with new people, learning about student societies I might join, and generally finding my way around all the materials I will be using for study.

I attended a session this week at university about reading sheet music. I technically joined mid-way through the event series so I was a bit out of my depth, but I still had fun and gained more of an appreciation for how many patterns there are that make up music. I think I’ll take the course from the beginning when it starts up again. I wonder if this will be the year when I can read a little bit of sheet music.

Today I went to a lecture on art and the working class, with a particular focus on art in the north of England. The lecture started by illuminating how much what you might call “fine art” represents a tiny group of people, and then showing how artists like Lowry and Turner, the art critic John Ruskin all paved the way for an art that represented the working class. Norman Cornish, for example, was a member of the "Pitman Academy" who depicted life in the mines.

The lecture concluded by looking at Banksy, whose works resonate around the world and, in the process, show that art is and should be for everyone.

Reflecting further on the topic of representation, I can’t help but think of how some of my favourite parts of the National Museum of Scotland is the art painted in the region where I grew up. I know those hills! I know that place. People throughout the centuries have seen beauty here, enough so to paint it. In the case of modern portraiture, seeing paintings of people from my local area have mattered so much to me. Art connects us to place, people, and times, but to live up to that potential – and to be truly for all – it has to include and represent as many places, people, and moments as possible.

I have so much energy right now, and am excited to begin my degree on Monday. The first topic is some induction material and then I'll be learning about the reputation of Cleopatra.

In the background, dinner is cooking in the oven, and I am excitedly waiting for an evening of listening in to poetry from the university poetry society.

Saturday, January 24, 2026 - Baty.net

2026-01-24T17:14:00.000Z

STATUS: Freezing. It’s -15°F out there.
PLANS: Solidifying my Linux setup. Emacs, mostly. Some Darktable.
READING: Half through “Anima Rising” by Christopher Moore
LISTENING: Tom Waits, probably.

It was -15°F while walking Alice this morning. I tried the doggy boots, but she wasn’t having it, so we barefooted it. She must be tough, because I didn’t see any signs of her feet bother her.

I don’t know why I worry about what kinds of posts belong where or whether they belong at all. No one else cares, why should I? So yeah, these daily posts are going to stay here for the moment, until I decide I was wrong.

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Linux and/or macOS - Baty.net

2026-01-24T14:10:00.000Z

I’ve been alternating between Linux (Fedora/KDE) and macOS since the beginning of the year.

I’d describe Linux and the software running on Linux like this:

Less polish, more power.

What I find challenging is that sometimes I want the power, other times I want the polish.

Surprisingly, I am starting to prefer being in Linux than being in macOS. Linux feels like it’s mine and I like that feeling. Everything in the OS makes me believe it was done with me mind. “Me” being “the user”. Even when things are frustrating, I usually understand why. macOS used to feel this way, but has drifted from it. It’s not all Tahoe’s fault, but it certainly hasn’t helped.

What I miss most about running macOS is not macOS. It’s the software. The polish.

Most of the stuff I use on Linux also works on my Mac. That doesn’t apply the other way around. Whenever I discover some cool new app and find that it’s macOS only, it stings a little.

I want BBEdit and Tinderbox and Keyboard Maestro and Things and iA Writer and Preview. There are usually “equivalent” apps on Linux, but they’re not really. They do mostly the same things, but they’re not the same. Not even close. It’s been hard to adjust.

The other glaring omission on Linux is an easy way to share things with family and friends. How am I supposed to send funny memes to my wife when I have to jump through so many hoops first?

KDE Connect would be a great solution, but every other time I want to use it, the computer can’t see my phone, or vice versa. By the time I cycle wifi on both devices, the moment has passed. Maybe I’ll try talking everyone into switching to Signal. Ha! There’s no chance of that, so I’m on my own here.

If we’re keeping track, I’m writing this in Emacs on the Linux desktop. It’s where I’ll probably end up full time eventually, but it’s not happened yet.

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Ryan - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-01-23T12:00:00.000Z

This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Ryan, whose blog can be found at laze.net.

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

Hey there, I'm Ryan. I'm originally from South Jersey (as in southern New Jersey) but live now in Northern Virginia with my wife, two kids, dog, and rabbit. I'm well out of school by this point, but I was a computer science major over half a lifetime ago. I've been a web developer for many years, though my current professional role is less well-defined for various reasons.

I've built fun little projects on the web since 1994, most of which were pretty low-key or niche. A couple got some nice acknowledgement in large media outlets or went mildly viral for a bit, but my favorites have always flown under the radar and garner just the rare "thank you!" email.

I'm passionate about genealogy/family history, the personal web (duh!), music/movies/books, radio archiving, personal preservation, running, animal rights, and trying to be less of a jerk each day.

What's the story behind your blog?

I launched my first personal web site on my college's server in December of 1994 (only the second student to have done so), but my first blog post, of sorts, was on April 20, 1998 shortly after I'd moved to a proper web host and my own domain. I had a changelog for a while with updates about the site, but then I started a page with a changelog for my life--a blog, though the word wasn't widely used at that point.

The blog grew more important and eventually got its own name, "twist of fait accomplis." It ran through 2020, though slowed down quite a bit in the mid-2010s. Over that time, I did a lot of personal blogging (the type of stuff that would later be appropriate for social media), linkblogging, commentary, and longer essays. I had a few posts gain traction over the years, somewhat unexpectedly. Like the one where I wrote about seeing The Maury Povich Show in person and watching Maury embarrassingly misgender an audience member. It blew up when people got to the post through Google and thought that I was Maury and started telling me their life stories in the comments (often with PII). That post got over 700 comments before I had to turn them off. Sadly, Maury himself never reached out to do a collab. laze x Povich could have been great.

In 2020, I was using a Wordpress security plugin that was (ironically) compromised and ended up injecting sites I ran with malware. I got fed up with Wordpress and had already been growing weary of the state of the personal web, so I pulled my site down and replaced it with a single, unindexed web page that I would quietly update every few months.

By 2024, I started re-engaging with the IndieWeb (or whatever you want to call it) and felt a hankering to bring my site back in some way, so I did. Since then, I've fallen back in love with blogging and tinkering with my site. The current incarnation features selected posts going back to 1998 from assorted sites I've run over the years as well as a nice dose of new posts.

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

I've decided that in the current iteration of my site, I'm simply letting my interests guide me. Sometimes, that means I'm writing a post about an album I've been listening to, other times responding to someone else's post or writing about a project I've been working on or a topic that's been interesting me. Sometimes I just write about my experience getting older.

Some of the posts (like one I wrote about heart disease and lipoprotein(a)) I put some time into researching, which can make the process a bit slow. I've got one post about a pretty esoteric piece of train history that I've been working on-and-off for months on because I feel like there's more good info out there I need to find before I can hit publish (even though only ten people will end up reading it).

I have a Writing folder in Joplin where I keep all my drafts. It's a nice way to write, as I can switch between a rich text editor and straight markdown, and then copy the markdown directly into a micro.blog post when I'm done. I do any proofing and corrections myself before posting and inevitably even more after posting. I try not to be too precious about it, though. It's my site and though I don't want it to feel sloppy, I'm human and make mistakes. I'm at peace with the occasional typo or awkward sentence.

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

Like most people, I like to have a quiet space to think and write, perhaps accompanied by some non-vocal music. I do most of my writing in my home office/guest bedroom looking out the window on my small backyard. It's quite pleasant during the summer to see all the greenery, but even during the winter months, I appreciate the light that comes through. Writing on the front porch in nice weather or by the fireplace in the winter are nice alternatives when I need to mix things up.

I don't have as many "I'm going to sit down and write for 30 minutes"-type moments as I'd like. More often, it's "I can probably snag ten minutes now for a paragraph or two." I take what I can get, which can result in fragmented prose that requires a good deal of massaging before it's ready for public consumption.

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

I've gone through so many blogging platforms and web hosts over the years, but laze.net is currently hosted at micro.blog, which I use more as a traditional CMS than as a microblogging or POSSE service as it was intended. It's Hugo on the backend and deploys as a static site, which I like.

I'm at the point where I don't want to worry about managing deployments, updating software, configuring servers... none of that interests me at this stage. I find more joy in thinking and writing than I do in tinkering with what's running the site.

(I run other sites where I'm more involved technically, but we're talking about laze.net here.)

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

I've started and restarted too many blogs and where I've settled is this: I aim to keep things as simple as possible (while also appreciating a degree of flexibility) with a well-designed CMS on the back end that pushes out a static site on the other. I'm happy with the way things are now.

I love that there are so many options out there now, whether it's micro.blog, Bear, Pika, or any of the other services Manuel outlines on his blog platforms page. There's a service out there for whatever level of involvement one might want to have with their site's appearance or functionality.

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'm on the micro.blog premium plan, which is $10/month. My email is hosted at mxroute, which I subscribed to a while ago for some deal, so let's call that a buck or two a month since I host other domains' email there as well. The domain registration costs about $13/year. So, I'm able to run the site for around $15/month.

I don't monetize the site. Nothing against anyone who does with theirs, though.

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

Some of these folks may have been featured here before (and indeed this may be where I found them).

Paul - I've known Paul online since the early-90s (GEnie!!) and we still keep in almost daily contact. His blog is always a good read. He's the writer I wish I was. Interview him!
Chris - Chris is a blogger I met back in the early 2000s only to find out he lived a block away (I knew he was local but not that local). He's been in the game forever and has always been a great example of what the indie/personal web is about. Interview him, too! (Already did!)
Alex - Alex's series on Tiny Archives and recent three-parter on personal social media archiving are some of my favorite things of the last couple of years.
Katherine - I feel like every probably knows about Katherine's site at this point, but I tell you... what a delightful web presence.
Grizzly Gazette - This group blog on Bear has been a good read since it launched this year.

I have a proper blogroll, too, that I'm always adding to.

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

I've always got a few side projects going on. I've got one dedicated to a pet cemetery in the Nevada desert. I do a good bit of radio archiving (and wholeheartedly support unimportant archiving). I've also got a digital garden dedicated to genealogy, but it needs some tending. And a pal and I have a very slow joint blog where we post once a year, alternating years between us. Anything new (or old) that I may be up to, I try to add to my "projects" page.

Keep exploring

Now that you're done reading the interview, go check the blog and subscribe to the RSS feed.

If you're looking for more content, go read one of the previous 125 interviews.

Make sure to also say thank you to Jan and the other 122 supporters for making this series possible.

I’m bad at coming up with examples - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-01-22T11:20:00.000Z

Yesterday I wrote something. It was, as it often is, the result of reading something I didn’t agree with. If you have read anything on this blog before, you probably know I like to make stupid and extreme examples to illustrate the point I’m trying to make in a specific post. And I already wrote about how sometimes my examples can cause confusion.

Since it happened again, I think it’s worth reiterating a few things here. The point of an example is to be, well, an example. It’s not the core of the post. It’s there to help illustrate a point.

In case you need this spelled, no, I never in my life read the Mein Kampf the same way I never read many other books. And in case you also need this spelled, to clear the eventual confusion, I do think Hitler was bad in ways that are beyond comprehension. I visited the Risiera when I was in elementary school, and the signs of those wars are very much still visible here. But that’s beside the point.

The thing I find the most interesting, looking at that whole thread, is that it appears that almost none of the people are discussing what the post was about. Instead, I see a lot of arguments for what “favorite” means in this context. And look, I’m not a native speaker, I don’t claim to possess the most articulate vocabulary: should I have used another term to make that example? Maybe? I don’t know. It was an example.

Should I have used Harry Potter and being a transphobe rather than Mein Kampf and being a nazi? Maybe, but again, it was a goddamn example. And I even explicitly stated that, literally, the line below:

This is obviously Godwin's law in action, and I’m using an extreme example to make the point clear, but it applies to all sorts of more nuanced scenarios.

The problem I see is that there’s no winning here: if I use an extreme example, someone will get stuck on the extremeness of it, and if I use a nuanced one, someone will get stuck in the small details. But that’s precisely the point I was making in my post: rather than assume straight away, you can engage in conversation and ask questions. I repeated, ad nauseam, that my inbox is open. There’s a link to it at the bottom of every single post. If you read that post and were perplexed by it, why didn’t you engage in conversation then?

Heck, suggest me a better example if you have one. Or, I don’t know, write an answer and share your own thoughts, and add to the conversation. Isn’t the point of all this public posting to have conversations?

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

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