~hedy's blogroll - BlogFlock

On open protocols - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2025-12-06T10:50:00.000Z

It’s Saturday morning, and I’m sitting here at my desk, working on client projects and sipping my coffee. While taking a break, I was clicking around the web, as one does, and found a post titled “Is Pixelfed sawing off the branch that the Fediverse is sitting on?” by Ploum (also featured on P&B).

I find this topic quite interesting, so I’m gonna take a moment to share my thoughts. I don’t have skin in the game, I’m not on any of these social media platforms, and I frankly don’t even care about the outcome of this situation. I’m just an external observer in this context.

Quick summary of the situation:

Pixelfed is a decentralised Instagram alternative built on the ActivityPub protocol and focused on images and videos
In order to do that, the app is designed to silently drop content that doesn’t contain images or videos, and so text-only content is not displayed on people’s timelines
In his post, Ploum is arguing that this is wrong because, in doing that, Pixelfeed is not behaving in a way that is in line with the rest of the Fediverse and can undermine the whole ActivityPub endeavor

I can’t stress enough that this is just a quick summary, and you should read the original post. There’s also a discussion happening on Mastodon, if you want to see what others are saying.

I can see where Ploum is coming from, his concerns are definitely valid, and he’s motivated by good intentions. At the same time, though, I find his position a bit perplexing. Isn’t the point of an open protocol, like ActivityPub, to provide a structure that can be used by others to build whatever they want?

If someone wants to build a service, on top of AP, that only displays content of a certain type, they should be able to do so. Granted, they should make it very clear to the people who sign up for it that some filtering is happening, but if those same people are cool with that, then I don’t see the issue.

If tomorrow I wake up and I want to make an AP-based service that only serves audio content and is designed to encourage people sending voice messages to each other, I should be able to do so, without being required to also implement everything else that’s available on the protocol.

In his post, Ploum uses the idea of a TextFed service “that will never display posts with pictures”. If you ask me, that would be a totally reasonable project, especially if you want to build something that is not very resource-intensive, since you’re only dealing with text, and you don’t want to mess with media content. Why shouldn’t you be able to build such a thing on top of AP? Why should you be forced to accept videos and images coming from the rest of the Fediverse if that’s not what you want?

Also, it’s hard for me to square this whole line of argument with the concept of moderation. If you can’t trust a user to figure out by themselves that by signing up to something like Pixelfed, they only get a subset of the content available on the fediverse, then I don’t see how you can’t trust them to understand that, depending on which server they join, some other servers might be blocked. Does that mean the Fediverse should not have moderation?

A protocol is either open or it is not. And if it’s open, we should accept that some people might use it in ways we do not agree with. And that’s ok. But again, I'm not a fediverse user, so maybe my intuition here is entirely wrong. So feel free to reach out to let me know why I'm wrong.

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A new home page - James' Coffee Blog

2025-12-05T15:10:47.000Z

I have been thinking about redesigning my website for a while. I wrote a bit about one of the design directions I explored recently. I loved doing the design part of the project, but knew there would be several hours of work to integrate the new style into my website.

Today I came back to the metaphorical drawing board – aka, browser developer tools – and started tinkering around with designing only a new home page. This gave me room to play while also not committing myself to redesigning my whole website. I wonder what I can make!

After lots of exploration, I have a new home page!

My motivation was especially piqued today as I am reading “The Non-Designer’s Design Book,” the IndieWeb Book Club choice for this month. I have learned a lot from the book so far; the more I read, the more I wanted to start designing something.

The source code behind my new home page is a bit messy: I designed the page in developer tools, copied the changed CSS, and pasted it onto a new page. With that said, maybe this in itself tells a story – that this is a project fuelled by experimentation and play and the immediate feedback that the browser gives you as you write and arrange and re-arrange HTML and CSS within the developer tools. I had so much fun making the new design!

For posterity – for I am cognisant that over the years my home page is likely to change more, and I like to have an archive of some of my designs – here is a screenshot of my home page as it is now:

I may end up designing other pages on my website in a similar theme, but for now I'm happy with the work I did on the home page!

Come on John - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2025-12-05T15:00:00.000Z

For all I know, John O'Nolan is a cool dude. He’s the founder of Ghost, a project that is also really cool. You know what’s also cool? RSS. And guess what, John just announced he’s working on a new RSS app (Reader? Tool? Service?) called Alcove and he blogged about it.

All this is nice. All this is cool. The more people build tools and services for the open web, the better. Having said all that though, John:

If you want to follow along with this questionable side project of undefined scope, I'm sharing live updates of progress on Twitter, here.

You are on your own blog, your own corner of the web, powered by the platform you’re the CEO of, a blog that also serves content via RSS, the thing you’re building a tool for, and you’re telling people to follow the progress on fucking Twitter? Come on John.

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

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NeoFinder as photo catalog on macOS - Baty.net

2025-12-05T13:05:53.000Z

On macOS, I prefer Capture One as my RAW editor, but C1’s cataloging features are weak. Plus, I’d prefer not having my catalog and editor so tightly tied together. I’d love to get out of the Adobe ecosystem, so I don’t want to get too deep into using Lightroom Classic for my catalog. Photo Mechanic is great, but has gotten too expensive.

I thought I’d revisit NeoFinder. I’m glad I did.

NeoFinder is really good at keeping track of all kinds of media on all kinds of storage. I’ve put 2025’s photos and some other projects into it as a test, and it’s impressive. Also, the app just turned 30 years old, so, Lindy Effect.

There are all kinds of handy tools to manage photo metadata. Here’s just one menu:

Oh, and it’s inexpensive ($39.99) with no subscription required.

My current plan is to catalog everything using NeoFinder, then export the edited keepers to my Immich instance for sharing/faces/albums.

I considered using digiKam for this, as it’s nicely cross-platform, but I don’t think it’ll cut it for the whole catalog. There are some nice tools built into digiKam, so it will remain in the toolbox.

The next step is to move everything out of iCloud Photos into Immich. That’s a whole ’nuther project.

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Stephanie Stimac - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2025-12-05T12:00:00.000Z

This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Stephanie Stimac, whose blog can be found at blog.stephaniestimac.com.

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The People and Blogs series is supported by Peter Rukavina and the other 127 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’m Stephanie Stimac, a product manager and designer from Seattle, WA but I currently live in a small town in England. My background is in visual and web design, and I graduated at a weird time in terms of web tech. A good portion of my final year of university was spent learning about how to build websites in Flash and when I graduated, Flash quickly became obsolete, but I had a bit of HTML and CSS knowledge which helped me advance through my career. I was doing purely design work for the first part of my career before I joined the Microsoft Edge Web Platform team, where I started doing a handful of other things that were product management and developer relations adjacent. I’ve spec’d out features, analyzed data and user flows, created content for social media, performed user research to identify developer paint points, given conference talks, the list goes on.

I left Microsoft for a startup that moved me to Berlin but that was unfortunately short lived due to the company folding rather quickly after hiring 100+ people. Now I live in England with my husband and work for Igalia, a technology consultancy, and I’m back in the Web Platform space. It’s sort of like my role at Microsoft but less product and more project focused.

In between all this, I wrote a book that was published in 2023 called Design for Developers. It’s an evergreen guide to the basics of visual and UX design for web developers.

I’m a collector of hobbies but my focus lately has been reading, baking, photography, printmaking and creating content. I’m a mountain biker and love to hike as well as paddle board. I’ve also gotten into birding in the last year or so. There are so many different kinds, it’s incredible.

What's the story behind your blog?

Depends on which blog you’re talking about! I’ve been blogging since about 2003 when I had a LiveJournal in high school. That evolved into a blogging and sharing about college life on Wordpress around 2008/2009 and went through a few iterations before I landed on the name The Hermes Homestead. I no longer blog there but am in the process of starting that sort of lifestyle blogging again and am building a new site with Astro and Netlify.

As for my more technical and design focused blog, I started that in 2019 about 3 years into my career at Microsoft. I wanted a space to talk about CSS, design and web browser things. This is my most visited blog, and it is attached to my personal website and portfolio though I called it “The Web Witch’s Blog” for a long time – now there’s just a cauldron with a code mark. It’s been through a few redesigns. It was very basic in terms of styling for the longest time. I’ve slowly made incremental improvements to things over the years, but this year I did a larger redesign to try and capture a bit of my witchy vibe and wanted to include more visuals, some subtle animations and view transitions.

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

There are a few different types of ways I post. I was doing monthly updates just covering things I had learned, big life events, what media I consumed in a month, books I read. I haven’t done this in a few months as I’m currently pregnant and was feeling burned out on everything. I’m sure I’ll pick those up again soon. I’ll also post about major career or life events.

Other posts are inspired by things I’ve experienced, for example I’m in the process of writing about the worst onboarding experience I have ever had with a credit card and the brand’s website and app. Nothing quite inspires me like a poor user experience, and I hope in sharing those experiences other people will be inspired to make sure whatever user experience they’re designing isn’t terrible. I’m also not afraid to share my terrible experiences working in tech, whether that’s about encountering conference line ups that are all men or finding out my book was scraped by Meta’s AI.

I also write about new CSS features that web developers can use but I have to want to write about these, so they usually need to have some sort of design focus or benefit.

Those are sort of the three main categories I center posts around at the moment, but generally if it fits into general life and career, I’ll write about it.

When it comes to writing the actual post, I usually just write straight in VS Code in a markdown file. I try to proofread in VS Code but I need a new spelling and grammar extension as I end up missing a few mistakes that I’ll correct as soon as I see them. Recently, I’ve started copying text over to Microsoft Word just for a quick visual to catch any misspellings. Then I hit publish. I rarely have someone else look over a post unless I am writing about something I’m little unsure about or if I’m talking about the company I work for. I don’t want to misrepresent them.

Overall, my process is kind of like writing for a diary. I don’t really overthink what I’m writing about and just post it. That being said, I often come up with many ideas for things to write about, but it really depends on the type of mental space I’m in whether those get finished or not. I have a pile of started but unfinished drafts.

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

For writing, I usually have to be at home or in a quiet space with some music. Sometimes I can write when I’m out at the coffee shop, but it is very dependent on the coffee shop and how busy it is.

Physical spaces 100% influence my creativity and just overall mood and wellbeing. I like to be in a space that inspires me, surrounded by things that inspire me. I have a hard time focusing if there’s a mess or I’m in a space that doesn’t speak to me. I like to be surrounded by an environment that has a vibe or a point of view.

I work from home so most of my work happens there. My husband and I have been in the process of slowly upgrading our home to be a space we enjoy being in. It’s been a slow process over the last two years, and we’re still making changes but it’s getting there and there are spots in our home I’m starting to love. But it’s also important to change up the scenery occasionally, so we’ll go out and work from coffee shops some mornings, otherwise I get stir crazy.

I also use a combination of digital and analog tools to keep track of things. I have a bullet journal I fill out every week with my calendar and personal to-do list, and I have what I consider a digital bullet journal for all my work stuff in Notion that’s formatted nicely. I do have a digital bullet journal for personal stuff I’m also starting to use again, which is helpful when I have a lot of long-term plans in the works.

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

For the technical blog, it’s hosted on Netlify and I’m using 11ty. The domain used to be registered with GoDaddy but I’ve been migrating all my domains over to Namecheap because I find some of GoDaddy’s practices predatory or less than user friendly.

The old lifestyle blog is on Wordpress and is still hosted on GoDaddy, and I’m probably going to end up paying someone to migrate it all to Namecheap for me because my migration attempts have been headache inducing. I want to keep the blog up even if it’s not active, but I’m tired of paying an exorbitant amount just for an SSL certificate compared to other providers. I think it’s criminal GoDaddy charges you the amount they do for SSL when you get an SSL certificate for free.

The new lifestyle blog will be hosted on Netlify (like most of my websites), with a Namecheap domain, and I’m building it with Astro.

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

For the technical blog, no I wouldn’t change anything. It’s tied to my name and career. I’m happy with Netlify and 11ty.

For the lifestyle blog, I wouldn’t use Wordpress again. It has its benefits but for the functionality I want and need, I think it’s overkill for what I personally am trying to achieve. I like having more control over the layout and design and I’m happy to be building the new one with Astro. As for the name, I only wish I had chosen something that was a bit more open instead of something that was so aligned to a specific period of my life (The Hermes Homestead). It doesn’t fit where I’m at anymore, but I feel like the new name is more open and maybe starting with a fresh slate isn’t so bad.

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?

If I combine everything, I think it’s about $350 a year for all my blogs including URLs and hosting but I expect that to be reduced significantly once I move everything away from GoDaddy. (For reference, I just got an email from them telling me that my SSL for one of the URLs I’m letting expire won’t renew and they want £90 a year just for the SSL certificate.)

On the technical blog, I do generate a little bit of revenue but not a lot. I sometimes include affiliate links, and I do run ads on the homepage, but it is one spot in the sidebar. I don’t want an intrusive experience with ads because there’s nothing I hate more than landing on a page that is so covered in ads you can’t navigate through the page (looking at all you food blogs.) I was recently on a food blogger’s page and went to the print recipe page to try and read the instructions more easily and they had even put ads on the print page. I don’t want to replicate that experience, so I try to keep things as minimal as possible.

I really don’t mind if people are trying to monetise their content unless it’s so overwhelming full of ads that I can’t view the content. At the end of the day, I don’t know what a person’s situation is, and we live in a rather precarious and unstable time for many people when it comes to employment. Monetising could help someone reach a goal more quickly or give them a little more freedom or room to breathe in their budget.

I’ve been given product in exchange for writing a review and I don’t mind that kind of partnership. I think affiliate links are a great way to monetise without being intrusive. I use Carbon Ads for my technical blog and don’t mind their style because it’s very minimal.

In terms of supporting other bloggers, I’ll click an affiliate link or engage with their content but I’m not currently paying anyone via Patreon or a subscription, though I have in the past.

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

I love Henry Desroches’ content over on henry.codes and stillness.digital.

Olu Niyi-Awosusi also has a lovely blog over at olu.online and I love reading their work.

Maggie Appleton’s Garden is also full of incredible writing.

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

If you’re a developer trying to level up your skills outside of code, my book Design for Developers, is available on Amazon and Manning.

My colleagues host an interesting podcast that covers a range of technology topics called Igalia Chats.

On the more casual side of things, I’ve been vlogging and trying to improve my video editing abilities over on YouTube. Typically sharing my life in England and more style focused content over there.

And a final shoutout to my husband, who is constantly building absolutely wild things with CSS. He’s working on getting his blog up but for now he’s got a few links on his website.

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 118 interviews.

Make sure to also say thank you to Thibault Malfoy and the other 127 supporters for making this series possible.

Double opt-in PSA - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2025-11-30T10:25:00.000Z

As of today, I run three different newsletters, all powered by Buttondown: there’s my recently announced Dealgorithmed, my outdoors-focused From the Summit, and the People and Blogs series. I also send my blog posts via email, if you prefer to consume content that way.

They all require double opt-in. Which means that if you signed up for one of them, you should have received a second email, asking you to click a link to confirm your subscription. Sometimes those land in the spam folder, sometimes they don’t arrive at all. That’s just the unfortunate reality of emails in 2025.

I just checked, and a solid 10% of the people who have signed up for Dealgorithmed have not confirmed their address. This is a reminder to check your inbox and click the confirmation link otherwise, you will not receive the first edition when it goes out on January 1st.

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

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Saturday - James' Coffee Blog

2025-11-29T14:49:04.000Z

Last week I ran a meetup for writers on the web. During the session, I brought up the topic of distance in writing. [1] We explored the topic in various ways – the distance between writing and publishing, the distance between reader and writer, how distance varies. As I write, I am thinking about the distance of poetic writing.

When I write poetically, I can use the ambiguity of poetic language to create a space for the reader to interpret something in whatever ways come to mind. I find it easier to write about the child-like joy of snow than to say that I had been missing the feeling of play I felt on that day for a while. But it also means I might not say something directly. That is not to say writing a personal blog post could substitute this writing. Poetic writing helps me say what I want to say.

What does this mean? That I want to write more personal stories? Right now, it is a thought, one that, previously only in my head, now exists in words. Through words I get closer to figuring out how I feel. It’s one of the reasons I love writing. It is also one of the reasons that writing can be so difficult. If I am not sure where to begin, the blank page feels particularly difficult. I might wish to have a formula for writing to come easier, but would the exercise be the same?

I intended for this blog post to be a bit of a narrative of my day. Sometimes I go to write one thing and end up in another direction. Thus is one of the joys of making things! With that said, I do still want to share the narrative of my day – this winter Saturday.

I had intended on going to a museum today and to pick up a library card but I had a bit of a headache in the morning. I might be getting a cold; I have what I would call the sniffles, but not to a great extent. Looking back I realise I sneezed a few times yesterday in such a way that makes me think I might be getting the cold. Nevertheless, I thought I’d stay inside and stay warm (although if you have ever spent time in a Scottish house in winter, you might know that it can still be a bit chilly indoors without the heating on!).

I spent the morning finishing Robin Sloan’s Sourdough book, which has been a delightful read. I enjoyed Sloan’s Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookshop. Both titles were set in San Francisco, the former about the curious characteristics of a sourdough starter and the latter about a bookshop with more stories to tell than met the eye. I then continued reading another book, had some lunch, and watched a vlog of someone going around Japan. The vlogger mentioned a band called Yoasobi whose music I have been listening to since – Yoasobi’s music is great!

I plan to spend the rest of the day listening to music, reading, and maybe catching up on a few blogs!

[1]: V.H. Belvadi did a terrific write-up on the writing event too.

Little moments of joy - James' Coffee Blog

2025-11-29T13:21:12.000Z

I was thinking about a design for a web page yesterday that I wanted to build with a few illustrations. I remembered that there was a site with old-timey illustrations that were available in the public domain. I thought I have no idea how to find this website!

Today,, I was both surprised and delighted that the search query “old timey illustrations” allowed me to find the site, which I now know is called Old Book Illustrations. It is amazing that I can type in a query like “old timey illustrations” into a web search engine and find the page for which I am looking. The speed with which I found the website for which I was looking – and how a search engine found the page with my description "old timey" – brought a smile to my face.

Addendum: It looks like not all illustrations are public domain according to the Terms of Use, but this doesn't detract from the story :)

Experimenting with web design - James' Coffee Blog

2025-11-29T11:25:27.000Z

Every so often I open developer tools in the web browser and start tinkering with my website. I love experimenting with different design directions, not necessarily in pursuit of a complete design so much as fuelled by a sense of curiosity. What would it look like if I made my web pages wider? What would I do with the extra room? Would this help me create grids of images that would be easier to peruse? What would it look like if my accent colour was on the left side of a page?

I was recently playing around with using more of the space available on desktops to create wider content columns. I experimented with this both in the context of blog posts and then, later, an overall layout that I could use as a template for other pages on my website.

While the final results are not anywhere on the web, I was proud of what I made so I decided to take the styles from my browser and put them into a local stylesheet. I started developing a layout. I then took a few screenshots of the results as documentation for the project, which I have listed below. Perhaps you will find them interesting!

A blog post layout with an image

In this concept, I simplified my navigation bar, moved it to the top of the page, and created a new card component that appears on the far left with metadata about a blog post. I also moved my accent stripe from the top of the web page to the left side.

A blog post with a wider image

I then replaced the heading with a serif font which I thought would fit the page better. I also made the image on the page bleed out both the left and right sides of the main content container, and made the text a bit wider, too.

A page for hats

I was enjoying the direction I was exploring, so I decided to see what the design would look like on a page that was not for blog posts. I experimented with my hats page, creating a four-column grid that escaped the main content container in a similar fashion to the full-bleed image I tried in the blog post.

An about page

I liked the single-column content layout and also the floating container I had for tags on my blog post layout. I decided to experiment with a layout that had a single column for content and a column on the right side of the page for images. I experimented with this on an about page.

Playing

I was going to start this paragraph with "I spent many more hours tinkering" but, in truth, I'm not sure how long I spent playing around. Indeed, I wasn't keeping track. Whether an hour or several passed, it didn't matter for I was having so much fun with the new direction.

I thought about turning my template into a new layout and design for my website, but I then realised that it would be non-trivial to transfer my new design concepts to my existing website. I had made changes to the HTML, and wanted to change some of my pages to have new elements like the image grid on the about page. It would have been a lot of work to make everything work. And I wanted to play!

With that said, I did copy what I wrote for the about page I designed onto this website. So now I have an About page!

Announcing Validate Everything - James' Coffee Blog

2025-11-28T21:09:32.000Z

Today the IndieWeb community hosted a Create Day event in which participants were invited to make something on the web. The theme of the event was “Build Don't Buy”, an invitation to make something this Black Friday.

While I wasn’t sure what I wanted to make, I knew I wanted to make something. I consulted my list of ideas and one stood out: a website that lets you type in a URL and creates links to various helpful validators. This project was inspired by Adactio’s “Bookmarklets for testing your website” project.

During the event, I made a new page on my website called “Validate Everything”. The web page lets you paste in a URL and automatically generates links to validators like the WAVE accessibility validator, the Google Rich Results Test tool, microformats testers, and more. I added tools I have used in the past to validate or understand the markup behind web pages.

I use a several validators but I typically end up typing the name of the validator into a search engine and then reading through the results to find the one I want. With this project, I wanted to have a single page with many common validators.

You can try out the page today, and see the source code on GitHub. Contributions are most welcome!

How the page works

As part of the project, I wanted to experiment with CSS. I asked myself: could I show/hide the validator links depending on whether there was a valid URL in the form field on the web page? After some thought, reading, experimentation, and discussion with fellow participants in the Create Day event, I learned that you can select a form field if it its contents are valid or invalid using the :valid and :invalid selectors. I could then combine these with the :has and :not selectors to manipulate content on the page depending on whether the user has typed in a valid URL in the form field on the page.

I came up with the following selector to show/hide the validator links not he page depending on if there is a valid URL in the page form field:

body:not(:has(#url:valid)) #items {
      display: none;
}

This selector will select the #items element if the page body does not have an element with the ID #url that is valid. If the condition is met, the #items element is hidden. The #items element contains the list of validators.

For :valid to work, I needed to specify a few validation rules in my HTML input. I wrote the following input tag:

<input type="url" id="url" name="url" placeholder="https://example.com" pattern="https://.*\.[a-zA-Z]{3,}.*" required autocomplete="off" />

This input says that the URL field must have a URL that:

Starts with https://, and;
Is followed by any string of characters, which is then;
Followed by a . (dot), which is then;
Followed by two or more letters.

For example, https://jamesg.blog would be valid, and as a result the validator URL list would appear. But https://jamesg.b would not be valid (only one character follows the .), so the validator list would not appear. An input is also required by specifying the HTML required boolean. This means that the validator URLs will not appear when the field is blank.

NB: This regex is not testing for whether a user’s TLD is valid. This could be done with a more complex regex, but this is something I can always add later. What I have right now is good enough!

When a URL is typed in, JavaScript makes two changes to the page:

A ?url=… parameter is added so that the user has a link they can bookmark/share, and;
All the validator links are updated to add the text the user has typed in.

This means that when the user has finished typing – or has pasted in – their URL, all the links on the page will directly link to different validator websites.

Building things is fun

I had a lot of fun making this web page! I learned about the :valid CSS rule. I got to play around with the :has selector more. I experimented with page spacing and typography. And I also learned that you can’t click on a view-source: link directly on a page in Firefox for security reasons. Indeed, with everything I build, I always learn something new.

I have been in a bit of a creative rut lately in terms of making new things. I am learning about so many new things, but I’m not ready to translate much of what I am learning into a project. I am eager to make things that push me outside my comfort zone and let me use my new skills, but I haven’t been quite sure where to begin. I read somewhere that sometimes the hardest step is getting started. Today, I was able to get started and create a page that I think is fun and interesting, useful, and based on an idea I had several months ago. I’m proud of the page I made today. I love making things.

Addendum: How it started

I like taking screenshots of my projects as I build them, especially if I'm experimenting with different designs.

I had a tab open from my first version of this project I made early in the meetup. I took the following screenshot:

When compared with the live page, you can see the above list has the essence of what I wanted: a URL bar, and a list of links. I then added subheadings to separate the validators into categories, realising there were many I wanted to add. I added some styles (and dark mode!) and worked on the JavaScript to make the page work.

Which is to say: all projects start somewhere, and are built one step at a time!

On eating shit - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2025-11-28T15:10:00.000Z

You’re sitting at a table. In front of you, a series of plates. They’re full of shit (like some people). Not the same shit, mind you. It’s different types, produced by different animals, in different quantities. The unfortunate reality of the situation is that you have to eat the contents of one of those plates. Yeah, it sucks, I’m sorry. But you just have to.

So you understandably start going through the thought process of figuring out which one is the “best” one. You start examining the shape, the texture, the animal that produced it. You start finding reasons to pick one over another. You start rationalising, trying to justify your decision to the other people who, like you, also need to pick which one to eat.

It’s a process. A shitty one, I might say. But in going through this ordeal, you start losing track of the only thing that really matters: this situation fucking sucks, and there’s no good answer. The only reasonable thing to do is to pick the plate with the least steamy, smelly, nasty pile of shit and then figure out a way not to find yourself in that situation ever again.

Sometimes eating shit is unavoidable. The only thing you can do is make it as painless as possible.

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Karen - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2025-11-28T12:00:00.000Z

This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Karen, whose blog can be found at chronosaur.us.

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

Hello! My name is Karen. I work in IT support for a large company’s legal department, and am currently working on my Bachelors in Cybersecurity and Information Assurance.

I live near New Orleans, Louisiana, with my husband and two dogs - Daisy, A Pembroke Welsh Corgi, and Mia, a Chihuahua. Daisy is The Most Serious Corgi ever (tm), and Mia has the personality of an old lady who chain smokes, plays Bingo every week at the rec center, and still records her soap operas on a VHS daily. My husband is an avid maker (woodworking and 3D printing, mostly), video gamer, and has an extensive collection of board games that takes up the entire back wall of our livingroom.

As for me, outside of work, I’m a huge camera nerd and photographer. I love film photography, and recently learned how to develop my own negatives at home! I also do digital - I will never turn my nose up at one versus the other. I’ve always been into assorted fandoms, and used to volunteer at local sci-fi/fantasy/comic conventions up to a few years ago. I got into K-Pop back in 2022, and am now an active participant in the local New Orleans fan community, providing Instax photo booth services for events. I’ve also hosted K-Pop events here in NOLA as well. My ult K-Pop group is ATEEZ, but I’m a proud multi fan and listen to whatever groups or music catch my attention, including Stray Kids, SHINee, and Mamamoo. I also love 80s and 90s alternative, mainly Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, and Garbage.

And yes, I may be named Karen but I refuse to BE a “Karen”. I don’t get upset when people use the term, I find it hilarious.

What's the story behind your blog?

So I have been blogging off and on since 2001 or so - back when they were still called “weblogs” and “online journals”. Originally, I was using LiveJournal, but even with a paid account, I wanted to learn more customization and make a site that was truly my own. My husband - then boyfriend - had their own server, and gave me some space on it. I started out creating sites in Microsoft Frontpage and Dreamweaver (BEFORE Adobe owned them!), and moved to using Greymatter blog software, which I loved and miss dearly.

I moved to Wordpress in - 2004 maybe? - and used that for all my personal sites until 2024. I’d been reading more and more about the Indieweb for a while and found Bear, and I loved the simplicity.

I’ve had sites ranging from a basic daily online journal, to a fashion blog, to a food blog, to a K-Pop and fandom-centric blog, to what it is today - my online space for everything and anything I like.

I taught myself HTML and CSS in order to customize and create my sites. No classes, no courses, no books, no certifications, just Google and looking at other people’s sites to see what I liked and how they did it. My previous job before this one, I was a web administrator for a local marketing company that built sites using DNN and Wordpress, and I’m proud to say that I got that job and my current one with my self-developed skills and being willing to learn and grow. I would not be where I am today, professionally, if it wasn’t for blogging.

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

I’ll be totally honest - I don’t have a writing process. I get inspiration from random thoughts, seeing things online, wanting to share the day-to-day of my life. I don’t draft or have someone proof read, I just type out what I feel like writing.

When I had blogs focusing on specific things - plus size fashion and K-Pop, respectively - I kept a list of topics and ideas to refer back to when I was stuck for ideas. That was when I was really focused on playing the SEO and search engine algorithm game, though, where I was trying to stick to the “two-three posts a week” rule in an attempt to boost my search engine results. I don’t do that now. I do still have a list of ideas on my phone, but it’s nothing I am feeling FORCED to stick to. It’s more along the lines of that I had an idea while I was out, and wanted to note it so I don’t forget. Memory is a fickle thing in your late 40s, LOL.

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

My space absolutely influences my mindset for writing. I prefer to write in the early morning, because my brain operates best then. (I know I am an exception to the rule by being an early bird.) I love weekend mornings when I can get up really early and settle into my recliner with my laptop and coffee, and just listen to some lofi music and just feel topics and ideas out. I also made my office/guest bedroom into a cozy little space, with a daybed full of soft blankets and fluffy pillows and cushions, and a lap desk.

In all honesty, my preferred location to write is at a coffeeshop first thing in the morning. I love sitting tucked in a booth with a coffee and muffin, headphones on and listening to music, when the sun is just on the cusp of rising and the shop is still a little too chilly. That’s when the creative ideas light up the brightest and the synapses are firing on all cylinders.

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

Currently, my site is hosted on Bear.

I used to be a self-hosted Wordpress devotee, but in mid-late 2024, I got really tired of the bloat that the apps had become. In order to use it efficiently for me, I had to install entirely too many plugins to make it “simpler”. (Shout-out to the Indieweb Wordpress team, though - they work so hard on those plugins!) Of course, the more plugins you have, the less secure your site…

My domain is registered through Hostinger.

To write my posts, I use Bear Markdown Notes. I heard about this program after seeing a few others talking about using it for drafts, notes, etc.

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

I honestly don’t think I’d change much! I really love using Bear Blog. It reminds me of the very old school LiveJournal days, or when I used Greymatter. It takes me back to the web being simpler, more straightforward, more fun. I also like Bear’s manifesto, and that he built the service for longevity.

I would probably structure my site differently, especially after seeing some personal sites set up with more of a “digital garden” format. I will eventually adjust my site at some point, but for now, I’m fine with it. (That and between school and work, it’s kind of low on the priority list.)

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 purchased a lifetime subscription to Bear after a week of using it, which ran around $200 - I don’t remember exactly. I knew that I was going to be using the service for a while and thought I should invest in a place that I believed in. My Hostinger domain renewals run around $8.99 annually.

My blog is just my personal site - I don’t generate any revenue or monetise in any way.

I don’t mind when people monetize their site - it’s their site and they can do what they choose. As long as it’s not invading others’ privacy or harmful, I have absolutely no issue. Make that money however you like.

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

Ooooh I have three really good suggestions for both checking out and interviewing!

Binary Digit - B is kind of an influence for me to play with my site again. They have just this super cool and early 2000s vibe and style that I really love. Their site reminds me of me when I first started blogging, when I was learning new things and implementing what I thought was cool on my site, joining fanlistings, making new online friends.

Kevin Spencer - I love Kevin’s writing and especially his photography. Not only that, he has fantastic taste in music. I’ve left many a comment on his site about 80s and 90s synthpop and industrial music.

A Parenthetical Departure - Sylvia was one of the first sites I started reading when I started looking up info on Bear Blog. They are EXTREMELY talented and have an excellent knack for playing with design, and showing others how it works.

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

One of my side projects is Burn Like A Flame, which is my local K-pop and fandom photography site. I actualy just started a project there that is more than slightly based on People and Blogs - The Fandom Story Project. I’m interviewing local fans to talk about what they love and what their feelings are on fandom culture now, and I’m accompanying that with a photoshoot with that person. It’s a way to introduce people to each other within the community.

Two of my favorite YouTube channels that I have recently been watching are focused on fashion discussion and history - Bliss Foster and understitch,. If you like learning and listening to information on fashion, I highly recommend these creators.

I know a TON of people have now seen K-Pop Demon Hunters (which I love, and the movie has a great message for not only kids, but adults). If you’ve seen this and are interested in getting into K-Pop, I suggest checking out my favorite group, ATEEZ. If you think that most K-Pop is all chirpy bubbly cutesy songs, let me suggest two by this group that aren’t what you’d expect: Guerrilla and Turbulence. I strongly suggesting watching without the translations, and then watching again with them. Their lyrics are the thing that really drew me into this group, and had me learning more about the deeper meaning behind a lot of K-Pop songs.

And finally, THANK YOU to Manu for People and Blogs! I always find some really great new sites to check out after reading these interviews, and I am truly honored to be asked to join this list of great bloggers. It’s inspiring me to work harder on my blog and to post more often.

Keep exploring

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If you're looking for more content, go read one of the previous 117 interviews.

Make sure to also say thank you to Fabian Holzer and the other 125 supporters for making this series possible.

Dealgorithmed - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2025-11-27T08:40:00.000Z

TL;DR: I hate having spare time, and I decided to launch another newsletter called Dealgorithmed. Will start on January 1st, delivered every 1st and 15th of every month. It’s gonna be a discovery newsletter focused on the personal/independent/whimsical/indie web.

I spent the last 15 years of my life working on the web, coding all sorts of sites for all sorts of people. Part of me loves the web, while another part of me hates what the web is becoming. One thing I refuse to do, though, is give up on it. This idea I see floating around that the web is dead and we should just give up the whole project and start from scratch makes absolutely no sense to me.

Yes, a huge chunk of the web is unbearable to use at the moment. Yes, an enormous percentage of sites are impossible to navigate without ad blockers. And yes, AI is not making the situation any better and also yes, I am so goddamn tired of hearing AI talk nonstop everywhere all the time.

All that is absolutely true. But that’s not all the web there is out there. The web is vast. It’s probably impossible to say with certainty how big it really is, but the Internet Archive recently celebrated 1 trillion pages archived. Yes, that’s trillion with a T. You know how long it would take to count to a trillion if you could count one number every single second without ever stopping? 31000 years.

The fact that people keep browsing the same 3 sites, day after day, getting served content by algorithms controlled by 3 companies is such a shame. Because there is so much interesting content out there ready to be discovered. And discovering new content also means connecting with new people, getting exposed to new ideas, different cultures. That’s by far the best quality of the web if you ask me.

The problem many people are facing is how to find that content, how to escape the algorithmic bubble. I think the only answer to that is curation. The vast majority of people on the web are lurkers which means someone has to spend time herding content and collecting it somewhere for others to consume.

Over the years, I realised that it is probably the only reasonable contribution I can give to this cause. I’m already doing this with People and Blogs, slowly composing a list of people—and blogs—worth following and engaging with. And I’m also collecting content both on the blogroll and on the forest.

If I already have these, why start something new you might be wondering. There’s a reason for this. Two actually. The first reason is that I hate having spare time, apparently. And if I have to burn myself to the ground in front of a screen, I might as well do it while doing something fun and useful. The second—and more serious—reason is that all those projects have some limitations. P&B moves slowly. It’s a weekly series, which means you’re discovering at most 5 new blogs a month. Yes, there are links on those interviews, but still, this is a slow-moving project. The forest and the blogroll, on the other hand, require intention. Those are sites you need to visit in order to discover new content, and we all know it’s a lot more convenient when content comes to you, rather than the other way around. Which is why I decided to start another newsletter.

The goal with Dealgorithmed is to provide interesting content gathered from all around the web in a convenient package delivered in your inbox twice a month. Content that you can then use as a starting point for your own internet explorations. If all this sounds compelling to you, feel free to sign up. The first email should land in your inbox on January 1st.

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A moment in yet another memorial - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2025-11-24T10:50:00.000Z

There’s something unique about visiting WW memorials. I don’t even know how to explain it. It’s a strange mix of awe, sorrow, gratefulness, and many other feelings all bunched together.

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Snowy morning - James' Coffee Blog

2025-11-24T09:23:34.000Z

On the cusp of the snowy doorstep, I felt a child-like excitement. I wanted to run outside and embrace the snow — the first proper snow, as we would say here, in at least a year. This is the kind of snow that will lie on the ground., I thought. The snow flakes were thick, leaving a white blanket over the whole countryside.

I walked to get my train, still wearing my summer trainers. Maybe part of me didn’t think it was necessary to prepare for snow — there was little last year. Except, outside, I knew a different shoe would have gone a long way.

I walked on untouched snow. I must have been the first person out in my neighbourhood. The loudest sounds were my footsteps on the wet snow, followed then by the snowflakes delicately falling onto the quiet stone paths. I started to notice a few snowflakes were falling into my long hair, which made me smile. I was darting a bit of the snow with me where I went.

I looked back briefly and noticed the track that my footsteps had made — each one a step in my journey. There were no footsteps ahead. Later, I encountered a pair of footsteps — maybe they were left by a couple out walking to the same train to which I was headed. The footsteps were in a beautiful alignment.

On the train — the warm, bright train — I was delighted by how many people there were, each one bracing the snow to be here. I felt less lonely, and smiled to myself. I carried a smile with me as I started my journey for the day, as well as crystals of snow that lay in my hair.

Bookmarks - James' Coffee Blog

2025-11-22T20:08:10.000Z

My copy of Stephen King’s On Writing has been sitting on the shelf for a while. Why I stopped reading the book is one of those things lost to time. But about two weeks ago, I went to my bookshelves and picked out the two books that I had started but not finished yet. I could finish these now, I thought. I remembered enjoying what I had read so far.

The blue ribbon bookmark built into the book, which I had placed at the page I had read last, let me pick up where I left off. At first I was a bit hesitant: would I remember where I left off? I quickly got back into the book, though; given the book is autobiographical in nature, I didn’t need to keep looking back to pick up the story.

I’m glad I started reading the book again. I am learning so much!

This week a friend said something that made me write down that bookmarks are a way of understanding where you are. A bookmark, sticking out at the top or the bottom of the book, lets you know how far along you are relative to all the pages. You have some bearing of your progress. But just as true is that bookmarks are a way of noting where you left off so that you can come back later.

There are topics I want to write about but for which I don’t yet have the words; I need to do more thinking, more reading, or have more conversations to help me figure out how to get started. It’s almost as if some of my ideas are mental bookmarks. When I come back to an idea, I can think oh, yes, this really interests me! and get back to thinking. Maybe there is no change and I leave the bookmark where it is. Or maybe the bookmark leads me to a story for which I am now ready.

Icebreakers - James' Coffee Blog

2025-11-22T19:55:52.000Z

This evening I hosted an online event about writing and writing on the web. “Writing” is a broad topic, so I wanted a way to help get the discussion going. A few weeks ago, I tried an ice breaker question in an event which went well, so I decided I’d try one again this evening.

At first, I wasn’t sure what question I wanted to ask, but I had a few criteria in mind. I wanted a question that any participant could answer. To me, this meant the question had to be resonant to the audience (writers), approachable, and not too daunting.

For this event, I didn’t want to have a schedule – that would be too structured. I didn’t think we would need a schedule, ether: writing, as I mentioned earlier, is such a broad topic. I was confident there would be things to talk about. However, moving from the event introduction into the first topic of discussion without an agenda can be tricky (and for long running events may encourage the same few people who are more confident to speak first).

I came up with the icebreaker question “What do you like to write about?” After introducing the event, I asked the question. I didn’t ask anyone in particular to answer because I think a key part of an event on writing – especially online – is for people to talk when they feel comfortable. A few people answered, which both got the discussion going and allowed us all to learn a bit about each other.

Then the thing happened that I was secretly hoping would happen: the discussion would naturally flow from there. And it did. In the following 90 minutes, we covered many topics, from writing as art to the use of emojis in writing to many more topics.

I am hoping to do another writing event in December. If you'd like to join, let me know and I can email you when the next event is scheduled! My email is readers [at] jamesg [dot] blog.

Alexandra Wolfe - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2025-11-21T12:00:00.000Z

This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Alexandra Wolfe, whose blog can be found at wrywriter.ca.

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The People and Blogs series is supported by Emmanuel Odongo and the other 125 members of my "One a Month" club.

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

I’m a viviparous, mammalian, carbon-based biped — a veritable fossil from a bygone age sometimes referred to as the Good Old Days. Though, to be honest, that’s debatable to the nth degree. I was born in Germany to British parents and moved across the planet every 2-3 years, all of which seemed very natural to me at the time. Apart from studying for 3 degrees (I never finished any of them) I did several years in the military ostensibly as an air traffic controller. I then somehow stumbled from there into the print & publishing trade and made a comfortable living working on books and magazines. I even rubbed shoulders with a few names over the years, which in and of itself, was pleasantly entertaining.

Being in the publishing trade allowed me to indulge in a number of my fav hobbies, including publishing a couple of scifi ezines over the years, run a Star Trek club, hang out at several scifi and comic cons, and meet the stars and writers of many of my fav scifi shows.

I still have the photographic evidence to prove it.

What's the story behind your blog?

I didn’t so much as decide to blog as stumble into it, like many back in the days of LiveJournal and MySpace, we all just followed the crowd. It then seemed logical (at the time) to upgrade from a MySpace account to bumbling around with HTML creating a static website that was then quickly superseded by me creating an official ‘Blog’. At that point I was using the then new Wordpress software. It was, for me at least, revolutionary. Suddenly, everyone was blogging about everything.

It’s at that point I think I bought my first domain name: wrywriter and used the dot com version till right up till a few years ago when I added the dot ca version and, sadly, let the dot com version lapse. Though now, I wish I had kept it.

Now, I still have the name, but have moved away from Wordpress and blog ‘lightly’ using Bear Blog and Micro Blog to scribble and share my thoughts on. Clean, small, simple and more focused on the actual writing and less on the tweaking and tinkering. Both platforms suit my current needs.

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

I’m not sure I have a process per se. I don’t plan posts, and don’t jot down ideas. I’m more of a pantster, I stare at the blinking cursor only when I feel like I have something to say. Whether that be some random thought I had over breakfast, a news item I want to respond to, or a response to someone else’s post. I don’t do research, or make drafts, or have endless notebooks full of ideas. Unless we’re talking about short stories or ideas for novels.

Blogging, for me, is more about spontaneity.

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

I would have to say that physical space can and probably does influence how anyone writes. And that we all have our own particular quirks and eccentricities when it comes to our writing environment. I like mine to be quiet, clean, and minimal. There are a few toys I have at hand I play with, but other than that, it’s me and the keyboard, and a large screen.

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

You’re asking a dinosaur who somehow lived long enough to stumble into a Jetson’s future what my Tech Stack is? Excuse me while I consult someone smarter than I am about what a tech stake might look like.

Oh, you mean where did I buy my domain name and that sort of thing? I want to say Porkbun because I just love saying Porkbun. But no such luck, I sourced my domains here, in Canada, with WHC.ca and, at one time I had hosting with them, that is, till they kept putting their prices up. I also got very disillusioned by Wordpress so moved full time to Bear Blog and Micro Blog.

I use Bear for more long form rambling posts and post my daily thoughts over on m.b. which is more suited to sharing said drivel on social media.

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

I find this a bit of an odd question, my experience is based on what I went through, that ‘living’ experience of places and spaces that no longer exist, so of course, in the here and now, it would all be different. I would probably start off with a simple blog on Bear or the Pika platform and skip the likes of Blogger and Wordpress altogether.

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?

The web might be obsessed with money, but I’d say most bloggers are not. I’m not interested in monetising my blog, nor am I interested in reading blogs that are focused on making money. I avoid them like the plague. If someone quietly, and respectfully asks me to support their writing, however, with a discrete ‘Buy Me A Coffee’ button, then I’m almost always happy to make a donation.

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

There are so many great blogs about at the moment, but some of my current fav reads are:

David at www.crossingthethreshold.net
Sylvia at sylvia.buzz
David at forkingmad.blog
Kimberly at kimberlykg.com
Robert at robertbirming.com
Annie at anniemueller.com

I would humbly suggest you ask David Johnson of Crossing The Threshold for an interview. David lives in Hawaii and always has some thoughtful posts to read on his blog.

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

There are many things I’m always working on when it comes to writing projects. I do love to scribble. You can find more over on Alexandra Wolfe (alexandrawolfe.ca) and read my daily posts over on the Wry Writer (wrywriter.ca).

For those of you out there who love reading fantasy, I stumbled upon a great series by Robert Jackson Bennet starting with, The Tainted Cup and followed by A Drop Of Corruption. I sincerely hope there’s more in the series.

Some fun websites people might like to check out:

My life in Weeks weeks.ginatrapani.org
Notebook of Ghosts notebookofghosts.com
Shady Characters shadycharacters.co.uk

And finally, I would like to extend a big thank you to Robert Birming for suggesting me to join in this amazing series, People & Blogs, and an even bigger thank you to you, Manu, for asking me to take part. I feel honoured to be among such an esteemed alumni.

Much love,
Alex

Keep exploring

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Winter sunset - James' Coffee Blog

2025-11-20T15:48:52.000Z

A dusting of snow blankets hills in the distance, left over from the snowfall two evenings ago. There are thin light clouds above the hills through which the sky peeks. On the horizon, separating the snowy white hills from the light grey clouds, there is a hint of a pale red, cast from the sun setting at the opposite end of the sky.

The sun is setting, I think to myself. Knowing that it will soon be the evening, I stand by the window and gaze out the window so I can see as much of the hills as possible before sunset. Will the snow be there tomorrow? I wonder. Whatever the case, the snow is beautiful right now.

On another hill, a few streaks of sun shine through gaps between the clouds, illuminating strips of a green hill – whose snow has already melted – with an amber colour. At the bottom of the hill, the treetops are dark green, occasionally interspersed with a few trees whose leaves are still orange – all trees change with the seasons at different paces. As autumn turns to winter, the orange sky and the remaining orange treetops complement each other well.

Most trees have lost their leaves, moving into their winter phase. A few leaves hang on to the trees near me, memories of the vitality of summer while I exist in a sea of Nature’s calls for rest that come in winter – the sleepy hills coated in snow, quieter streets.

The sun has set over the hills; yellow and orange colours are cast onto a few clouds, but the rest of the sky is light blue. Soon, the blue will change. We will cycle through gradient of all the colours that come in evening. I leave to look at the opposite end of the sky and see a warm pink hue envelops the clouds on the horizon, above which there is a fluffy line that goes from pink to light blue. I wonder if I will see the purple in the sky this evening, I think to myself.

I consider how much I love winter sunsets, and how much easier it is to notice them in winter for they happen much earlier in the evenings. I wonder for how long the sky will be pink, I think to myself as I continue to look out at the horizon in awe.

Resonance - James' Coffee Blog

2025-11-19T12:12:11.000Z

I have been listening to a podcast interview between Ezra Klein and Brian Eno. In it, Eno referenced the concept of the “premature sheen.” I stopped what I was doing, paused the podcast, and started to think about what those words meant.

I wanted to learn more about the concept, so I searched for “preamture sheen” on the web. DuckDuckGo returned an info card of Martin Sheen at the top. Not quite the result for which I was looking, then I realised that there was a typo in my query and maybe that had something to do with it. ¹

The second result was Adactio’s blog post called “The premature sheen”. This looks familiar, I thought. I clicked on the result and realised that it was through Adactio’s blog that I first found this podcast episode.

I saw the post in my web reader, clicked through to Adactio’s blog, clicked on his link to the podcast, and that’s how I got here. Then a web search engine took me back to his blog. All of this is something of a cycle in finding information, a cycle in which personal websites are at the heart. I discovered the podcast through a personal website. I kept up to date with the personal website through a web reader tailored for following blogs.

I haven’t yet read about the concept of “premature sheen” for the serendipity of finding the blog post on which I originally discovered the podcast swept me away. The web is both wide and small. The web is full of potential. The web is wonderful.

I have been thinking for a while of making a list of “reasons to be optimistic about the web.” I tried writing that post but the writing felt a little bit forced, almost as if I was trying to apply sheen before I knew exactly what I wanted to say. I kept my writing as a draft. Now, I wonder if the form of that idea is a list of stories that emerge as I experience wonder with the web – stories like the one I shared above where I had a full-circle experience involving personal websites. A story where the next place to learn about something I heard was from a friend, on the web.

On a similar note, I read Y’all are great by Manuel earlier today, in which he noted “with all the other wonderful humans that are still out there, spending their time making sure the old school web, the one made by the people, for the people, is not dying.” Another personal website that is beaming hope into the world about the web can be!

The web is indeed not "dead." With every voice publishing on independent platforms, and every link between websites, the web shines. With every blog post, story, and note, the power of connection that the web makes possible is illuminated. We can build the web we want.

If you are looking to make something for the web today, I have a prompt for you: What stories do you have of times recently when the web has felt alive?

[1] Typo tolerance is one of my favourite features of search engines. Fun fact: when you add spelling correction in the background to a search engine, the engine becomes significantly more delightful to use. I don’t think Martin Sheen should have come up in the search result, but I’ll take any excuse to think for a moment about the West Wing.