I had a webblog once. Around the 2000s. It is long gone. Lately I have been pondering to take up the habit again, so down the rabbit hole I went. Here's my abbreviated journey.
I'm an avid user of Zim, the desktop wiki. I manage my tasks and areas of interest with Zim, I journal my day with Zim, I take notes with Zim, I write long-form stuff in Zim. Curiously, I rarely use the Wiki-features such as cross-linking, but I tag a lot.
Therefore it was clear from the beginning that Zim would be part of my workflow. Zim offers an HTML export but it targets old HTML4. So I wrote an export template for HTML5. Then I wrote a first set CSS code for the template. Then I wrote a small static site generator (SSG) in Go, taking Zim-exported HTML5 and building a very simple site from it. Then I packaged the SSG output into a tarball and loaded it up to Sourcehut (my favorite git service provider). Then I set up my custom domain. Then I lived happily ever after. Or not.
While coding the SSG I got sidetracked. Again. What did I expect? This time it was the old Gopher protocol, and from there Gemini. The connection is obvious, isn't it? Like so many people with tech affinity, I deplore the modern web. The old Extreme Programming wiki is still the pinnacle of usability. Okay, maybe not, but you probably get what I mean... considering this is a post in geminispace and stuff.
Any way, I was sidetracked by the discovery of the Gemini protocol. Twice, actually. But the second time around I found gemlog.blue. My own blog domain was supposed to be gogo.blue, so... yay! I guess, I will set up a gemini server on this domain now.
What's so appealing about gemlog.blue. First, obviously, its low barrier to entry. A simple webform gives you access and you type your posts into stupendously simple webform. Everything is so simple that I probably could write a gemlog client right away. Naturally I will look into it to automate my Zim workflow.
But even more importantly it's obscure. It lacks features that, for example, midnight.pub offers. No interaction possible. It probably is going to be full of crackpots and weird multilevel marketing ploys. Virtually nobody is going to look at it or take anything written here seriously. That's perfect.
Why's that perfect? Because I pretty much need to write down things in a stream of consciousness fashion to get them out of my system. Sometimes it is venting, sometimes it is not. I do that in Zim, but there are things I want to share without discussing them too much. I have come around, seen a few things here and there. I have been told on numerous occasions that I should share my thoughts and insights in places like LinkedIn... this despicable festering boil of attention-whoring on the collective ass of the world wide web. You see, that's something I would think would be misplaced on LinkedIn. I digress again, and maybe I'm unfair. I've never used Facebook or Twitter, so maybe they are worse. I don't know.
Did I mention that I'm in the stream of consciousness camp. I did? Good. Good. Like I wrote above, I do my writing in Zim. But I'm having an easier time if I feel that I'm writing for someone. Many, many things are easier for me, if I think I'm doing it for someone. Gemini and gemlogs obscurity allow me to write for an imaginary audience without actually having a reasonable expectation that more than a handful of people are going to read my thoughts. And that suits me just fine!
I think a lot about my work. And philosophy. Sometimes they mix. My work is in tech. I'm old. I'm experienced. I have had my share of successes and failures. I started out in the early 1990s and I have done most things in tech that were doable up to the 2010s, from coding lowlevel hardware drivers to shepherding database clusters on wobbly hardware. I don't know about you, but for me work was always "agile" in these times. XP is useful and thought provoking. IT Kanban is eyewatering obvious if you live in an unpredictable environment with frequent interruptions. Both are based on strong principles and very few rules. Most of the agile stuff after that was not unlike the old philosophy chestnut by Alfred North Whitehead, just footnotes to what came before. Still, in my later days I did my part to create workplaces where developers, no, everybody, could do their best to deliver value in a sustainable pace and good quality. The simple principles of yore are sufficient. This surprisingly became harder over the last decade or so. As to why, I've my theories. Maybe in another post.
Let's publish this shit.
Sourcehut Software Development Platform
The (among other things) Extreme Programming Wiki