Tag, You’re It

Jim tagged me. These have been a lot of fun to read. Happy to keep it going.

Why did you start blogging in the first place?

I wanted to be a part of it. When I was new to building websites (started around ’04, launched this site in ’06, added the blog in ’09), the people I looked up to in web dev all had blogs—most still do. Those blogs had a massive impact on how I thought about and approached building the Web. Having your own website and blog felt subversive and cool! It felt like this little secret that these folks were in on and I wanted to be a part of that in any way I could.

What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it?

This is a static site built with Eleventy. Hosted with Netlify. Posts are Markdown files. I don’t get fancy with organizing them, just a blog directory of files named the title of the post. The code is on GitHub.

I chose it because it’s light and fully under my control. And after years of this setup, it’s how my brain works best for writing.

Have you blogged on other platforms before?

Not really, no. For the first iteration of this blog I had an overengineered setup. I would write posts on a private Tumblr, then pull those into this site using the Tumblr API. I built it in PHP using Zend Framework. I’d also gone way down a rabbit whole of pulling in most data on the site from other sites using their APIs (Twitter, Lastfm, Flickr). But this domain has always been the canonical location. Over the years I’ve used other static site approaches; by hand with SSI, then Jekyll, then Metalsmith

There was a stint where I was cross-posting from here to Medium. Was doing that for some idea of wider distribution. That was short-lived though.

How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?

Locally in VSCode. In years past it’s been other text editors, but always just in the codebase. I open a PR to merge each post. I’ve also used Hemingway for years to help me edit. I don’t have any type of streamlined process there, just copy/paste from VSCode to Hemingway.

When do you feel most inspired to write?

When I’m excited about something new and I feel like I have a solid grasp on it. The majority of my posts are; “Here’s a thing I did and how I did it.” Every post comes after some amount of discovery and learning.

That and seeing other people writing about what they’re up to. Jenn’s recent posts on her day-to-day life have been fun to read and are making me want to write about what I’m up to outside of computers.

Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?

Immediately, but with a caveat. I rarely start drafts and work on them for any more than a couple days. I don’t have a bunch of partially written posts saved anywhere. What I do have is a ton of half-baked ideas for posts that I’ve written and re-written in my head, but never actually typed into a file anywhere.

When I do finally open VSCode and make a new Markdown file, 99% of the time I publish that post within a day or two. My usual process is to wake up on a given day and give myself an arbitrary deadline of like 5pm to write and publish. It’s a helpful forcing function.

I have a rare draft going nowhere right now. I think it’s because it’s a boring post so I’m not motiviated to write the last few sentences needed for it to be done.

What are you generally interested in writing about?

My processes for designing and writing code to make things. For Design, I like to show that good design isn’t magic or only for a select few with a naturally given ability. It’s more about asking questions and putting in time. Those are things everyone can do.

For code, I write about things I use the most; HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Over the years I’ve written about certain libraries, frameworks, or tools. Those come and go. But the foundation of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript is always relevant and interesting.

Who are you writing for?

Me. This is largely selfish activity. Even though lots of posts are helpful for other people, the primary target of that help is me. And, putting my thoughts into public is an attention-seeking behavior. Getting attention isn’t a main motivator, but it’s definitely a nice bonus.

What’s your favorite post on your blog?

“Building OS X Apps with JavaScript”. I put a ton of work into that one. It was exciting to see potential in something new and then give myself the time to explore it and do a deep dive on it. And again, the bonus was it got a lot of attention.

Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?

A partial redesign and content refresh is in the early, still-in-my-head, stage. I’m exploring the idea of what a personal website is for me these days. I want to take that idea and apply it to aesthetics and content. I want it to be strange.

Tag ‘em

Tagging Dan, Pascal, Matthias, Max to continue the chain. Also, if you’re not on that list, but reading this, consider yourself tagged by me. These questions were fun to think about and fun to write about.

I like how Jim did this, so I’m doing the same. He didn’t ping me directly. He just added me to the tagged section and published his post. Then I saw it when I was going through my RSS reader this morning.