blogging
Design Links & Learning
A Blog by Nick TrombleyCollections of articles, links, and other material from around the web, relevant to software design and engineering.
On online collaboration and our obligations as makers of software
An Essay by Baldur BjarnasonIs it the notetaking system that’s helping you think more clearly? Or is it the act of writing that forces you to clarify your thoughts?
Is it the complex interlinked web of notes that helps you get new ideas? Or is it all the reading you’re doing to fill that notetaking app bucket?
Is all of this notetaking work making you smarter? Or is it just indirectly forcing you into deliberate, goalless practice?
missing concepts in link culture?
The idea of “evergreen” content naturally contrasts with its opposite. I am going to call that non-evergreen content “deciduous” because I wasn’t bullied enough as a child.
revisiting architectural blogging
An Article by Alan JacobsI have appropriated from Brian Eno and others the distinction between architecture and gardening, and have described my blog as a kind of garden. But lately I’ve been revisiting the architecture/gardening distinction and I have come to think that there is something architectural about writing a blog, or can be – but not in the sense of a typical architectural project, which is designed in advanced and built to specifications. Rather, writing a blog over a period of years is something like building the Watts Towers.
Simon Rodi didn’t have a plan, didn’t even have a purpose: he just started building. His work was sustained and extended by bricolage, the acquisition and deployment of found objects – and not just any objects, but objects that the world had discarded as useless, as filth. You put something in here, then something else, you discover, fits there … over time you get something big and with a discernible shape. Not the regular shape envisioned in architectural drawings, but nevertheless something that can be pleasing or at least interesting to look at – an organic and irregular shape. A geometry of irregular forms.
Stream on
An Article by Simon CollisonA primary motivation for creating my Stream was the paralysing sense that a blog post needed appropriate length and weight. Since switching to Kirby, there’s relatively little friction to posting, but there’s definite friction in evaluating a post’s worth to the reader. I’d think to myself, “I’d like to write something about that, but I’ll have to come up with all sorts of extra stuff and dressing, and it’ll take all afternoon.”
And so, I was increasingly aware that I was letting many interesting or essential thoughts go undocumented, allowing them to drift from memory, or exist only on social media, likely to one day evaporate. I’ve become more and more interested in the human desire to document, and it’s something I’ve always valued, so I needed to find a solution that I could entirely control and own. That solution was my Stream.
scribe.rip
An ApplicationI hadn't realized that Medium had made JavaScript a requirement to be able to read any Medium post - I'd had JS disabled for ages on Medium just because of all the extra cruft they added.
But now, without JS, you only get the first few lines of content, and the rest is loaded entirely with JS - which is...stupid.
Scribe fixes all that and focuses entirely on the author's content.
Why Would I Want to Use This?
- You believe in an open web
- You believe more in the author than the platform
- You don't like the reading experience that Medium provides
- You object to Medium's extortionist business tactics
- You're concerned about how Medium uses your data
- Other reasons
What do I need to read to be great at CSS?
An Article by Baldur BjarnasonA rule of thumb is that the importance of a blog in your feed reader is inversely proportional to their posting cadence. Prioritise the blogs that post only once a month or every couple of weeks over those that post every day or multiple times a day...Building up a large library of sporadically updated blogs is much more useful and much easier to keep up with than trying to keep up with a handful of aggregation sites every day.
Things Learned Blogging
An Article by Jim NielsenEschew anything beyond writing the content of a post. No art direction. No social media imagery. No comments. No webmentions. No analytics...Imagine stripping away everything in the way of writing until the only thing staring you back in the face is a blinking cursor and an empty text file. That’ll force you to think about writing.
...[And] write for you, not for others. And if you can’t think of what to “write”, document something for yourself and call it writing.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the mystery of blogging, it’s that the stuff you think nobody will read ends up with way more reach than anything you write thinking it will be popular.
So write about what you want, not what you think others want, and the words will spill out.
How to blog
An Article by Tom MacWright- Own your domain and use simple technology
- Never change the technology
- Write something on a schedule
Whomst styles?
An Article by Robin SloanThis is a “whostyle”: an attempt to carry the ~timbre~ of an author’s voice, in the form of their design sensibility, through into a quotation. It’s the author who defines their whostyle; the quoting site just honors it, a frame around their words.
I think the whostyle makes a few arguments. Among them:
- Text is more than a string of character codes. Its design matters, typography and layout alike; these things support (or subvert!) its affect, argument, and more.
- The web should be more colorful and chaotic, along nearly every dimension. The past five years have brought a flood of new capabilities, hugely expressive — let’s use them!
- Quoting is touchy, and anything you can do to cushion it with respect and hospitality is a plus.
multiverse.plus
A Website by Kicks Condor & Weiwei HsuAn audacious attempt to reshape blogging, to see where it can go next!
Podcasts and video have really taken over - to the extent that it feels like reading may be falling behind. Can we enhance text and imagery on the Web? Try to give blogging new life?
A Brief History of the Digital Garden
An Article by Maggie AppletonDigital gardening is the Domestic Cozy version of the personal blog. It's less performative than a blog, but more intentional and thoughtful than our Twitter feed. It wants to build personal knowledge over time, rather than engage in banter and quippy conversations.
Blogging with Version Control
An Article by Will DarwinI’ve been musing for a while now on the way blog posts are typically presented—in reverse chronological order. This format has never truly made sense and does not reflect the way good writing and thinking happens.
...The main issue with the ‘pile’ system is that this post is eventually buried beneath more recent pieces of writing; there is no incentive for revisiting or updating the work. Even worse, if an author does decide to unearth the piece and make some major changes, those who read the original piece are not made aware of these alterations. The sorting order is static.
The Value of a Personal Site
An ArticleA personal site offers a dedicated place to experiment across the entire tech-stack; not a deliverable for a client that is handed over and then never touched by me again. A personal site is a place to try out that new API, see what can be done with CSS, truly discover what the Web can be.
This used to be our playground
An Essay by Simon CollisonThere was a time when owning digital space seemed thrilling, and our personal sites motivated us to express ourselves. There are signs of a resurgence, but too few wish to make their digital house a home.
aboutfeeds.com
A Website by Matt WebbUse feeds to subscribe to websites and get the latest content in one place.
Feeds put you in control. It’s like subscribing to a podcast, or following a company on Facebook. You don’t need to pay or hand over your email address. And you get the latest content without having to visit lots of sites, and without cluttering up your inbox. Had enough? Unsubscribe from the feed.
You just need a special app called a newsreader.
This site explains how to get started.
XXIIVV Webring
A WebsiteThis webring is an attempt to inspire artists & developers to build their own website and share traffic among each other.
Navigation by shibboleth
An Article by Dorian TaylorThe inverse-chronological colly on the front page is exactly what I didn’t want to end up with. I have tried my damnedest to keep everything on this site as temporally neutral as I can make it. I even intentionally leave the dates off the documents. Temporality only matters if you’ve already read everything and you want to see what’s new or changed, like if you’ve subscribed to a feed. Which is exactly what that is on the front page.
How the Blog Broke the Web
An Article by Amy HoyHow would I improve RSS?
An Article by Matt WebbMy sense is that RSS is having a mini resurgence. People are getting wary of the social media platforms and their rapacious appetite for data. We’re getting fatigued from notifications; our inboxes are overflowing. And people are saying that maybe, just maybe, RSS can help.
Quotebacks
A Tool by Tom Critchlow & Toby ShorinQuotebacks brings structured discourse to blogs and personal websites.
Quotebacks makes it easy to reference content and create dialogue with other sites by turning snippets of text into elegant, self-contained blockquote components.
Re: How would I improve RSS?
An Article by Robin RendleI still believe in a Kindle/Analogue-esque device that, within it, contains an operating system that is half Patreon, half Substack, half Instapaper.
I think of this as the Republic of Newsletters writ large—The OmniBlog—where writers can publish their work and folks can subscribe via RSS but with a Coil-esque payment system built in and preloaded onto a physical e-reader. Writers could blog away, connected to eachother, whilst readers could subscribe to their work and perhaps even fund larger pieces of writing...
Shit, I just described Medium huh.
The Image of the City
- To become completely lost
- Apparency
- On the edge of something else
- Nothing there, after all
- Paths, edges, districts, nodes, landmarks
To become completely lost
To become completely lost is perhaps a rather rare experience for most people in the modern city. We are supported by the presence of others and by special way-finding devices: maps, street numbers, route signs, bus placards. But let the mishap of disorientation once occur, and the sense of anxiety and even terror that accompanies it reveals to us how closely it is linked to our sense of balance and well-being. The very word "lost" in our language means much more than simple geographical uncertainty; it carries overtones of utter disaster.
Apparency
Half a century ago, Stern discussed this attribute of an artistic object and called it apparency. While art is not limited to this single end, he felt that one of its two basic functions was "to create images which by clarity and harmony of form fulfill the need for vividly comprehensible appearance." In his mind, this was an essential first step toward the expression of inner meaning.
On the edge of something else
The most common response to the question of symbolism was nothing in the city at all, but rather the sight of the New York City skyline across the river. Much of the characteristic feeling for Jersey City seemed to be that it was a place on the edge of something else.
Nothing there, after all
When asked to describe or symbolize the city as a whole, the subjects used certain standard words: "spread out", "spacious", "formless", "without centers". Los Angeles seemed to be hard to envision or conceptualize as a whole. Said one subject:
It's as if you were going somewhere for a long time, and when you got there you discovered there was nothing there, after all.
Paths, edges, districts, nodes, landmarks
The contents of the city's images which are referable to physical forms can conveniently be classified into five types of elements: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks.
- Paths are the channels along which the observer customarily, occasionally, or potentially moved.
- Edges are the linear elements not used or considered as paths by the observer. They are the boundaries.
- Districts are the medium-to-large sections of the city, conceived of as having two-dimensional extent.
- Nodes are points, the strategic spots in a city into which an observer can enter, and which are the intensive foci to and from which they are traveling.
- Landmarks are another type of point-reference, but in this case the observer does not enter within them, they are external. They are usually a rather simply defined physical object: building, sign, store, or mountain.
A directional quality
Paths may not only be identifiable and continuous, but have directional quality as well: one direction along the line can easily be distinguished from the reverse. This can be done by a gradient, a regular change in some quality which is cumulative in one direction.
Introverts and extroverts
Some regions are introvert, turned in upon themselves with little reference to the city outside them, such as Boston's North End or Chinatown. Others may be extrovert, turned outward and connected to surrounding elements. The common visibly touches neighboring regions, despite its inner path confusions.
Junctions
The junction, or place of a break in transportation, has compelling importance for the city observer. Because decisions must be made at junctions, people heighten their attention at such place and perceive elements with more than normal clarity. This tendency was confirmed so repeatedly that elements located at junctions may automatically be assumed to derive special prominence from their location.
What we are accustomed to call beautiful
Most objects which we are accustomed to call beautiful, such as a painting or a tree, are single-purpose things, in which, through long development or the impress of one will, there is an intimate, visible linkage from fine detail to total structure.
A certain plasticity
There are dangers in a highly specialized visible form; there is a need for a certain plasticity in the perceptual environment. If there is only one dominant path to a destination, a few sacred focal points, or an ironclad set of rigidly separated regions, then there is only one way to image the city without considerable strain. This one may suit neither the needs of all people, nor even the needs of one person as they vary from time to time. An unusual trip becomes awkward or dangerous; interpersonal relations may tend to compartmentalize themselves; the scene becomes monotonous or restrictive.
As plain as day
The personal experience of most of us will testify to this persistence of an illusory image long after its inadequacy is conceptually realized. We stare into the jungle and see only the sunlight on the green leaves, but a warning noise tells us that an animal is hidden there. The observer then learns to interpret the scene by singling out "give-away" clues and by reweighting previous signals. The camouflaged animal may now be picked up by the reflection of its eyes. Finally by repeated experience the entire pattern of perception is changed, and the observer need no longer consciously search for give-aways, or add new data to an old framework. They have achieved an image which will operate successfully in the new situation, seeming natural and right. Quite suddenly the hidden animal appears among the leaves, "as plain as day."