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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
I knew āCracker Barrelā as a brand of cheddar cheese my mother sometimes bought when we were kids. The recent brouhaha over ābrandingā informed me itās also the name of a chain of restaurants, one of which shares a parking lot with the motel on the West Side of Cleveland where Iām staying. Iād eaten nothing since leaving Houston early Tuesday morning and was feeling hungry, not picky.Ā Eating alone in a restaurant always feels a little awkward ā and extravagant. Itās a kidās dream, an experience you want to milk. You can order what you want and as much as you want. The menu at Cracker Barrel isnāt afraid of a little cholesterol, though I was prudent ā meatloaf, fried okra, cole slaw, biscuits. Normally Iām a tofu-and-hummus kind of guy, but I was feeling not only hungry but very American. Ā My waiter looked to be about twelve and was desperate to please. I had to reassure him several times that the food was filling and good. He almost begged me to order dessert, which I never eat. Then he handed me a check for fifty-seven dollars and change. Wrong table. I thought he was about to perform seppuku. He handed me the right check: under ten bucks. I left a fiver under my plate and remembered John Updikeās āThe Grief of Cafeteriasā: Ā āEveryone sitting alone with a sorrow, overcoats on. The ceiling was stamped of tin and painted over and over. The walls are newer, and never matched. SALISBURY STEAK SPECIAL $1.65. Afterwhiffs of Art Deco chrome, and the space is as if the space of the old grand railroad terminals has been cut up, boxcarred out, and reused. SOUP SALAD & SANDWICH $1.29 Nobody much here. The happiness of that at leastāof vacancy, mopped. Behind cased food, in Hopper light, The servers attend to each other forever.ā
When people talk about the value of paying attention and slowing down, they often make it sound prudish and monk-like.Ā But we shouldnāt forget how interesting and overpoweringly pleasurable sustained attention can be.
Timing is crucial in oneās reading life. Several people have advised readers to take on Proustās masterwork only after their fortieth birthday. I first read it months before my eighteenth in the old C. K. Scott Moncrieff translation. Was much of it lost on me? Of course. I was callow and naĆÆve, enthusiastic but ignorant. Thatās part of the reason I read it again a decade later as I approached thirty. It was like reading a different novel and the experience convinced me of the obligation to reread the books that matter most to us. Now I retain in memory enough of Proust to return periodically to favorite passages. In 1999, I left a rose on his grave in CimetiĆØre du PĆØre Lachaise. Perhaps Iām deluding myself, but I fantasize about reading Ć la Recherche du Temps Perdu a third time. Proust is a rewarding obligation, like Shakespeare and Chekhov.Ā Around the time I first read Proust I also discovered the work of a far less significant writer, Sherwood Anderson. He charmed me then though I can no longer read his mushy prose. He is, I suspect, a young person's writer, unlike Proust. He was a fellow Ohio native and lived for a spell in Cleveland, my hometown. I bought a beat-up copy of Winesburg, Ohio (1919), a Viking Compass Book, from the long-defunct Kayās Books on Prospect Avenue in downtown Cleveland, where I would go to work as a clerk several years later. That city block, which I will visit next week while visiting Cleveland, is yet another space charged with memories. A stray line from John Lennon comes to mind: āAll these places had their moments . . .ā In them, space and time intersect. One of the blessings and curses of life is memory. Iāve just remembered waiting at a bus stop downtown after visiting Kayās and thinking I would write a collection of short stories titled Clevelanders, in homage to Joyceās Dubliners. Naturally, it was never written. Ā Here are the final words of āDeparture,ā the final story in Winesburg, Ohio: ā. . . the town of Winesburg had disappeared and his life there had become but a background on which to paint the dreams of his manhood.ā Anderson based the fictional town of Winesburg on his childhood home, Clyde, seven miles northwest of Bellevue in north central Ohio. I moved to Bellevue in January 1981, about a week before President Reaganās inauguration, and went to work as a reporter for The Gazette. I was twenty-eight and this was my first daily newspaper. Previously I had worked as the editor of the weekly paper in Montpelier, Ohio, about two hours to the west, near the Indiana and Michigan lines.Ā Ā Ā The Gazette closed in 2016 year after almost 149 years in business. Its owner, Civitas Media, switched to twice-a-week publication in 2015 but couldnāt keep the paper afloat. Its circulation was about 1,000, after peaking at 4,300 in the late nineteen-seventies, just before I got there. Civitas Media also owned and closed The Clyde Enterprise. Ā George Willard, the character leaving Winesburg on a westbound train in the passage quoted at the top, was also a newspaper reporter. Like him, I remember incidentals, small things, like meeting Pat Boone, and the smell of Aramis, the āmenās fragranceā our publisher seemed to apply with a paint brush, the city manager coming to work one winter on skis. Georgeās memories are folksier than mine: Ā āHe thought of little thingsāTurk Smollet wheeling boards through the main street of his town in the morning, a tall woman, beautifully gowned, who had once stayed overnight at his fatherās hotel, Butch Wheeler the lamp lighter of Winesburg hurrying through the streets on a summer evening and holding a torch in his hand, Helen White standing by a window in the Winesburg post office and putting a stamp on an envelope.ā
