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Tagged by Scott and Luke and in thoughtful return, Iām answering the Blog Questions Challenge here. Some of these answers may overlap with the answers I gave Manu for his People & Blogs series, so Iāll do my best to do something a bit different. Please visit Manuās P&B site though, and read through many of the excellent interviews there. Much credit to Bear Blog for these questions. Why did you start blogging in the first place? I noted how I appreciated the early bloggers, in particular from the Pyra Labs/Blogger crew, but to go back even further, I was fond of journaling early. Much of that was in the form of drawings as a child, then coupled with text. It wasnāt until I read about how musicians like Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam would keep copious journals, and in particular, Henry Rollinsā Get In The Van, showed me that documenting your life was important as a record of a lived person. Rollins would later read from these journals early in his transition from full-time musician to spoken word artist, and the storytelling inspired me. Since I was online, and web design had captivated me, it all came together. What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it? Iām currently using the lovely static site generator, Eleventy (11ty). It pushes to a GitHub repository, which triggers a deploy to Netlify. After using so many different platforms over the decades, with my posts and data semi-locked in MySQL databases, the idea of a fast, file-first, SSG was the way I absolutely wanted to go when I started blogging at this domain. Steph Angoās File Over App is a thoughtful read on data portability. Have you blogged on other platforms before? As mentioned just before this, yes. I started with Geocities, Livejournal, tried Greymatter, then Movable Type was the first to make it all click. I got really comfortable and pushed that system far āĀ Gapers Block was the most involved version that I had done with multiple blogs running under one instance with different layouts and sections and includes all over the place. Dean Allenās (RIP) Textpattern stole my heart away for many years after MT got acquired, and then I stopped blogging when Weightshift became my focus, and social media started to bloom. Weightshift used various CMSs for clients: MT, TXP, ExpressionEngine, CraftCMS, Wordpress, etc. I toyed with Tumblr, and other things, but eventually restarted with Jekyll, but quickly switched to 11ty. How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard thatās part of your blog? Most everything starts in Bear. I have a master note of ideas, that links out to other notes and I keep adding new ones, revisit others, and check off published ones. When do you feel most inspired to write? Whenever an idea strikes. This can happen at any time and drafts are started anywhere. I generally publish in the evening though. Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft? I used to be more immediate with my publishing decades ago, adhering to a near daily schedule. These days, some thought and care goes into each post, and if possible, I like to add a touch of flavor to a post, like the rotated album covers for the Music in 2024 post. What are you generally interested in writing about? How we as humans live in a world ever-changing because of technological influence and societyās adoption and adaptation to it. I love travel so posts about cultures and countries, as well as overlanding and camping domestically. And personal things that are more feeling the feels. Who are you writing for? Myself first, but through a lens of, āthis information or thought could help someone else, and/or Iād love to share a different perspective thatās unique to me.ā Whatās your favorite post on your blog? 2023 in the Rearview is a big one, and I worked on that for a while. Taken for a Ride is a good one I think about taking a Waymo autonomous vehicle for the first time, but I like the sort of pieces that come from a more emotional and resilient place, like Let This Be a Moment, that allow me to work through things. Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature? Iām very content with 11ty. Iām constantly evolving and refactoring the design and code where I can see improvement. This is a lovely mode to be in: itās iterative like software development than constantly new like marketing. As for features: a work section (underway), and better ways to showcase my photography, which is a longtime interest and activity for me. Tag āem. Iām going to tag Bix, Ethan, Gosha, Grant, Matt, Piper, Rachel, Simon, Susan, Thu, and Winnie. Read on nazhamid.com or Reply via email
We are tenants with landlords who want to make sure that we canāt leave the building or go hang out with friends elsewhere, all while showing us how happy we should be with the limitations imposed on us. ā Den Delimarsky A long, weighty one, but very worth the read. Visit original link ā or View on nazhamid.com ā
01/05 PREDATORS, AMERICAN GREED ā Steven Soderbergh Director Steven Soderbergh's media recap of 2024. It's fascinating to see how many movies he watched multiple times, and the reverse watch of the original Star Wars trilogy. Phantom of the Menace twice too? Visit original link ā or View on nazhamid.com ā
Iām including the most memorable, impactful, or beloved works ofācreative genius, or something, that Iāve encountered this year. Iām not a critic; I am mostly just talking about things I liked. These are tremendous to me. I hope they can be tremendous to you, too. ā Anh The list is great, but this one is also visually gorgeous. Best experienced in a browser near you. Visit original link ā or View on nazhamid.com ā
Itās idealistic and very millennial of me to reminiscence the early days of Web innocence, unbound creativity it hosted and wonderful lack of monetisation of virtually every aspect of being online. We canāt turn back time. But, individually and collectively, we can strive for better as the Web evolves as a home for work, knowledge, community, and love. We can resist the ongoing enshittification and corporate capitalism. So I jotted down an non-exhaustive list of what Iād love the future Web to be. ā Karolina Szczur A great list. Visit original link ā or View on nazhamid.com ā
More in literature
My first high-school reunion was postponed for a year by the COVID-19 lockdown. We met in 2021 for the fifty-first at a supper club on the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland. Lake Erie was a hundred yards to the north and when conversation lagged, I could watch the ore boats moving down the river. The Cleveland skyline, much of it unrecognizable from childhood, started on the other side of the Cuyahoga. It was a perfect late-summer evening, and we sat on the patio, trying to talk over the āclassic rockā blaring from the overhead speakers. I didnāt like the Guess Who in 1970, and that hasn't changed. Nostalgia has become an industry.Ā I met three of my former teachers, including Linda Wagy, my eight-grade English teacher from 1965-66. It had been her first year teaching and she thoughtfully pretended to remember me. Most of the classmates I had hoped would be there did not attend. The highlight was meeting a woman I knew from thirteen years of public school but hadnāt seen in fifty-one years.Ā I recognized her immediately and even remembered her name. I wrote about our conversation the following day. The dreariest encounter came when I met a guy who has changed his name (his birth name, he explained, had ātoo many consonantsā) and is now a lawyer in Cleveland. He was boring in 1970 and remains so. Boring in a very earnest, strident, self-centered way. It took a long time to shake him so he could bore someone else. Ā The organizers have announced a fifty-fifth-year reunion to be held in September at the Cleveland Yachting Club, and I plan to go. Mostly Iām curious. In high school I was shy and usually a loner. What friends I had were those I knew from the A.P. classes. My only social involvement was editing the school literary magazine ā no dances or sports. There are risks, of course, the principal one being another consonant-free nudnik. The wittily acerbic Louisiana poet Gail White feels otherwise. In āWhy I Failed to Attend My High School Reunion,ā she says: Ā āBecause it would have gone like this: Hello, hello, hello. (You never liked me, did you? Where was this friendship 15 years ago?) Youāre looking wonderful. I wouldnāt kid you about it ā you look great. (You hefty cat.) And Jeffrey ā are you married? Oh, you are! Three kids? However did you manage that? (For Godās sake, someone point me to the bar.) Me? Iāve just spent the summer in Tibet learning some basics from a Buddhist nun. Itās an experience I wonāt forget. (As if you cared.) More crab dip, anyone? (And hereās the Great Class Bore. Youāre still the same.) Forgive me. I canāt quite recall your name.ā Ā White explains her poem is āhumor based on truth. Iām now 78 and have never been to a class reunion. Nobody who likes me would be there. I didnāt make real friends until I went to college and started meeting people who read books.ā
"What weād hope for on the planet is creativity and sanity, conviviality, the real work of our hands and minds."
Another request for a reading list from a young reader. Any reply will be incomplete and risk discouraging aspiring literati. The only infallible inducement to literature is personal pleasure, a notoriously subjective criterion. I love Gibbon and Doughty, and you may find them appallingly tedious. I favor the time-tested and rely on books carrying the seal of approval from generations of readers, and your interests may be strictly contemporary. Itās not dismissive to tell a young reader: jump in anywhere. Like Borges, I assume that one book is potentially all books. That is, gamble a little, select a book that sounds interesting and see where it leads. Thereās no shame in closing a book if it disappoints.Ā In 1909, the English novelist Arnold Bennett published Literary Taste: How to Form It, a sort of self-help guide to English literature. Bennett includes a list of several hundred recommended books, arranged chronologically and giving their prices as of 1909. This is not a snobās list (though it includes Gibbon and Doughty), and at least a third of the books I have never read. Bennettās opening sentences: Ā āAt the beginning a misconception must be removed from the path. Many people, if not most, look on literary taste as an elegant accomplishment, by acquiring which they will complete themselves, and make themselves finally fit as members of a correct society. . . . This attitude, or any attitude which resembles it, is wrong. To him who really comprehends what literature is, and what the function of literature is, this attitude is simply ludicrous. It is also fatal to the formation of literary taste.ā Ā Neither Bennett nor I wish to impose a ācanonā on anyone. We merely know some of the books that have given us pleasure and perhaps taught us something. Weāre small-d democrats. Weāre not here to lecture, especially to young readers. Bennett is honest about the potential audience for reading the best books: Ā "A classic is a work which gives pleasure to the minority which is intensely and permanently interested in literature. It lives on because the minority, eager to renew the sensation of pleasure, is eternally curious and is therefore engaged in an eternal process of rediscovery. A classic does not survive for any ethical reason. It does not survive because it conforms to certain canons, or because neglect would not kill it. It survives because it is a source of pleasure, and because the passionate few can no more neglect it than a bee can neglect a flower. The passionate few do not read āthe right thingsā because they are right.ā Ā So much for fashion.
Eleanor Barraclough on the ordinary people of Norse history The post The Epic Viking Saga of the Everyday appeared first on The American Scholar.
