~hedy's blogroll - BlogFlock

Tuesday, February 24, 2026 - Baty.net

2026-02-24T13:45:05.000Z

Am I back? Not sure yet, but I think I’m a static-blog kind of fella. Pure Blog is awesome, and Kev’s done a great job with it. I like it a lot. And yet, there’s this nagging feeling about it running “out there” and needing PHP, etc. Pure Blog is super simple to host, but not as simple or portable as a static site. A CMS with a nice, simple UI is pretty great, but I’ve spent years honing my combination of Hugo and Emacs. Blogging is a “solved” problem, right? :) Anyway, I’m going to try this again for a minute.

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Dopplr colours - James' Coffee Blog

2026-02-24T09:03:45.000Z

Last year I was introduced to the idea of “Dopplr colours” in the IndieWeb community. This refers to an accent colour assigned to cities on the now-defunct travel website Dopplr. You can see examples by clicking through different Dopplr city pages in the Internet Archive and paying attention to the borders of the map.

While I haven’t been able to find an authoritative description of the algorithm, to the extent I understand the Dopplr colours were assigned using an MD5-based algorithm. Aaron implemented a demo of the Dopplr colour system and described the algorithm in PHP as:

substr(md5($_REQUEST['city']), 0, 6)

Here is an equivalent Python implementation:

import hashlib

colour = hashlib.md5("jamesg.blog".encode()).hexdigest()[:6]

print("#" + colour)

These code snippets calculate the MD5 hash for a string, then take the first six characters. This creates a hexadecimal value that can then be used as a colour. The Dopplr colour for my domain name is #e228f3. It’s pink! Of note, you can calculate a Dopplr colour for any string, not just city names.

The IndieWeb community uses Dopplr to assign colours to cities in its timeline of in-person IndieWebCamp events:

I had never heard of the idea of Dopplr colours prior to the IndieWeb, and a Google Search was not fruitful in returning a page that described the algorithm. I thought I’d write this page to document the idea, and make it easier for people to find the idea.

Brainstorming search engine ranking introspection - James' Coffee Blog

2026-02-23T12:57:26.000Z

Search is one of my favourite disciplines in computing. In 2024 I spent a lot of time working on a NoSQL engine that I called JameSQL. This tool now powers the search engine on my website.

Designing search engine ranking systems is tricky to say the least. When I use my blog search engine, I sometimes notice that the article for which I am looking does not show up at the top of the search results. Google set a high standard for search; when I type something in Google in a site search, I can often find what I am looking for.

I am not yet ready to delve back into the world of search, but I did want to take a note of an idea I had today: I want my next search project to have tooling for ranking introspection. By this I mean I want to have tools that let me know why a particular article ranks above another.

At present, JameSQL only returns a single attribute, _score, which is computed using either TF-IDF or BM25, with any additional boosts you have specified (i.e. give h1s 3x more weight). I imagine having a value like _score_answer that would tell me how much weight each attribute used in ranking had, for example:

[
  {"bm25_on_post": 100.01},
  {"score_after_h1_boost": 101.01},
  {"score_after_inlinks_added": 109.01},
  ...
]

This would be an ordered list that specifies what calculation has been made, followed by the score at that point in time. This could then be used to calculate how many points each ranking factor added onto the final score. This can be done by calculating the difference between scores after each weight is applied.

This information would help me answer the question “why is this post ranking in this place for this query?” much more effectively than right now, by letting me see exactly how each calculation and ranking factor affects the final search engine ranking.

I started building a tool that lets me interactively experiment with different algorithms (see image of the dashboard) which was useful. I think I would like to revisit that dashboard to make it more useful if/when I work on a search project in the future.

Outside of the scope of this particular, developer-focused context, I generally want to use software that gives me a clear idea as to why I am seeing what I am seeing. As a user, I shouldn’t be left thinking “why did this show up?” With many opaque recommendation systems used on the web today, I am often left feeling exactly like that: “why did this show up?” This makes it a lot harder for me to understand, and therefore trust, a system.

Preserving calm in software over time - James' Coffee Blog

2026-02-23T11:48:11.000Z

When I announced Artemis in 2024, I titled the announcement “Artemis, a calm web reader, is available (in beta)”. So central to the philosophy of how I build the software is the principle “calm” that, when I write about Artemis, I still use the phrase “a calm web reader” to describe what the software is.

While exchanging blog post titles with Britt, she asked me a terrific question:

How you maintain calmness in Artemis while still adding new features. Is there an upper limit on the amount of things a calm reader could do while still being calm?

I ended up writing a post on another suggested topic “A piece of art I would love to see in person”, but the question about Artemis stuck in my mind. How do I preserve calm in Artemis over time?

I have been using Artemis for over a year and a half now. In that time the software has gone from a static site that updates once a day to a service that others can use. I have added a lot of features since Artemis was a static site. With that said, I don’t think new features have reduced the sense of calm I feel when I use Artemis. I think “calm” is an attribute of a feature and its design: a feature can afford calm, or make the experience of using Artemis less calm.

Adding features while preserving calm

My own experience using the software is that it feels like Artemis exists in the background. I go to see what my friends have written lately and then I go to their website. It doesn’t feel like it demands my attention; the update cadence is much slower than social media and other readers.

The new features I have added, and continue to add, are mostly around the topic of user preferences and control. How can I let a user customise their reader more? How can I make sure the user controls what they see? That latter question, for example, relates to the work I put in on keyword filters (which can now be applied both to all feeds and to individual feeds!). I have a few keyword filters set up which allow me to not have to think about topics I don’t want to see in my reader. In this way, the feature affords calm.

Preserving the calm I associate with the software is made up of intentional choices I make whenever I choose to add, or not add, a new feature. I ask myself questions like: How can I make this as unobtrusive as possible? Does this feature give a user more control over what they see in their reader? Will this feature affect the main reading experience and, if so, how will I make sure it is not disruptive? (For the last question, the answer is often to make something opt in by default.)

In addition, if someone thought a feature was intrusive or confusing, I would consider the feedback thoughtfully before writing a response and see what I can do better. Indeed, I have the experience of Artemis as the person who builds it; others’ feedback would help me improve the software beyond what I can see from my perspective.

Roadmaps, ideas, and red lines

There have been periods of weeks where I haven’t worked on Artemis. This is important to me. I don’t have a roadmap for Artemis with dates on when I plan to deliver features. Rather, I build what feels right when the idea comes. “via” came after a user highlighted a bug that I also noticed. “roll-ups” came after I realised people may want to follow feeds that publish many posts at once, but may not want to see all their post sin their main reader.

There may come a time when I plan a short roadmap for Artemis, but at present all I can think of would be simplifying the code such that things are more stable. I would like to work on removing repetitive code in Artemis at sone point. It would take a lot of time and I would need to plan it out, but this work would make the software easier for me to understand while reading the code and therefore easier to maintain.

There are a few “red lines” for Artemis that I don’t want to cross. These are all essential philosophies of why the software exists. First, Artemis does and will not strive to refresh posts in real time. Second, I don’t want Artemis to become an inbox, so there are no unread counts. Third, I want Artemis to be a stepping stone, rather than a destination. Artemis should point you to sites you enjoy rather than trying to be the place where you go to read the web.

Regarding the question “Is there an upper limit on the amount of things a calm reader could do while still being calm?”, I think the answer is “yes”; the more features something has, the more complex it is. I am cognisant that having lots of user preferences will, over time, feel more overwhelming. To counter this I try to set as reasonable defaults as possible (and, related to the topic of software maintenance, I need to revisit the defaults to make sure they are as good as they can be; I need to do a full run-through of using Artemis from sign-up to adding feeds to keep building my understanding of how the software works for new users).

Conclusion

The original question that motivated this post is prescient. I want to make software that is useful and makes people feel empowered. I think “calm” as a design philosophy is one part of this.

To keep following through on the reason Artemis exists – to provide a calmer way to follow websites you enjoy – means I need to continually consider that reason as I build the software. The obligation to be considerate in adding features is especially great because other people use the software. As a software author making something for other people, I want to make sure people have the experience they signed up for, and for that experience to persist over time.

Artemis “via” - James' Coffee Blog

2026-02-23T10:58:14.000Z

Recently, a feed a few users – including myself – were following with Artemis published a “bookmark”-like post. The markup in the corresponding feed was a bit different than expected, so Artemis ended up linking directly to the bookmarked post rather than to the author’s post itself.

I fixed the underlying bug in Artemis, but it left me thinking about an idea I have been considering for a while: should Artemis let users know when a post has a permalink that corresponds with a site other than the author’s?

I recently subscribed to a feed of bookmarks that someone published and had an idea: I could add “via” in the author’s name. So when they publish a post in this feed, dedicated to bookmarks, Artemis would show it as being published “via {their name}”. I liked this pattern but it meant that I had to proactively update bookmark feeds I follow to include “via” in the author name. And I would have to remember to do this when I followed other such feeds in the future.

This led me to develop a new feature: Artemis “via”. This feature shows “via” when Artemis thinks the permalink for a post is not the same as the site you are following. Here is what it looks like if a post in your reader links to a site other than the author’s:

Above there are three posts. The first post is published on the author’s site, so their author name appears as normal. The next two posts link to sites other than the author’s website that I am following. “(via)” appears before the author name when the entry links to another website. “(via)” is in italics which provides a subtle visual indication that Artemis has added this. Users can’t add italics to author names.

With the above "(via)" labels, I can see without clicking or hovering over a link that it will take me to another website.

The following things must be true for “via” to show up next to an author’s name for an entry:

When your feed is calculated, the hostnames of all entries are calculated. The most popular hostname is found. If the number of posts with the most common entry name is not equal to the number of posts published in the author’s feed (as defined by how many days of posts you opt to show in your reader; ideally Artemis would look further back, but I still need to scope out this work) a given post in the author’s feed will be considered for a “via” label.
The entry URL hostname must be different than the feed’s domain for the entry to be considered for a “via” label.

If both of these conditions are met, “(via)” shows up before the author’s name for an entry.

For example, if I have a feed jamesg.blog/bookmarks and the post permalinks in the feed point to example.com and coffee.com, my author name would appear as “(via) James’ Bookmarks” in Artemis.

This implementation accounts for an important edge case: some feeds may publish the same hostname for every entry but the feed URL itself has a different hostname. I saw this come up in the case of feeds for a blogging platform that supports custom domains; sometimes, the underlying feeds linked to the blogging platform itself rather than the custom domain.

Suppose I publish jamesg.blog and all posts use jamesg.example.com as the hostname. This would mean the first condition in the above bullet point list (a hostname for an entry must match the most popular hostname) would fail, so “via” would not show up. This means that if a site has a different hostname for all entries, “via” will not show up.

Without this condition, I saw sites that I knew to be linking to the right URL showing up as “via”. This is suboptimal: seeing “via” in cases where it is not applicable would be confusing.

The “via” logic is still very much under development: it may be the case that I need to come up with other heuristics. With that said, I think it is a good start. The overarching motivation is to make it more clear when an entry permalink points to an external site, as is common in the case of bookmark feeds. By adding “via”, Artemis can help users understand that what they are seeing is not going to be on the site they followed, but rather go to another site that the author they followed found interesting enough to put in their feed.

Interviews, interviews, interviews - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-02-23T10:35:00.000Z

For some weird combination of factors, I ended up answering questions to three different people for three entirely unrelated projects, and all three interviews went live around the same time.

I answered a few questions for the Over/Under series run by Hyle. Love the concept, this was a lot of fun.

I also answered a few questions from Kai since he’s running a great series where he asks previous IndieWeb Carnival hosts to share some thoughts about the theme they chose.

And lastly, Kristoffer asked me to talk a bit more about my most recent project/newsletter, Dealgorithmed, for his Naive Weekly, another newsletter you definitely want to check out because it’s fantastic.

Click those links and check these projects; they’re all wonderful. And especially go check all the other interviews, so many wonderful people are listed on all three sites.

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Artemis dense layout - James' Coffee Blog

2026-02-22T22:01:05.000Z

This evening I added an idea I have had for a while to Artemis: a "dense" layout.

By default, the Artemis interface appears in a single-column layout. The dense layout creates several columns. Each column from left-to-right shows posts for a given day. You can scroll down to the next row of columns to see posts from previous days, too.

You can experiment with a new "dense" layout, designed to be skimmable, by setting your "Choose a Layout" preference to "Dense" in your account settings.

Here is what the dense layout looks like:

I made this layout with a question on my mind: how much information could I fit on the page while preserving the readability of its contents? A grid layout lets me pack in many more posts. The UI is busier than I prefer, but I like how skimmable a dense grid can be.

On reflection, this layout also lets me see clusters of posts that I haven't read (marked in white). (Although I have read more posts than the ones above via someone's site directly but that doesn't show up above.)

Addendum

This layout fits in my idea of what a "Lab" set of features would look like for Artemis (a la Ghost Labs). Such a Lab would contain features that are experimental. I don't have list of features in a Lab that you can toggle on/off, although I would love to create a Lab section at some point so people can play with experimental features that have an explicit label indicating they are experimental.

Grouping threaded posts in Artemis - James' Coffee Blog

2026-02-22T21:05:53.000Z

Artemis lets you subscribe to ActivityPub feeds (i.e. accounts on Mastodon). To do this, you can type in an ActivityPub handle like @jamesg.blog@jamesg.blog [1] on the “Add a website” page.

When you subscribe to a feed using an ActivityPub handle, Artemis can use the information in the feed to determine if a post is in reply to a previous post by the same author. This is sometimes called a “thread”; longer threads of posts by the same author used to be called “Tweetstorms”.

Rather than present all posts by an author individually, Artemis groups threaded posts. Here is what this feature looks like:

The post at the top of the thread is at the top. Subsequent posts by the author in the same thread are nested below the top post, with an arrow icon to indicate the visually nested post is a reply. Only the first two posts in a thread are shown this way so that long threads don’t take up a lot of space int he reader (although I will likely add a [and {n} more] label soon).

In addition, ActivityPub posts are presented slightly differently in Artemis. Posts with images will have [photo] to indicate there is an image in the post; posts with content warnings will have a [content warning] label; hyperlinks are replaced with [link]. Using these textual cues, you can get a sense for the post with a quick skim. Artemis acts as a preview: to see the full post, you can click through to the author’s original post.

It is also worth noting Artemis only saves posts published by an author and replies to their own posts, rather than all posts by an author (which would include their replies to others' posts, re-posts, etc.). I made this decision because I generally like to follow what someone has written as my first priority. I may extend this feature in the future to allow people to choose what they want in their reader if this is requested by users.

Conclusion

The concept of nesting posts is related to the “Grouping link posts in a web reader” post I wrote last year, except that post was specifically addressing a scenario where one website you follow responded to another. The thread grouping feature discussed in this post is specifically for threads of content by the same author published via ActivityPub.

I wanted to document this feature as an example of how to present previews of threads. If use Artemis and have any ideas on how this could be better, or have seen other implementations of this idea that you like, please feel free to email me!

Footnotes

[1] @jamesg.blog@jamesg.blog publishes a post with the title, first few words, and URL of new posts published on my website. I use Bridgy Fed for this. I set this up in case people wanted to get notifications for when I publish something new on my website. I haven't announced this anywhere yet, so consider this footnote the announcement.

Step aside, phone: week 2 - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-02-22T07:50:00.000Z

Halfway through this enjoyable life experiment, and overall, I’m very pleased with the results. As I mentioned last week, I was expecting week two usage to be a bit higher compared to week one, where I went full phone-rejection mode, but I’m still pleased with how low my usage was, even though it felt like I was using the phone a lot.

Also included is a screen from last Sunday

No huge spikes this week, didn’t need to use Google Maps a lot, so the time distribution is a lot more even, as you can see. The first three days of the week were pretty similar to the previous week. I moved my chats back on the phone, and that’s most of the time spent on screen since “social” is just the combination of Telegram, WhatsApp, and iMessage.

Usage went up a bit in the second part of the week, but I consider that a “healthy” use of the phone. On Thursday, I spent 20 or so minutes setting up an app, one that I’d categorise as a life utility app, like banking or insurance apps. They do have a site, but you’re required to use the phone anyway to take pictures and other crap, so it was faster to do it on the phone.

Then on Saturday, I had to use Maps as well as AllTrails to find a place out in the wild. I was trying to find a bunker that’s hidden somewhere in a forest not too far from where I live (this is a story for another time), and that’s why screen time was a bit higher than normal on that particular day.

Overall, I’m very happy with how the week went. A thing I’m particularly pleased with is the fact that I have yet to consume a single piece of media on my phone since we started this experiment. So far, I have only opened the browser a couple of times, and it was always to look up something very specific, and never to mindlessly scroll through news, videos or anything like that. My content consumption on the phone is down to essentially zero.

One fun side effect of this experiment is how infrequently I now charge my phone. I took this screenshot this morning before plugging it in, and apparently, the last time it was fully charged was Wednesday afternoon. I’m now charging it once every 3 or 4 days, which is pretty neat.

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Thinking; walking - James' Coffee Blog

2026-02-21T19:48:43.000Z

Earlier this week I started to feel something I haven’t felt in a while: I felt lost. I started to look ahead and feel disoriented. Where do I want to be in a few years? What do I want to work on? What is my dream? I have never looked too far ahead in time, as long as I have a little bit of direction. I like to wander but with a little bit of a destination in mind. This week, though, I thought: maybe I should have a little bit more direction? A bigger plan?

It is perhaps with the anguish that comes from entertaining such questions that, when I woke up this morning, I asked myself: do I want to get up and go for a walk, and maybe go to a bookstore or a cafe? Or do I want to stay here in bed and sleep in for a bit? The skies are grey. Although I knew I had to get up. Something told me I had to. I did, with tiredness in my eyes.

After getting ready, I did some reading. I tried to go to a bookstore but I didn’t see anything of interest. I felt like I needed to be outdoors. Today may have been the warmest day so far this year. I can’t miss this opportunity to be outside. I left the bookshop and went walking with no destination in particular. I need to be outside.

I walked and walked through the streets of Edinburgh, ending up at the Water of Leith walk. If there is any place in Edinburgh that could be the setting of a fairytale, the Water of Leith is it. Seasons had passed since I had last been here.

I listened to the sounds of the water crashing down at a point where the water falls down an incline in the river. I watched the stillness of the water in the moments before it would flow down the incline. Relative stillness and turbulence together, so close. The water would need to flow down to find the next point of stillness.

I followed the river, enjoying the sounds of the water changing with every meter I moved. I then wandered under a tall bridge which towered over the river and the path I was on. This building is as tall as the ceilings of the tallest churches I have been in, I thought to myself. So grand was the height of the bridge. I stopped and listened to the water for a few minutes. I felt relaxed, although the thoughts that occupied my mind at the beginning of the day were still there. I feel lost.

I listened to the water more and kept going. I then reached the Classical-inspired statue. I have walked past the statue a few times and always appreciated it, but my eye today was different: I noticed that there was a jug that made me recall when I learned about river gods in a museum. As I said, it had been seasons since I had been here. The landscape was the same but I was different. The poetic and the artistic shone through me more than ever. Am I lost?

I kept going further and further, walking and walking. I can’t let this day pass me by. It hasn't been this warm in so long. Today felt closer to Spring than any other day. I kept going without a direction. I stopped for a croissant. It was delicious. It took me ages to decide what I wanted, but that’s me: it takes me time to think about what I want. (I hesitate to extrapolate how long it might take me to make big decisions if it took me so long to decide I wanted a croissant.)

I ended up in a park I had wanted to visit for a while, next to the Botanic Gardens. I had never visited because I would always go to the Botanic Gardens then go for a cup of coffee. Today though my walk led me somewhere new.

Walking through the park then ascending the hill I saw a beautiful view of the city; panoramic. I could see further than I had seen that day. I was struggling to place myself relative to the landmarks I saw, even with a map, but I knew one thing: the road may have been filled with turns, but here I am enjoying a wonderful view of things that I both have seen and never seen before.

My walk went on for another little while, then I visited an art gallery: an open day with paintings I had never seen before. Two stood out to me which I think were by the same artist owing to the similarities in style between them. The first one that caught my eye used a similar pink to one of the paintings that stood out to me most in a gallery a few years ago, a painting of which I do not know the name but do know that it made me appreciate what art could be.

Then I felt tired. More tired than I have in a long time. It took me a moment to figure out why I might have been so tired. Oh, the walk. I had walked five miles, more than any other day in weeks. I had been indoors for a lot of the last week owing to the weather and how my hands react to the cold. I didn’t expect to walk so far today, but I did. The journey was what I needed.

I still feel a bit lost, but I was able to spend the day doing two things that I love: walking and enjoying art. I also remembered that I am running an event about writing later today. The event almost feels like a gift from my past self. Today I can do another thing I love: bringing people together to talk about writing and the web. The grey skies feel a bit clearer.

I found my way around today, and even discovered new places. That gives me confidence, enough to make me think I'll find my way around tomorrow too.

Updated thoughts on People and Blogs - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-02-21T17:50:00.000Z

This is a follow-up on my previous post. After talking to a few friends and getting feedback from the kind people who decided to email me and share their thoughts, I decided that I will stop once interview number 150 is out, on July 10th. 150 is a neat number because it means I can match each interview to a first gen Pokemon. I am a 90s kid after all.

That said, my stopping on the 10th of July doesn’t mean the series also has to stop. If anyone out there is interested in picking it up and carrying it forward, I’ll be more than happy to give the series away. If that's you, send me an email. I’m also happy to part ways with the domain name if it can be of any help. Whether someone picks up the torch or not, the first 150 interviews will be archived here on my blog for as long as I have a presence on the web.

20 interviews left, 6 drafts are ready to go, a few more people have the questions, and I’m waiting to get their answers (that may or may not arrive before July 10th). It’s going to be fun to see who ends up being the final guest.

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Stefano Verna - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-02-20T12:00:00.000Z

This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Stefano Verna, whose blog can be found at squeaki.sh.

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

I’m Stefano, I’m 40 years old, I live in Italy. I have three sons (the oldest turned 18 last week — happy birthday Ale!). I try to be a present and attentive father, and I believe I am, despite the compromises that come with divorce.

I discovered programming at 12 with a little book I found at the library featuring games in QuickBASIC… and I never stopped from there. Creating digital things has always been my greatest passion.

In my first year of university, I released one of the very first Firefox extensions, which was an immediate huge success: in no time, 2M daily users… and thousands were donating on PayPal! A huge thing for a 19-year-old. From that experience on, I kept recreating that recipe: building my own software on the web.

After many years in the web agency world, one of the many ideas I threw together in my spare time for fun, DatoCMS, was once again very successful. 10 years after the first line of code I wrote, the product continues to exist, grow, and be used all over the world. Today we’re about 15 people working on it. For me, it’s a true dream come true.

Apart from programming, which continues to be a fundamental part of my life in terms of fulfillment and satisfaction (perhaps too much so), I’m an idealist, a man of the left, and a great enthusiast of meditation, psychology, and personal growth work in general.

What’s the story behind your blog?

I’ve had various blogs in my life. The first one was as a teenager, in the full Blogger era (2004), to communicate and find friends. I even found my future wife and mother of my children there. The second was to find work and make myself known professionally (the articles are still on Github).

My current blog, squeakish, was born after a month-long vacation I took a couple of years ago in Brazil: disconnecting (for the first time in my life, actually!) from responsibilities for an extended period gave me the chance to think about many things differently. It inspired me and made me want to study and write again.

It’s called squeakish because I’m (proudly?) the exact opposite of a solid and confident person. I’m full of internal creaks, and my blog contains posts that represent “yieldings,” vulnerabilities that I feel like exploring and sharing.

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

Inspiration always comes from personal reflections that I feel the need to communicate. Often these are difficult things that I struggle to put out into the world. Of these reflections, only a small portion ends up on the blog. Most of them I feel are too personal in their details to be of value to someone else. This is perhaps the biggest block at the moment: understanding the threshold for when something should move from my personal journal to being shared on the blog. I should probably worry less about it?

My posts are always written in a single session — I want them to remain as authentic as possible to the moment they were conceived. I wait a few hours before publishing them, to be able to reread them and see if something can be improved, and then they’re online.

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

My creative process needs to be facilitated, first of all by taking dedicated time. This is the fundamental thing. Normally I’ve always written from home, in my usual “nest,” but lately (and even right now) I’m trying to change locations (bars, cafés). Surrounding yourself with different things helps you see things differently. I also try to avoid any kind of “aesthetic” distraction — I write in a notepad without any formatting (Paper), and only at the very end I copy on the CMS and format.

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

The site is in Astro and the code is available on Github: there’s a README that explains the details. I had fun learning and implementing webmentions, microformats, backfeeding from Mastodon, and I wrote a brief guide about it.

The content is on, well, DatoCMS. I didn’t want to invent anything new — it’s what I know like the back of my hand, and I know it already gives me everything I need and like, including easy image and video management.

The site is deployed on Cloudflare Pages, the domain is on Spaceship.

I tried to keep the layout as simple as possible, and even copied the Hey World layout. No distractions!

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

The first version of the site was in Svelte: working in the headless CMS world, in ten years I’ve really worked with all the available platforms, static site generators, and frameworks, and I’ve come to the conclusion that today Astro is the most suitable and versatile tool for producing content-driven websites. YMMV.

The name “Squeakish” still appeals to me — it has something playful about it and doesn’t take itself too seriously — but I’ve never been a fanatic about finding perfect names.

So yeah, right now I’m good with what I have!

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 only cost… is for the domain ($30/year)? Cloudflare Pages is free, the DatoCMS project is on a free plan. Personally, I have no need to monetize my blog. With monetization automatically comes a sense of responsibility, and this is exactly the opposite of what I’m looking for.

I have no negative opinion about those who do it. The important thing is to avoid the enshittification that money normally brings. Personal blogs, as you well know, are the soul of the Internet, and we must try to preserve them free and sincere.

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

God, there are so many! My feed reader is actually publicly visible at /news and at the bottom there’s the list of people I follow. Personally, I’d go with David Celis and/or Chris!

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

Having your own simple feed reader publicly available inside your own website is something I haven’t seen anywhere else, but it’s simple to build and I feel gives a nice high-level view into what one person is currently feeding himself with. I've actually wrote a bit about this.

I just watched a wonderful film, so I feel the need to share it: O Filho de mil Homens.

Finally, I’d like to use this space to offer my experience (personal? professional?) to anyone who might need it: if you’d like to have a chat, and you think I might be able to help you with something, reach out via PM on Mastodon and I’ll try to do my best!

Keep exploring

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If you're looking for more content, go read one of the previous 129 interviews.

Make sure to also say thank you to Marcus Richardson and the other 117 supporters for making this series possible.

An incomplete list of things I don’t have - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-02-19T18:15:00.000Z

Hair. A nice beard. Savings. Debt. A house. Subscriptions to video streaming services. A piece of forest. Kids. A wife. A husband. Hands without scars. Arms without scars. Legs without scars. A face without scars. A monthly salary. Paid vacations. Happiness. Things I’m proud of. A normal dog. Social media profiles. Investments. Plans for the future. Plans for the present. Plans for the past. A camera. Concrete goals. Wisdom. Ai bots. Ai companions. Ai slaves. Fancy clothes. Colognes. Fame (although I am quite hungry). Faith. Horses in the back. 99 problems. Enlightenment. A daily routine. Willingness to write long posts.

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

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A perfect day - James' Coffee Blog

2026-02-19T17:42:39.000Z

Jo and I are trading blog post titles. The title Jo chose for me is “A perfect day.”

What would my perfect day look like? Reflecting on this question, I started to think about the days that have brought me the most joy in the past. I realised that the days that stick out in my memory as being really good were all unique. I had so much fun at the Eras tour. I have loved my days spent in art galleries (and the memories of wishing for just one more hour).

This made me think about how I'm not sure there could ever be a perfect day. No day could fit all the things I love in, nor would this be desirable. All my days fuel all my other days: my days in galleries fuel one part of me, my days talking about technology fuel another part.

With that said, I want to try and write something about what a perfect day would look like.

I first need to share a little bit about how I like to move through the days. I like to plan a few things that I want to do in a day, but I don’t tie myself to the plan. My plan may be as simple as I need to write that essay today or, especially in the case when I am on holiday, a list of things I want to do. I like to have breathing room in a day to make room for the unexpected: the things I couldn’t have planned for but that transform the day.

My perfect day would begin with breakfast. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. If I could choose an ideal breakfast, it would be waffles and diner coffee at a diner. I’d love to have a conversation with someone sitting nearby; to hear a story to start my day. After breakfast I would want to do something with friends. A morning spent making web pages with friends and chatting about how we can make the web better would be a great time. I love hearing and talking through ideas.

For the afternoon, I think I’d want to go to an art gallery that I have never been to before. I’d prefer to do this by myself because I like to wander and go at my own pace. When I enter an art gallery I usually look at the exhibits closest to the entrance first and then keep exploring; I occasionally use maps, but I much prefer seeing what stands out by going from room to room. I would especially appreciate an art tour at some point in the afternoon. I enjoy art tours.

I would want to fit in walks throughout my day. It could be walking with friends, walking to get from lunch to the art gallery – whatever kind of walking I can fit in the day.

After leaving the art gallery – which would probably be at about 5pm or 6pm – I’d have dinner, either Italian food if I want something I know I’ll enjoy, or, if I’m feeling more adventurous, a cuisine I have never tried before. For the rest of the evening, I’d appreciate wandering, ideally with a friend but I’d also be happy to be by myself. I would want to watch the sunset from wherever I could, maybe by the river. I haven’t said where my perfect day would be up until now, but it would probably be in a city to allow for both the diner and the art gallery.

I would want to keep walking and spend time with a friend until we were tired and then I’d get some sleep.

Remembering my affinity for serendipity, my perfect day might be completely transformed half-way through by something I didn’t expect: meeting someone new, finding a place I have never been before that piques my interest while walking, feeling eager to relax and so spending the afternoon reading a book. I couldn’t plan a perfect day because my perfect day would have to have a degree of serendipity. But, what I have said above is a blueprint. If anything, writing this brought me a bit of warmth on a chilly winter day.

Scotland’s brightness levels - James' Coffee Blog

2026-02-19T17:21:45.000Z

I am trading blog post titles with Joe. He gave me a few suggestions for what to write about. I chose the title “Scotland’s brightness levels”.

Place is a recurring theme when I am writing. Where am I? What do I see? What I write about Nature is what I see here in Scotland. In the back of my mind, I occasionally think: how is the climate in other places? How is the weather in Australia right now? What are the seasons like in different places? I wonder.

As I write it is a cloudy day. We have had persistent cloudy weather for the last few weeks here, with the occasional interval of two or so days of sunshine. It is in those intervals that I realise how beautiful the weather can be and is here: the clear skies are wonderful, the warm colour of sunsets bring me a lot of joy, the snow-covered hills are magical.

It gets dark in winter. The sun might rise after 8am and set before 5pm. Two years ago I learned we get a sufficiently low amount of sunlight in winter that our health service recommends vitamin D supplements. I started taking them and they helped take away some of the low feelings that come at this time of year.

It might get dark in winter, but I always think about how I can see the sunset earlier, and how beautiful a clear winter sky is. While I don’t like the cold, there is something special about being out on a winter morning where there are almost no clouds in the sky, you can see your breath, and the world feels still for just a little moment. Indeed, winter, like all seasons, has its beauties.

We had a break from the clouds earlier this week, which was most delightful. The natural light was once again shining through the windows, casting a glow on the inside of the room. The days will get brighter from here. I think I wrote that hope was my favourite virtue in my Proust’s Questionnaire response because, at this time of year, a little bit of hope goes a long way. I hope for clear weather.

The shortest day passed in December. Since then, we get more daylight by the day. I have noticed it when I wake up. The daylight makes me excited to open the curtains. The especially cloudy weather of late has me particularly aware of the beauty of opening the curtains in the morning and seeing the yellow glow of the sun on the horizon.

The days will get brighter from here.

When I thought about Scotland’s brightness levels, two things came to mind: first, the current weather (winter); second: the so-many days I have spent enjoying the sunshine. Scotland is bright in my mind even on the dull days.

While Scotland may have a reputation for being rainy, the sunny days are truly special (and, to be honest, I don’t think Scotland is especially rainy, despite writing this after a period of persistent rain). I remember vividly the sunny days that allowed for wonderful walks in the park, the days sitting outside with family, the days where the cool breeze puts a spring in my step as I go on a longer walk that is possible in the sunnier weather.

I am writing on a cold and cloudy day, fuelled by memories of the moments when the bright sunlight casts through the windows and makes everything more radiant. In the back of my mind, I have a feeling of excitement: the brighter days of Spring are only a few weeks away. Oh! how much I love the Spring.

Rhythm - James' Coffee Blog

2026-02-18T15:44:35.000Z

I have been thinking about the rhythm of my writing recently. I wrote in my drafts:

I have spent much of this evening writing. I started by working on a draft of a post about clouds that I wrote on my phone using Apple Notes while waiting for the bus. I then explored a few more ideas that were in my notes. This has me thinking about how when I take more notes I usually end up writing more prose too. Also, I continually observe that when I start writing I love to keep going. As with many things, getting started is the hurdle.

I often write in “bursts” – a few posts in one day, then no posts for a little while. Sometimes I am more consistent than others. I have had preferred times for writing in the past – like trying to write a blog post before dinner, or writing late in the evening – but I don’t have a schedule in mind. I write when I feel like I have something to write. Things seem to come easier when I have already started writing.

This has me thinking about the rhythm between posts, too. I wrote Snow the day before Clear sky. Between those two moments I saw snow falling with an intensity I hadn’t seen in over a year then, the next day, a clear sky. Each post documents a moment; together, they document a time.

There was a time when I felt like I “should” write on particular cadences, but I don’t like to force things. It is also for this reason I have several posts in my head that I would one day like to write – what “private posts” could look like on an open web, for example – but haven’t written yet. I need time to not write.

I don’t know why I can write more when I have gotten started. Perhaps it’s a mix of the joy of putting words on the page and the flow I enter when I write. Or maybe writing about one thing does help my brain figure out how to write about other things. I’m not sure! With that said, there is one thing I can say for sure: I feel that writing has a rhythm.

IndieWeb wiki pages I really like - James' Coffee Blog

2026-02-18T15:14:41.000Z

I visit the IndieWeb wiki almost every day. The wiki is maintained by the IndieWeb community, documenting everything from interfaces for creating posts to POSSE.

I was thinking that, like all wikis, there are pages that are almost “hidden gems” in the sense that, while they are on the web, they may not be the first thing you look for, or may be interesting to an audience greater than that of the wiki. I then thought: I should make a page that lists some of the wiki pages I really like so I can share the links I have found particularly valuable to a greater audience.

Some of the links below I have included because they are great links that I think should have broader recognition outwith the community (i.e. the community code of conduct); others are included because they are a bit more obscure than the well-known pages like Webmention but equally interesting.

Publics: “publics are the combined set of people who make up the readership or audience of a post.”
Life happens: This was the first context in which I had heard the term “life happens.” Now it is part of my vocabulary.
Code of Conduct: A thoughtfully maintained, “living” page outlining how the community works.
Digital garden: A fun page with so many links on digital gardening.
URL design: Notes on how to design URLs.
Discovery: A list of resources for finding personal sites on the web.
How to set up web sign in: This link describes what you need to do to sign into the wiki. The sign in process is different from many other sites since you sign in with your domain name (using IndieAuth).
Loqi: How the community bot works. Loqi is used extensively to create wiki pages and add links to existing ones.
IndieWeb Carnival: The hosting schedule is coordinated on this page, a fun example of using wiki to coordinate a community event.
webactions: An interesting idea that I want to come back to in the future, not necessarily in the context of like/repost (I don’t like “like” buttons), etc. buttons but more collaborative buttons like editing.
Front End Study Hall: A wide range of HTML/CSS/JS links are listed on this page which is used as a key point of reference for the Front End Study Hall event.
ai;dr: Artificial Intelligence; Didn't Read

Of course, the above list is by no means exhaustive: I have consulted likely hundreds of pages over the course of my web weaving and coding. Many of the pages are quite technical but I have found I have learned a lot by focusing on the places that interest me most.

The IndieWeb wiki is by no means a complete record of all things indie web – far from it. If anything, the most complete record of all things indie web is the indie web itself – that’s the beauty of the web. With that said, the IndieWeb wiki is a terrific resource with so many links to explore, definitions and explorations of concepts related to the indie web, and screenshots of software designs to peruse, all licensed openly under CC0.

If you are in a community wiki, I’d encourage you to think: what are pages you have found really useful that may be less easy to find? How could you help people find those pages?

Also posted on IndieNews

Test post - James' Coffee Blog

2026-02-17T19:45:41.000Z

This is a test post.

Step aside, phone: week 1 - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-02-15T07:05:00.000Z

First weekly recap for this fun life experiment. To remind you what this is all about: in order to help Kevin get back to a more sane use of his time in front of his phone, we decided to publicly share 4 weeks of screen time statistics from our phones and write roundups every Sunday. Yes, we’re essentially trying to shame ourselves into being more mindful about our phone usage. Let me tell you, it definitely works.

Every time I do one of these experiments, I use the first week to prove to myself that this whole phone usage situation is mostly a matter of being mindful about it, and that if I decide that I don’t want to use the phone, well, I will not use it. And it’s not very hard. Monday to Wednesday, I basically almost never picked up my phone from my desk. It was fully charged on Sunday afternoon, and I didn’t plug it in again till Thursday.

I did use it when I was outside for a couple of minor things, but as you can see from the image below, screen time is reporting 9 minutes of total usage for the first 3 days of the week.

Thursday and Friday, I logged a bit more screen time (had to do a few things that required the use of apps), but also because I started listening to a few podcasts while I was driving. I said I started because one thing I did this week was delete any app that’s related to content consumption from the phone. I think my personal goal for this month-long experiment is going to be to get back to a use of my phone that’s utility-driven and not consumption-focused. The phone should be a tool to do things and not a passive consumption device.

Friday usage spiked, and that’s because I was out on a date, so most of the time spent with the screen on was Google Maps being open while I was in the car. I still tried to be mindful of that, though. I drove about 5 hours back and forth, but I only used Google Maps for a bit more than 1 hour. I also used the browser for the first time this week to purchase a couple of tickets for a museum, and I took a few pictures.

So this is how the first week went. Not included here is last Sunday—I told Kevin we were going to start this experiment on Monday—but I clocked 11 minutes on that day. Not bad.

Now, one consideration about this first week: in order to push my phone usage this low, I had to move some of my normal phone usage over to my Mac, which is how I managed to basically never touch chat apps on my phone. I know this is pretty much cheating, but it was intentional and something I was planning to do only in this first week, and I will move that screen time back on my phone starting next week.

The goal is to find the right balance after all, and I like the process of pushing it all the way down to the extreme and then bringing it back up to some more sane levels.

If you have decided to take part in this experiment, email me a link to your post, and I’ll include it below.

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A piece of art I would love to see in person - James' Coffee Blog

2026-02-14T14:40:17.000Z

Britt and I are trading blog post titles. The topic Britt chose for me is “A piece of art you would like to see in person”.

One of the many joys of art galleries is that you never know what you might see. A few weeks ago, I was surprised and delighted to encounter the J.M.W. Turner exhibit at the National Gallery of Scotland. I had likely seen Turner’s paintings before, but I didn’t know enough about him to characterise his style. After waiting in line for half an hour or so and starting to glimpse at the paintings, I felt like I was entering a new world. This was painted with watercolour? Turner painted a little bit near where I grew up?

I have fallen in love with many kinds of art because of how easy it is to move from one room to another in an art gallery: to explore the space next to the one you are in to see if there is anything that interests you. I can’t remember why I started going to more art galleries, but I do remember having a preference for Impressionism before thinking I may as well explore another room. I’m already here.

Going to the next room – exploring the periphery – has taken me from medieval art to religious art to landscapes, and led to many areas of interest. My interest sprawled to the extent that now I have to make a commitment to go to the Impressionist section in a gallery if there is one otherwise there is a non-zero chance I will not make it there before the gallery closes. Oh how time flies!

I don’t have a list of artworks that I would like to see in person. I much prefer to go to a gallery and see what I can find. I suppose, again, the same is true of my experience with the web: I like to explore and see what I can find, starting from the places that I know.

With that said, there are places I want to go to see art. I especially love Italian art and would love to go to Florence and Venice. I would love to see some of the places I have only seen painted. In Florence, I would especially like to visit the Cathedral and see the famous Baptistry doors by Lorenzo Ghiberti. I studied the doors last year in the part-time art history course I took with the V&A. I’d love to study them up close in person.

I would also like to see if I can find another painting that evokes the same feelings for me as Fernande with Black Mantilla by Picasso. I don’t know what it is about that painting that has made me spent hours studying it. I suspect, as I write, that the painting, like all works of art, is one of a kind.

Part of the joy of going to art galleries and artistic places is that I never know what is going to stand out. This, I think, is what makes me lose a day in an art gallery.

Addendum: I would love to see more works by Berthe Morisot, an incredibly skilled painter from the Impressionist era. I would also love to see some of Monet’s Venice paintings.