~hedy's blogroll - BlogFlock

My 2-step process for AI-free blogging - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-03-21T13:25:00.000Z

Following the 7-step approach and the 1-step approach, and also channelling the spirit of the longstanding tradition of learning how to draw owls on the internet:

Think about a subject and then start typing
Type the rest of the fucking post and then hit publish

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The return of my Everything RSS feed - Baty.net

2026-03-21T10:25:16.000Z

After posting about having four blogs and a wiki, I felt guilty that things were scattered all over the place. There are a handful of people who actually want to follow all of my posts, and I’ve been making it difficult for them.

For a while, I kept a WordPress instance with a couple of plugins that would consolidate various RSS feeds into a single “Everything Feed”. I lost interest in maintaining it, and grew tired of the plugins nagging me to “Upgrade to Premium!” all the time. It was overkill and a pain, so I pulled the plug. Besides, I shouldn’t have so many blogs, anyway, right?

The dream of having One True Blog remains ellusive. It occurred to me that if I’m going to continue posting to several blogs, I should bring back the Everything Feed, but only if it’s easy to maintain.

My feeds don’t update that often, so I wanted a basic static site that let me trigger updates manually when needed. I sat down with Claude yesterday and we came up with a simple (Node.js) app that parses all of my feeds and generates one master feed. There’s a companion web page containing a link to the feed, and cards for each individual site as well.

You can see it at feeds.baty.net.

It took an hour to build, test, and deploy. “Vibe coding” has derogatory connotations, and is a bad idea in many places, but there’s no denying its utility for small projects like this. I would never have bothered trying to build this on my own. It was fun, fast, and easy. And hopefully useful.

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Melanie Richards - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-03-20T12:00:00.000Z

This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Melanie Richards, whose blog can be found at melanie-richards.com/blog.

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

I’m a Group Product Manager co-leading the core product at Webflow, i.e. helping teams visually design and build websites. My personal mission is to empower people to make inspiring, impactful, and inclusive things on the web. That’s been the through line of my career so far: I started out as a designer at a full-service agency called Fuzzco, moved to the web platform at Microsoft Edge, continued building for developers at Netlify, and am now aiming to make web creation even more democratic with the Webflow platform.

I transitioned from design to product management while at Microsoft Edge. I wanted to take part in steering the future of the web platform, instead of remaining downstream of those decisions. I feel so lucky to have worked on new features in HTML, ARIA, CSS, and JavaScript with other PMs and developers in the W3C and WHATWG.

I’m a builder at heart, so I love to work on webby side projects as well as a whole bevy of analog hobbies: knitting, sewing, weaving, sketchbooking, and journaling.

What's the story behind your blog?**

I have a couple primary blogs right now:

melanie-richards.com/blog, simply the blog that lives at my main website. I post here about the web, design, development, accessibility, product management, etc. One practice I’ve been keeping for a few years now is my monthly Learning Log. These posts are a compendium of what I’ve been shipping or making, what I’ve been learning, side quests, neat links around the internet, and articles I’ve been reading. When I’m in a particularly busy period (as was the case in 2025; my first child was born in September), this series is my most consistent blogging practice.
making.melanie-richards.com: this is the blog where I post about my aforementioned analog projects. Quite a lot of sewing over the past year!

From 2013–2016 I also had a blog and directory called Badass Lady Creatives (wish I had spent more than five minutes on the name, haha). This featured women who were doing cool things in various “creative” industries. At the time it seemed like every panel, conference lineup, and group project featured all or mostly dudes. The blog was a way to push back on that a little bit and highlight people who were potentially overlooked. Since then gender representation (for one) seems to have gotten a bit better in these industries. But the work and joy of celebrating diverse, inspiring talent is never done!

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

Big “yeet to production” vibes for me! I use Obsidian to scribble down my thoughts and write an initial draft. Obsidian creates Markdown files, so I copy and paste those into Visual Studio Code (my code editor), add some images and make some tweaks, and then push to production. I really try not to overthink it too much. However, I will admit that I have a tons of drafts in Obsidian that never see the light of day. It can be cathartic enough just to scribble it down, even if I never publish the thought.

For my Learning Log posts, I use a Readwise => Obsidian workflow I describe in this blog post. Reader by Readwise is the app where I store and read all my RSS feeds and newsletter forwards.

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

“Parallel play” is the biggest, most joyful boon to my creativity. I love to be in the company of others as we independently work on our own projects side by side.

There’s a delicate balance when it comes to working on creative projects socially. For example, my mom, my aunt, and I often have Sew Day over FaceTime on Sundays. Everyone’s pretty committed to what they’re working on, so it’s easy to sew and talk and sing (badly 😂) at the same time. I also used to go to a local craft night that very sadly disbanded when the host shop changed hands.

For writing or coding, that takes a bit more mental focus for me. I started a Discord server with a few friends, which is dedicated to working on blog posts and side projects. We meet up once a month to talk about our projects (and shoot the breeze, usually about web accessibility and/or the goodness of dogs). Then we all log off the voice channel to go do the thing!

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

Both of these blogs use Eleventy and plain ol’ Markdown, and are hosted on Netlify. Some of my other side projects use a content management system (CMS) like Webflow’s CMS, or Contentful + Eleventy. Again, Webflow is my current employer.

I use a Netlify form for comments on my “Making” blog, and Webmentions for my main blog. I will probably pull out Webmentions from that code base: conceptually they’ve never really “landed” for me, and it would be nice to delete a ton of code.

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

I generally like my setup, though sometimes I think about migrating my “Making” blog onto a CMS. As far as CMSes go, I quite like Webflow’s: it’s straightforward and has that Goldilocks level of functionality for me. Some other CMSes I’ve tried have felt bloated yet seemed to miss obvious functionality out of the box.

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 have a Bookshop.org affiliate link and it took me several years to meet the $20 minimum payout so…yeah I’ve never truly monetized my blogging! I find there’s freedom in giving away your thoughts for free.

As far as costs go, I have pretty low overhead: just paying for the domain name.

I’m fine with other folks monetizing personal blogs, though of course there’s a classy and not-classy way to do so. If monetizing is what keeps bloggers’ work on the open web, on sites they own and control, I prefer that over monetizing through walled gardens. Related: Substack makes it easy to monetize but there are some very compelling reasons to consider alternatives.

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

Mandy Brown, Oliver Burkeman (technically a newsletter with a “view on web” equivalent), and Ethan Marcotte’s writing have been helping to fill my spiritual cup over the last couple years.
Anh and Katherine Yang are doing neat things on their sites
What Claudia Wore for a nostalgic pick; I’d love to recreate some of these outfits sometime. Thank you Kim for keeping the blog up!
Sarah Higley would be a great next interview. She blogs less frequently, but always at great depth and thoughtfulness on web accessibility. Web developers can learn quite a lot on more involved controls and interactions from Sarah.

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

This is highly topical: I’m currently scheming about a directory site listing “maker” blogs! So many communities in the visual arts and crafts are stuck on social media platforms they don’t even enjoy, beholden to the whims of an algorithm. I’d like to connect makers in a more organic way. If you’re a crafter who would like to be part of this, feel free to fill out this Google form!

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Four blogs and a wiki - Baty.net

2026-03-20T10:04:08.000Z

Given my proclivity for tinkering with publishing tools, it should come as no surprise that I now have four active blogs and a wiki.

baty.net - The “main blog”. Hugo. (You’re soaking in it.)
daily.baty.net - Daily notes and short posts. Statically published using Tinderbox.
baty.blog - Possible replacement for baty.net. Pure Blog is so simple! (PHP with plain-text content files)
copingmechanism.com - New. Not sure what it’s for. I can’t seem to let go of Ghost with its ActivityPub stuff and ease of posting.
Rudimentary Lathe - The Wiki. I love TiddlyWiki and it’s a great place to dump stuff and deal with it later. I’ve started over from scratch.

I understand that this is probably unsustainable, but I can’t seem to help myself. It’s chaos, especially for readers, but it’s a fun chaos!

It’ll be fine, once I’m able to admit to myself that I’m not so much a writer as I am a blog collector.

Like the Dread Pirate Roberts, each night I tell my blogs:

“Good night. Good work. Sleep well. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.”

Dread Pirate Roberts

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Social media reimagined - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-03-19T14:40:00.000Z

We’re all familiar with social media: the Facebooks, the Twitters, the TikToks of this silly digital world. They have invaded our lives and taken over our time and attention. We have spent the past decade posting, snapping, tweeting, reeling (?), tiktoking (??). We fall asleep youtubing, only to wake up with our “for you” page completely fucked up because the algorithm lives a life of its own and has decided to profile us as someone who loves sheep herding and carpet cleaning (and, you know, maybe it's right).

But imagine for a second if someone managed to reinvent social media. Imagine if there was a new product out there on the internet. A product so revolutionary, so original, so refreshingly different, that it will completely transform the way you feel and interact with other people online.

Can you feel the excitement building? Well, I’m sorry—not sorry—to disappoint you because that product is not here. What is here, though (blame Kevin), is a silly little experiment: the Dealgorithm IRC server. I was thinking about setting an IRC server up just for fun, and he took the idea, ran with it, and the server is now live.

Now, contrary to the fools at Digg, I know how the web works, and there’s no chance in hell I’d let this server open to the internet, so that every weirdo out there could join. Which is why, if you’re interested in joining, you need to apply by filling out this form. I’m not going to request a copy of your ID…for now.

The server is currently set up to retain up to 2000 messages per channel for up to 48 hours. We might play with these settings, but I don’t want this to be a place for content to stick around. The idea is to have a space where a bunch of people can hang out in a very casual way and talk about anything they find interesting.

We may or may not permanently ban you if you profess your love for AI. You’ve been warned.

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Exploiting brain flaws - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-03-18T08:10:00.000Z

In my “closing thoughts” post about the phone usage experiment, I mentioned I had deeper thoughts I wanted to share. Here I am, sharing those thoughts. I ran various month-long life experiments over the years, many of which I chronicled here on this blog. For that reason, the outcome of this recent phone experiment wasn’t a surprise: if I make the conscious decision to pay attention to some specific aspect of my life, there’s a high likelihood I’ll manage to enact significant changes in that specific area. Or so I thought.

You see, I am a flawed human being, like many—most?—of the people out there. If I were in therapy, there would be a plethora of issues I’d be discussing with my therapist, but in therapy I am not, and so I thought it would be fun—for me at least, not sure about you—to tackle one of them here, since it’s strictly related to this recent phone experiment.

«Wait a second, if that’s the case, then why aren’t you in therapy, Manu?» Good question, I’m glad you asked. There are two main reasons. The first, and less important reason, is that I am a stubborn motherfucker, and the idea of asking someone else to help me fix my inner issues is something that doesn’t sit right with me. The second, and more important reason, is that I have a fundamental distrust of psychologists. Not in psychology as a field, I have no issues with that. I even considered going into psychology back when I was about to finish high school and was thinking about possible career paths. I also read plenty of psychology books, and the book that had more impact on me growing up was a psychology book written by a psychologist.

The issue I have with psychologists is that all the ones I had the pleasure to meet in person were deeply flawed and fucked up individuals, and that left an impression on me. Now I carry this fundamental (and partly irrational) distrust in them, which is a bit problematic since it’s hard to go to therapy when you don’t trust the person on the other side. Maybe this will change at some point in the future, who knows. I'm open to that possibility.

Anyway, to get back on track, the issue I wanted to discuss is related to disappointment. Specifically, my issue with the concept of disappointing others. This is something I had to deal with since I was a kid, and I’m not sure why that is. I don’t know if it was triggered by something specific that happened or if it’s just part of my character, but disappointing others and especially the thought of seeing them disappointed because of something I did or didn’t do, is something I have always struggled with. To this day, I still do.

The reason why I think this is all related to my weird life experiments is that those experiments usually follow a pattern: I experiment with something, I blog about it, I get to enjoy the benefits of some positive change, the experiment ends, I stop blogging about it, and slowly but surely the old habits manage to creep back in. It happens every time, like clockwork. But this time around, I realised that the reason why it happens is that I, fundamentally, do not give much of a fuck about myself. That itself is a topic for another time, but in the context of this discussion, the thing that matters is that as long as I’m blogging and I’m sharing my experience, the irrational pressure of disappointing someone keeps me on track. At a rational level, I know that no one gives a fuck if I fail at these silly experiments, and yet, for some reason, that extra pressure is what keeps me in check.

Now, is this a healthy way to exist in this world? Probably not. Do I care? Definitely not. But, having realised this, I’m now wondering how I can exploit this to my advantage. Because there are things I’d love to change in my life, and I’m starting to think leveraging the disappointment-lever to my advantage could be the way to go.

My phone usage, for example, is still under control, and that’s because I know I’m gonna keep sharing those numbers. Not weekly, because that’s boring, but probably every couple of months. And this fact alone, the decision of doing this, is apparently enough to keep my brain on track.

Brains are weird, what can I say? I’m still figuring out which changes I want to put in place in my life. The tricky part is that they need to be trackable and shareable somehow; otherwise, this will not work, but I’m sure I’ll manage to come up with a solution.

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Patrick Rhone - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-03-13T12:00:00.000Z

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

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

My name is Patrick Rhone. When I'm not trying to be the best husband and father I can be, I'm mostly known as a writer, blogger, technology consultant, speaker, mental health advocate, and general c-list internet personality.

I also restore old houses as a professional hobby. I do volunteer circus rigging at a performing youth circus school as a less professional one.

What's the story behind your blog?

The very first post on my blog, Rhoneisms, is dated November 7th, 2003. Of course, I had been blogging before that, and there used to be posts dated slightly earlier. But, my blog actually began as an internally hosted one at the college I used to work for and I lost those earlier posts when I moved to a different platform and brought it public… Gosh, that seems like it was just yesterday. Not 22 years ago. Such is life.

My main blog has had many different points of focus over the years. From geeky, mainly Apple, tech stuff to GTD-driven personal productivity stuff, to practical/actionable life advice stuff, to the anything I'm interested in sort of thing it is now. And, that’s exactly what a blog should be — a reflection of one's interest and attention over time. A reflection of who one is right now and where they've been. Blogs are living things that should grow at the same rate we do.

I say "main" blog above because I do have a couple of other topic specific blogs (one for my home restoration work and The Cramped which is not often updated these days).

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

I really just post anything I feel like. Links to things I find interesting. Essays of things that take me a bit longer to express. Short thought's I'm having. All sorts of things.

I’m 58 years old. The internet was not even anything regular people could use until I was in my early 20s. My first "online" writing was things I posted to dial up BBS systems/communities. In the old days of the internet, it was common to have a blog just links or thoughts much like mine is today. There was no such thing as content management systems (like Moveable Type or WordPress) or services. No such thing as blogging software. Things were hand coded HTML. There were no “rules” about what a post had to look like or be.

Here’s Kottke.org from 2001. No titles. No format. Just some thoughts and a bunch of links for the day. This is the feel I’m trying to recapture.

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

I generally do not have a specific creative environment. I believe the best inspiration can strike anywhere at anytime for the type of blogging I'm doing.

That said, for my longer form essays, in general my process is that I think about something for a very long time and then suddenly, out of nowhere at often at the most inconvenient time, what I call "writing brain" kicks in and I must find something — anything — to get it written down ASAP. It appears fully formed when that happens. So, no drafts.

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

My blog and domain registration is through Dreamhost who I've used for too long to remember (2012 maybe). It runs on WordPress. If I'm on iOS I use Drafts to post to it. On my Mac, I use MarsEdit. I very rarely use the Wordpress web interface for posting. Only if I need to jump in and edit the HTML of something complicated to format otherwise.

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

Nope. I'm very happy with where it is now and how it exists. Like I said, a blog should grow and change at the same rate I do so, who knows, that could change tomorrow and when/if it does, I'll change it accordingly.

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 monetizing personal blogs?

Back of the napkin calculation: My general unlimited hosting for all my domains (I have a lot), sites, etc. is $39.95 a month. It would be too difficult to break down how much it is just to host the one blog out of that.

It doesn't generate any direct revenue really and I don't do it for that reason. I suppose people who enjoy my work will buy one of my books or something but it is not for this that I do it.

I blog because it is the best way for me to catalog my interests and thinking over time.

If others want to monetize their work that's their choice and I have no real opinion on it. There are a few bloggers that I support with my dollars in different ways and I'm happy to do so.

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

I remain a fan of Nicholas Bate who currently blogs at Hunter Gatherer 21C. In general, I enjoy his thoughts and insights. I also like his style of blogging. In many ways similar to mine (and I'd be remiss if I did not admit that mine is somewhat inspired by his). I'd recommend him for sure.

But, there are too many people I absolutely adore and admire to list here. Some of which have already appeared in this series. Annie Muller, Rebecca Toh, Kurt Harden, my friend Jamie Thingelstad. Obviously also internet famous ones like Jason Kottke and John Gruber.

The wonderful thing about the internet and the resurgence of blogging is that there is an endless amount of great blogs and bloggers out there. There is something and someone for everyone. Google your interests and find your people.

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

Well, I'm writing this in the middle of a tumultuous time not just in my country but in my city and local community. It is the end of January in Minneapolis/Saint Paul and anyone reading this - even long after - need only google to know what is happening here. And, I can tell you anything you do see or read or hear about it is but one of hundreds or thousands of stories. In other words, my mind is a bit pre-occupied right now.

But what I do want people to know about that is that despite everything our own federal government is doing to our state, it is only making our local communes stronger. We are deepening our ties with our neighbors, developing mutual aid networks to ensure care for the most vulnerable, and building peaceful resistance rapid response groups on a hyper local level.

So this is what I want people to know: The worst of them is bringing out the best of us. The worst in them is bringing out the best in us.

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Thursday, March 12, 2026 - Baty.net

2026-03-12T11:08:15.000Z

It’s a pain finding a photo for every daily journal post, but reviewing my catalog helps remind me that I enjoy photography and have made many photographs that are interesting to me. It acts as a tiny bit of inspiration each day. For today’s photo, it’s the guy in a suit talking on the phone while leaning against the wall. It was taken using my 1946 Leica IIIf, which is adorable.

Guess what. I thought about quitting Emacs again yesterday. Went so far as to re-install Obsidian. After a few hours of new-shiny-this-is-way-easier, I remembered I can’t stand using Obsidian. I do this once every month or two and I never learn.

Speaking of being back. I’m doing a daily post here, today. I’ve been enjoying using Tinderbox to publish the daily blog again, but I’m so far into my Linux experiment that I get twitchy using software that limits me to using a Mac. At least where there are alternatives that I also enjoy using.

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Just admit you’re playing the game - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-03-12T08:55:00.000Z

It’s fine. Many people do it, and you decided to do the same. That’s ok. But don’t attempt to use some wishy-washy argument to justify your actions. You either believe in something and you’re willing to power through, or you don’t, and you do what everybody else is doing. It’s fine to pick option B, but at least have the courage to admit it and don't use some bullshit argument to justify your actions.

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Step aside, phone: closing thoughts - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-03-09T16:10:00.000Z

Four full weeks of paying more attention to phone screen time are behind us, and it’s time for some closing thoughts on this experiment. But first, a quick recap of how the final week went.

The average was slightly higher than the previous 3 weeks, and that was mainly due to what happened on Tuesday and Friday, which, as you can see from the weekly recap, saw higher-than-usual phone usage.

On Tuesday, I passed 1 hour of screen time for the first time since the start of this experiment, and that was because of a…phone call? I’m not entirely sure why screen time registers a phone call as screen time, but that's why I passed the 1-hour mark on Tuesday. I had a 30-minute phone call for something work-related, and that apparently is picked up as screen time. Go figure. Aside from that, as you can see, usage was business as usual: about half an hour of messaging and a minute here and there for a few extra things.

Friday, I passed the 1-hour mark again, and this time it was actual usage, and it was just Telegram. As you can see from the time distribution, I spent almost 40 minutes chatting with a few people late in the day and aside from Telegram, I barely picked up my phone. The rest of the week was very uneventful.

the full 4 weeks long experiment

Looking back at these past 4 weeks, I feel like, for me, the way my life is structured at this moment, 4 hours of weekly phone usage is the sweet spot, and I intend to keep it that way. I’m happy I managed not to consume content on my phone. Podcasts, music and RSS are gone from the site, and I feel like my relationship with this stupid object is in a much better place.

I have deeper thoughts I want to share, but those will get their own dedicated post, likely tomorrow.

How about the others, though? I started this thing to help Kevin get off his phone, and I succeeded so well that he jumped off iOS entirely and moved to Android. Not exactly the outcome we wanted, but hey, at least it's a change. He'll be back using his phone 5 hours a day now that nobody is paying attention. Kev instead is too busy vibe-coding blog platforms to pay attention to his phone, and he abandoned us after one week. As for John, Thomas, and Alex, they all did great, I'd say, and I love that Thomas tracked time spent in front of his computer and not just the phone.

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Revamped the (Tinderbox) blog at daily.baty.net - Baty.net

2026-03-07T10:38:34.000Z

I’m infatuated with the new version of my Tinderbox blog running daily.baty.net. I started over from scratch and it feels great not having to lug around a giant pile of legacy code and cruft and content. I’m writing this post in an Emacs buffer and I love doing it this way, but there’s something to be said for the way Tinderbox lets me do it.

The Tinderbox document that generates daily.baty.net

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Eric Schwarz - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-03-06T12:00:00.000Z

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

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

Hi! I'm Eric Schwarz and my online "home" has been SchwarzTech. I grew up in Indiana in the United States and had a knack for anything involving computers from a young age. Although my first computer was a very-old Radio Shack TRS-80, I quickly shifted to an Apple IIgs and later playing with various used Macs. I really appreciated the intentional, but flawed aspects of Apple's products in the late-1980s and early 1990s. Despite my technology background, I went to college to work in media, especially audio/video production, but between the devaluation of a lot of creative jobs and the 2008 financial crisis/recession, I stuck around for more schooling, getting a graduate degree in Information & Communication Sciences, basically a mix of information technology, telecom, and a bit of business.

From there, I ended up working in higher education, moving through different roles in an IT department at a small college, the bulk of which involved network engineering. A couple of years ago, my now-fiancée and I uprooted for her work and I'm at a different university, still doing a variety of IT things. I really enjoy working on a small team because it means you get to a little bit of everything!

I've found that it's really nice to balance the structured, break/fix things from my day job with creative pursuits and projects outside of work. Like many that have been interviewed here, I dabble in photography, have done some various audio and video projects, and seem to be my friends' go-to for graphic design-related things.

Other than those, I appreciate a good TV show or movie, maybe satisfying my college-self a little bit. I've gotten into following the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) as well as some of the minor-league sports that are in our city. I love trying new foods and visiting new places (as cliché as that sounds), just because there's so much of the world to explore and experience—I think that makes one a more well-rounded, empathetic person.

What's the story behind your blog?

I don't quite remember the origin story for the name other than that it was going to be the name for my software "business" (remember, I was kid!) when I was writing software on the TRS-80. None of that really lasted and I reused the name when I created a personal site on GeoCities. In the late 1990s, the Internet was a weird patchwork of personal sites, academic resources, and still rough-around-the-edges corporate sites. I think we were all learning what this could be used for as we went along and I was no exception. Initially, it was a landing page of sorts when I was writing about tech elsewhere, including Low End Mac and the long-defunct MacWeekly.

Eventually, getting a new iBook G3 and wanting to expand my topics led me to turning my site into a blog. I think that second-generation of the site was my attempt to compete with some of the larger players at the time, mixing in product reviews, longform opinion articles, news stories, and even a few guest writers. At that time, my family still had a big analog C-Band satellite dish at home and I was able to tune in to the live feeds of the Macworld Expo keynotes, so I could "live blog" those from afar, too. iLounge, MacOpinion, Think Secret, and TUAW were some of the sites I looked up to. By the time I was in college, it was a lot to balance courses, a campus job, somewhat of a social life, and the site scaled back a little, but was still very much a fun hobby of mine.

Like many other bloggers, my site's third-generation morphed into more of a format similar to John Gruber's Daring Fireball: longform articles mixed with linked-out items that have a couple of paragraphs of commentary (I call them "Snippets.") I liked the format, as it allowed me to share things I found interesting or worth talking about. However, I found that in recent years so much of the tech industry has started to feel like a parody of itself. I felt like I had to cover stories because of their importance, rather than because I wanted to. After realizing that, I've started to shift my content a bit and my goal is to get back to content that celebrates my relationship with technology and even things that can be more lasting. That might be leading to a "fourth-generation" of the site.

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

As I touched on a little earlier, I think my creative process got a bit hijacked by so much bad news around "Big Tech"—while I've tried to avoid my site becoming a cheerleader for Apple, that's the corner of the tech world that I've lived in for the past 30+ years (if you count the Macs and Apple IIs I used in school before I had my own.) Inspiration and sources come from a variety of areas: other blogs and things in my RSS reader, links on social media, tech stories from the larger media outlets.

I think for Snippets, it's something that I feel is important to share or that I have strong feelings for. Those are often a bit more off-the-cuff and get a quick proofread before publishing. If it's something longer-form, I'll take some time, edit as I go, maybe have someone look over portions if something isn't quite working for me, and then publish. In terms of research, I try to link to outside sources that can provide additional context, older posts of my own that can add some historical context, while still maintaining and assuming that most of my readers have an above-average grasp on a lot of the topics. It's a bit of writing-for-me and I hope others will join me on the ride.

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

While I'd love to say that I have a certain ritualistic place that I write, the truth is that sometimes it's just wherever I am. I don't love writing from my phone, but sometimes due to travel or between things at work, I might hammer out a quick post. I do think that I've gotten my home-office to be a comfortable place to sit down and focus on writing, with cozy lighting and everything set up. When I was working at my last job, I'd often grab a laptop or iPad and work from a nearby coffee shop—I think getting out of my then-apartment and having a more intentional time for writing with fewer distractions helped. Since moving, I haven't done that as much.

If I think of some of my favorite "let's go write" moments, it's often on a moody, rainy day where there's some ambient noise from outside while I work.

I have found that taking a break and letting something sit for a day or two has been a more important thing than location. Trying to force oneself to write when your head and heart aren't in it just doesn't seem to work for me.

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

I set up my site on WordPress about twenty years ago when I outgrew server-side includes. It took a little while to wrestle the templates to work like my previously-carefully-crafted stylesheets. In some ways WordPress has gotten really bloated for my needs, but it works well enough and I have yet to find something to easily replace it with all the random things I've bolted onto my theme over the years.

I'm in the process of re-evaluating some of my services, but right now I'm using IONOS (formerly 1&1) for hosting, which I had originally started with when they set up shop in the United States. My domains are with Hover at the moment.

As for what I use to create my site, I'm currently using a Mac mini (M4), iPad mini (A17 Pro), and iPhone 15. On the Mac, BBEdit or directly on the web are where I'll do my writing. On the iOS side, I do a lot of writing in iA Writer. I'm still using Panic's Coda an Code Editor (formerly Diet Coda) for a lot of file mananagement/coding. Considering how long both have been discontinued, finding suitable replacements for both at my desk and mobile are on my to-do list.

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

Other than the name being sometimes hard to spell, I don't think I'd necessarily pick something else. The beauty of it is that I'm not necessarily tied down to Apple/Mac-specific content and I can adapt it over time. I think of how many sites were Mac-something or iPod-something and then had to abruptly (and sometimes awkwardly) rename to fit the changing scope of content.

I think for a CMS, I might want something a bit "lighter," but WordPress has allowed me to adapt the site for my changing content numerous times.

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 find it to be relatively inexpensive to run the site with hosting running me about US$100/year and then US$20/domain on average. I make some of that back with the single ad through the Carbon network, but I don't necessarily want to have more ads than that. Since it's a hobby for me, I'm not looking to make a lot of money, but I understand for folks who want or need to and don't begrudge that. I've toyed with the idea of letting people support the site, but I'm also not sure if it's worth the trouble.

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

To try to avoid repeating anyone who has already been interviewed, I went through my RSS feeds to find a few that I immediately skip to when I see a new post:

Brent Simmons is behind NetNewsWire and I started following his writing soon after I discovered NetNewsWire years ago, and got to follow the story of how that piece of software changed hands numerous times.

Stephen Hackett is someone whose content and knowledge I can really relate to, so it's interesting to see his take on a lot of tech.

Matthew Haughey covers a lot of different topics, but manages to craft a post that is always so damn fascinating.

Mike Davidson doesn't blog as much these days, but he was another person whose work I followed way back in the mid-2000s and looked up to when I was interested in the convergence of traditional media and the Web.

Jedda, Keenan, Lou Plummer, Nick Heer, Riccardo Mori, and Louie Mantia were already in the series, but I always enjoy when something new comes along from them, too.

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

I have a few odds and ends that I wasn't quite sure where to fit elsewhere. First, I wanted to mention my side-project, The Chaos League, a blog that followed a similar format as SchwarzTech, but focused on the NWSL. This was a fantastic distraction coming out of the pandemic as it gave me an outlet that wasn't tech. Unfortunately, in the last few years, coverage from large media outlets and the public's appetite for short-form video content have kind of killed a lot of interest in bloggers covering that space. It's currently on hiatus and I'm not sure what the next step, if any, will be.

Other than shamelessly plugging what I’ve done, I wanted to comment that this was a really fun exercise to think over my place online and what it means to me—thanks again for the opportunity!

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 131 interviews.

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Artemis changelog #8 - James' Coffee Blog

2026-03-06T11:41:34.000Z

I have been working on a few new features for Artemis, the calm web reader I maintain. You can read a summary of what’s new below.

Organise subscriptions with folders

You can now create folders in Artemis. This feature is designed to help you organise websites you follow into separate pages in your reader.

To add an author to a folder, go to the Edit page for an author, then scroll down to the “Folder” option:

Set a name for the folder to which you want to add the author. Then, save your changes.

You will then see a new “folders:” label in your reader with an “all” folder (the default folder) that lists all of your subscriptions, and the new folder you created.

Notes: Folder names are automatically converted to lowercase. You can only add one folder per author. To delete a folder, you will need to remove the folder name from all authors in the folder. I may work on improvements to this experience in the future.

Hide YouTube Shorts

You can now hide YouTube Shorts on a per-author basis. This is ideal if you only want to follow the long-form videos published by a YouTube channel rather than Shorts.

To hide YouTube Shorts for an author, go to the Edit page for an author and toggle the checkbox next to the option “Should YouTube Shorts by this author be hidden from your reader?”:

Thanks to Ava and Suliman for providing the inspiration for these features!

_Ava_ _Suliman_

Take two - James' Coffee Blog

2026-03-05T14:17:32.000Z

Trafalgar Square is a special place. The architecture and views are breathtaking. The National Gallery, the church of St. Martins in the Fields, Canada House, and more, all surround the Square. From the right place you can look down Whitehall and see Big Ben.

In the heart of the Square is the National Gallery, a huge, Neoclassical building. I have visited the gallery a few times and only last weekend, on my most recent visit, did I start to feel oriented in the gallery. I love that feeling of getting lost in an art gallery; of wandering around and exploring and building a map of where things are. I also love the feeling of looking back and realising it is getting easier to find your way because you have visited a place a few times before.

I studied the architecture of the new Sainsbury Wing in the V&A course I did last year. [1]

Visiting now, following my studies, I came to see the building. with a new perspective. My first perspective is as it always is when I see beautiful architecture: wow. Then I thought “I studied the new building!” I started to appreciate the architecture more.

I noticed the columns that I had until then only studied on the screen. I find myself looking at columns in architecture more. I now know the difference between an Ionic and Corinthian column; learning about architecture feels like learning languages of design.

Inside the gallery, I noticed a few paintings I had seen before only on a computer screen. That’s Hay Wain by John Constable! I thought with excitement as I noticed the painting. The gallery is also home to Turner’s Rain, Steam, and Speed, a painting I first learned about through a blog post. I studied the painting with great excitement. What can I see that I don’t remember from looking at it first? Many details stood out: the bridge feels darker in the real painting; there is a person in a boat in the bottom left of the image. The boat is tiny in comparison to the scale of the bridges.

I went to the National Gallery with new perspectives: of architecture, of seeing paintings I had only until then seen on a computer screen.

When I visited the Rembrandt room I said to myself I thought I knew Rembrandt’s work. I had seen paintings by him before, understood that he used dark backgrounds to highlight the subject of the painting. But I knew so little: of Rembrandt’s difficult life, of his changing artistic style over the years, of how expressions were his subject.

On reflection, studying a work of art involves a lot of “take twos”: of looking and looking again to gain a better understanding of a painting, either in one sitting (looking around a work and coming back to different features) or across multiple sittings. Impressions of art change with time, too: with knowledge of the artist, the time period in which the work was painted, growing knowledge of how others painted similar subject matters, my own new experiences since I last saw the painting, and the context in which a painting is seen (location, digital vs. physical).

As I learn more, I know more of what to look out for in a work of art. I am learning to distinguish details that are significant in painting: how colour is used, perspective, theme, brush-stroke, symbols. I recently learned that anchors are the symbol of hope in some paintings.

I will soon be starting my first art history block in school where I’ll be learning how to use a visual analysis toolkit to analyse a painting. I am excited to learn and apply what I learn when I visit galleries in the future.

In a lecture this week we were asked to say what we saw in a painting as a light introduction to visual analysis. One person noted the presence of a dog under a table. The lecturer then said they had looked at the painting many times through the course of their teaching and never noticed the dog. This makes me think about how we all see different things, and how much there is to see even in art we already know.

This is my (very late) submission for the June 2025 IndieWeb Carnival on the topic “Take Two.”

[1]: The Sainsbury Wing has a storied, tumultuous history; then-Prince Charles publicly criticised one of the proposals for a redesign in May 1984. Today, the Sainsbury Wing houses a wonderful collection of medieval art.

Rain, Steam, and Speed learned about through a blog post _June 2025 IndieWeb Carnival on the topic “Take Two.”_ 1]: [The Sainsbury Wing has a storied, tumultuous history

Museum memories - James' Coffee Blog

2026-03-05T13:29:16.000Z

This is my entry for this month’s IndieWeb Carnival on the topic “Museum memories”.

When I was 10 or so – maybe younger; childhood can be hazy – my grandparents took me to the National Museum of Flight in Scotland for a day. My memory starts as many of my earlier museum memories do: with the joy I felt having lunch in the museum cafe. I then start to think about the day and realise I remember the trip vividly: the hangars, the planes, walking across the airfield, going inside a decommissioned plane.

The National Museum of Flight is on a different scale to other museums because of its subject matter: flight. Planes are huge. They were especially huge for young me who would look up in awe at the vehicles. This was the closest I had ever been to planes.

I feel that same sense of awe now in art galleries when I look at grand paintings: the scale of the thing in front of me can be so grand – or indeed small and extensively detailed – that, for a moment, I can’t help but think “wow!” That feeling never gets old.

On that day, we walked around a lot, exploring the different planes. As I think back I realise museums are playgrounds for curiosity; places to imagine. One exhibit I remember in particular depth was a Concorde plane that you could go inside. I didn’t know the significance of Concorde at the time, but the experience was nevertheless amazing. Indeed, you don’t need to understand all the history around something in a museum to appreciate what you see.

I appreciated that the museum was outside. I suspect that I was probably tired toward the end of the trip; the car journey, walking around a lot, it all would have been tiring. Although I don’t remember exactly, we may have got fish and chips for dinner that day on the way back; I remember other such trips where fish and chips was the meal to end the day.

I just looked at the map and saw that the National Museum of Flight is near East Linton. East Linton was home to an office of 4J Studios, the creators of Minecraft Xbox Edition. I don’t know if it was on this day or on another trip but I do remember seeing the sign that we were going through East Linton and thinking wow, Minecraft [Xbox Edition] is [partially] made here! The journey can be as exciting as the destination.

Although my memory is hazy and I may have mashed together a few memories together, the museum itself remains vivid. I had a lot of fun that day: going into a Concorde plane, walking across the airfield, having a nice lunch. I look back and wonder if I was in awe that day; a day before I probably would have known what “awe” meant.

_Museum memories_

Night time; walking - James' Coffee Blog

2026-03-04T18:33:47.000Z

i'll spend my whole life looking for the next best thing
but when I finally find it, i’ll be too busy looking
for the next best thing

I had spent half of the day travelling and the other half looking at art. Whenever I am going anywhere, I like to arrive as early as I can and either walk around or go to an art gallery; ideally, I like to do both. After all the galleries had closed and I had eaten dinner, I walked for an hour or two as the sun set. I had spent enough time indoors; I needed to exercise my legs.

I love walking around central London, especially down the Thames. There is a nice path on the south side of the river that takes you past many wonderful places. You can see skateboarders in their element in a skate track, which is next to a cinema; across the river you see the grand Somerset House, home to the Courtauld Gallery. The more you walk, the more you see: cathedrals and parliament and bridges and water.

I was walking over a bridge and admiring the colours of the city after the sun had set. Pink neon lights coming from the bridge I was on cast beams of light in front of me. The clock of Big Ben shone bright. In the heart of so much beauty – and so close to many stories – it was not the light but a few words that caught my eye. As I was walking, I saw a message written on the pavement.

i'll spend my whole life looking for the next best thing
but when I finally find it, i’ll be too busy looking
for the next best thing

“What’s next?” I ask myself that question a lot. What is the next thing I am going to make? What will I do next? It is little wonder that I have felt lost lately; if I am worried about what’s next, I lose sight of what is in front of me. Despite the size and scale of London relative to where I call home, I didn’t feel lost at any point on my trip. I didn’t have time. I was walking and listening and talking and studying art. I was following familiar paths and going on detours and listening to my feet. I am here.

With the message written on the pavement in mind, I decided to focus on what I could see: all of the beautiful buildings around; the calm flow of the evening river on a spring day. I admired the cityscape. I turned around so that I could see as many perspectives as I could from where I was standing. I am here.

I continued on with my walk. London is beautiful in the evening. I ended my day watching the city around me. I love to watch and study. I started the next day with a walk by the same river, a day on which I had plans – a day for which I had been looking forward for weeks. And as the weekend went on, I found myself with more and more answers to: what’s next? Among them: I don’t need to push to move forward: there is so much for me to learn from where I am.

The writing on the bridge was signed @beakandsqueak, who has reportedly written hundreds of messages in chalk across London. I am sincerely grateful that they took the time to write a message for others to enjoy.

Guitar; sunset - James' Coffee Blog

2026-03-04T18:12:02.000Z

The days are getting longer and brighter. The bite of the winter air is being replaced by a delicate breeze. It feels like Spring is here.

I have been trying to play my guitar every day, usually before I eat dinner. Over the last week, I have noticed that the time I play the guitar coincides with the setting sun. Today, I stopped playing a bit early so I could admire the orange glow of the sun on the horizon. I love watching sunsets. I keep going back to the window to look at all the other colours in the sky: the faint pink hue where there was only half an hour ago a vibrant orange, the light blues.

Looking at the hills now, I notice they have a hint of blue, too. A couple just hugged outside as I stand with my laptop arches on one knee, writing about what I see. When you look outside you never know what you are going to see. The couple are now walking together. I love moments when people get together.

Anyway: the hills have a hint of blue. Like some paintings I have studied. I didn’t know why until recently. It turns out there is a name for this phenomena: aerial perspective, where the “colours of the object also become less saturated and shift toward the background colour, which is usually bluish”. I have never thought about how the hills can really take on a blue hue in the distance, and how that is mirrored in art. Studying art is giving me new lenses through which to see the world; new words to explain what I see.

I have been practicing the guitar for a few months now. Since the beginning I have hoped that I could sing along to a song. Over the last few weeks I have been trying little by little and, this week, I have finally been able to sing along with a few songs. I feel my right hand becomes more automatic when I am strumming. I am starting to notice that I can find the rhythm of a song. For all the guitar players out there, the DUDU DUDU DDU and DD UU DU strumming patterns are the easiest for me to sing along to right now.

It feels great to be able to sing along to songs I love and play them at the same time. I am not a good singer, but I am having fun.

The days are getting longer and brighter. I see the early stages of the sun rise and can watch the sun set. I see colours I forgot the sky could have. I think about how those tones are mirrored in art. The vibrant colour of the orange sun this evening reminds me of the colour of the sun in Monet’s Impression, Sunrise, the first painting to be known as Impressionist. The colours are beautiful.

Offline mode - James' Coffee Blog

2026-03-04T15:15:43.000Z

My blog has an offline mode that lets you view articles you have previously read on my website. This mode allows you to read something on my website even if you don’t have an internet connection. If the page you want to view has not been cached, you will see a custom page that lists articles you can read:

How it works

My offline mode works using a service worker (see code) that is based on Jeremy Keith’s examples of service workers (example one, example two; NB: I may be missing some examples; See also: Minimum viable service worker). Jeremy wrote a book that documents how you can add offline support to your website: Going Offline. I haven’t read this book, but all the code snippets and blog posts that Jeremy has posted has helped me get to something that works for me.

When you visit my website, a service worker is registered. This service worker maintains a cache using the JS Cache API. When the service worker is first registered, a selection of articles I have written are automatically cached. This means that if you only visited my website once or twice, you would still have something to read. My offline page is also cached.

This service worker intercepts web requests to my website. If I am reading the code correctly (it has been years since looked at this, and my work is largely based on Jeremy’s examples), a fetch request is made to my site first. If the request is successful, the result is cached for later. If the request fails and there is a cached version of the page available, the cached page is returned. If the user is offline and no cached page is available, the /offline page is displayed. [1]

My offline page lists articles and web pages that have been cached in your browser, listed in descending order by the date the URL was added to the cache. This allows you to see what is available to read while you are offline.

Looking at this page now, I think I want to separate the list of articles available for offline reading into two lists: a list of blog posts and a list of pages. I may work on this at some point.

The reason I am so reliant on Jeremy’s examples is that service workers aren’t the easiest to work with. I am not an expert on service workers; I have used them sparingly, and I can't say what I have follows best practices since it is a few years since I am not up to date on service workers. I encourage you to do your own reading and experimentation while playing around with them. I found working from examples to be the easiest way to get something that worked.

You are free to copy mine in its entirety if you would like, as it is licensed under the same CC0 1.0 Universal license as Jeremy’s original work. You’ll need to update the list of URLs to add to the cache to be posts that exist on your website, and update the /offline link to wherever you end up storing your offline page. You will also need to add the registration code to every page on your site:

<script>
    if ('serviceWorker' in navigator) {
        window.addEventListener('load', function() {
            navigator.serviceWorker.register('/service-worker.js');
        });
    }
</script>

Experience

I love having an offline mode.

I think I have only used the offline mode once when I was at an IndieWeb event, sitting in a cafe with my WiFi off. I was writing a blog post and had my WiFi off in part because the connection was bad in the cafe and also in part because I wanted to focus on writing. I needed to consult a page on my website though. Offline mode lets me do that.

While I haven't used the feature much, given how much I consult my website on a day to day basis it is reassuring that I can access some of it offline (ideal if I am using my phone).

I have been working on a new project for sharing contacts at events that stores all data locally. For this, too, I am using a service worker to add an offline mode. This means I can use the website even if I have variable or no connectivity.

Designing an offline mode has several parts: the technical infrastructure behind it (in this case, the service worker), the offline mode experience, and, in more complex cases, additional technical decisions that need to be made if a site has an offline mode (i.e. synchronisation for applications that need to send data back to a server). For a blog like this, the service worker does most of the heavy lifting, and my offline page does the rest.

The Church at Varengeville by Monet - James' Coffee Blog

2026-03-03T15:13:49.000Z

I am writing about a few paintings to help me build my description skills. My analyses are not formal or comprehensive. If nothing else, I hope that you enjoy the painting that I feature!

The warm colours in Monet’s The Church at Varengeville (1882) stood out to me the moment I saw them in a corner of the Courtauld Institute in London [1].

In the top left of the painting, the subject, the church of Varengeville, is painted. But the church takes up a relatively small portion of the painting: a much greater portion is dedicated to the cliffside, bushes, and two trees that span from the bottom to the top third of the canvas. This is in contrast to other paintings of churches that Monet has made like the Roen Cathedral and the Church at Vétheuil where the church takes up much more of the canvas.

The Church of Varengeville stood out to me for its use of colour; Monet paintings always make me feel something, and one question I would like to answer in my studies is why his use of colour makes me feel the way it does. The sky is a warm yellow. Is the sun about to set?

I appreciate the contrast between the sky and the ocean: the sky is yellow and bright, whereas the ocean is a soft blue with yellow tones. The sea and sky are separated by a horizon line.

The bushes in the foreground are more clearly defined than the fields of grass; the bushes use a mix of vivid yellows and reds and oranges, whereas the grass uses a more limited range of colours. The left side of the painting is orange. I am unsure what phenomena or flora it depicts.

I was mesmerised while looking at this painting, studying up close the detail of the brushstrokes in the bushes and from afar the overall composition and use of colour. I like to look at paintings from many different angles to help me understand what I see, and if what I see is different as I change my distance from the work.

Now that I am back home and analysing the painting, I realise that, if I put a romantic lens on, the two trees in the foreground take on new significance for me. There is something beautiful about there being two trees so close seeing the sun set together.

Visual analysis aside: this painting brings me joy.

[1]: The painting is displayed as part of a temporary exhibit while the Barber Institute of Arts that usually houses the painting is renovated.

State of the Browser 2026 - James' Coffee Blog

2026-03-03T12:49:41.000Z

State of the Browser was electric. This is how I summarised my experience at the annual State of the Browser event in London in my notes. I like to capture moments as they happen, then write about them later. The note is the essence of a blog post; the starting point. The note blossoms at home.

State of the Browser is a conference about the web. There is always a nice mix between web technologies, standards, and designing for the web. This year was no different. The day started by learning about CSS anchor positioning and ended with a demo of an interactive video game on the web, between which everything from accessibility compliance to introversion as covered.

What makes State of the Browser distinct is that the talks generally peel back layers of the web, allowing the audience an insight into a part of the web they may not see. This was exemplified by Jason Williams’ talk “Temporal: It’s about time”, which was all about how the Temporal API standard was developed. If I heard correctly, work on the standard – which provides a more reliable, intuitive way to work with dates and times in the browser – has taken around ten years. There are four thousand tests that accompany the standard.

In learning about how much time was spent on the Temporal API – no pun intended – I can’t help but feel in awe of the work that goes into web standards: all the discussion, scoping, writing, implementing, documenting, testing, and adopting that goes into making parts of the web better. And when a new standard is available and implemented, all developers can use it with their applications.

One thought I had at the conference is that I am starting to look forward to new releases in the browser. The more I learn about HTML, CSS, and native JavaScript APIs the more I am excited about the cutting edge. Anchor positioning is implemented in most major browsers. Work is being done on masonry layouts. The technology that powers the web is improving. Behind every change and improvement are people. State of the Browser uniquely brings together many people who make, use, and appreciate standards. I appreciate that I can go to the conference and hear stories from the people who are actively building the web platform.

Mike Hall’s talk “Lessons from building for the bottom of the web” was all about his experience building a website that had to work with 2.5G connections. It was fascinating to hear the design considerations behind that. The project team wanted to deliver a web page that was no heavier than 128 KB, including images. They succeeded in their goal through many creative optimisations and technical decisions. It made me think about how light I could make a web page. What would an “ultra-light” version of a web page look like, I wonder?

I have lots to say about every talk I saw, but I will end by reflecting on one more talk: “The Plateau of Accessibility Compliance: Where do we go from here?” by Chad Gowler. This talk opened my mind to the work that is being done in the video games industry on accessibility. Gowler showed a video game that had an “arachnophobia mode” that allowed users to change the appearance of spiders if they preferred. In another example, Gowler showed the plethora of accessibility options made for one game – so many that the page kept going on and on as they scrolled through the instructions.

I loved the mix of talks, and thoroughly enjoyed meeting so many interesting people. Indeed, one of the best parts of the event is the conversations with other participants – at the start of the event, in the breaks, at lunch, and at the pub at the end of the day.

The synopsis for all the talks mentioned above is available on the State of the Browser website. I suspect talks will be available on the London Web Standards YouTube channel at some point. Thanks to Dave for organising the event, and for the whole team that made the event happen.

Tickets for the next event will be available on the 2027 State of the Browser website. The in-person Super Organised Bird tickets have already sold out, but more tickets should be available soon.

~hedy's blogroll - BlogFlock

My 2-step process for AI-free blogging - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

The return of my Everything RSS feed - Baty.net

Melanie Richards - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

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

What's the story behind your blog?**

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

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

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

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

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?**

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

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

Keep exploring

Four blogs and a wiki - Baty.net

Social media reimagined - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

Exploiting brain flaws - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

Patrick Rhone - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

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

What's the story behind your blog?

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

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

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

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

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 monetizing personal blogs?

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

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

Keep exploring

Thursday, March 12, 2026 - Baty.net

Just admit you’re playing the game - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

Step aside, phone: closing thoughts - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

Revamped the (Tinderbox) blog at daily.baty.net - Baty.net

Eric Schwarz - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

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

What's the story behind your blog?

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

Keep exploring

Artemis changelog #8 - James' Coffee Blog

Organise subscriptions with folders

Hide YouTube Shorts

Take two - James' Coffee Blog

Museum memories - James' Coffee Blog

Night time; walking - James' Coffee Blog

Guitar; sunset - James' Coffee Blog

Offline mode - James' Coffee Blog

How it works

Experience

See Also

The Church at Varengeville by Monet - James' Coffee Blog

State of the Browser 2026 - James' Coffee Blog