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Reading List More from Ognjen Regoje • ognjen.io
At a conference a while back, I noticed a couple of speakers get such a confidence boost after solving a small technical glitch. We should probably make that a part of every talk. Have the mic not connect automatically, or an almost-complete puzzle on the stage that the speaker can finish, or have someone forget their badge and the speaker return it to them. Maybe the next time I, or a consenting teammate, have to give a presentation I’ll try to engineer such a situation. All conference talks should start with a small technical glitch that the speaker can easily solve was originally published by Ognjen Regoje at Ognjen Regoje • ognjen.io on April 03, 2025.
I didn’t write much this year. The projects that I worked on (at work) used up most of my creative mental capacity leaving little for writing. The backlog is brimming, however. Targets for 2024 ❌ Publish at least 40 posts 11 ❌ Reach at least 200k readers Don’t have an accurate number ❌ Have at least 6 posts on the front page of something Probably would have met this if I had posted more – I had one successful post on Jan 14, which is encouraging ❌ Make at least $50 from writing. Nope, did no monetization whatsoever Breakdown Some stats: Number of posts: 11 Total word count: 3125 Longest post: When am I “allowed” to quit and not be labeled a quitter? (630) Shortest post: Speaking at Hasso-Plattner-Institut (0, because it’s just a link to a LinkedIn post) Breakdown by category: business: 1 startups: 1 ethics: 1 robots: 1 architecture: 1 interviewing: 1 productivity: 1 selenium: 1 doctolib: 1 No trend there. Feedly still reports 18 followers - no movement. But it also marked the blog as inactive which is a shame. Targets for 2025 I would like to commit to writing more in 2024, but I’m not very confident that I will have the time. Regardless, the 2024 goals were quite lofty but achievable so it makes sense to try them again Publish at least 36 posts (3 per month) Reach at least 200k readers (not sure how to track this accurately since I’m not keen to add analytics and GoAccess doesn’t seem to be super accurate) Have at least 6 posts gain traction (front page of HN, 10 reactions on LinkedIn, etc) A review of the blog in 2024 was originally published by Ognjen Regoje at Ognjen Regoje • ognjen.io on January 01, 2025.
2023 was a busy year so I did not spend a lot of time blogging, unfortunately. It was only in December that I had meaningful time for writing. In the 2022 review I set a few targets for the blog in 2023: Targets for 2023 ❎ Publish at least 40 posts 14 ✅ Reach at least 150k readers With a couple of viral posts this is very easily achievable. I’m at 180k even though I only had a few posts. I will include a target for the number of posts as well. ❎ Get at least 10 posts professionally? publicized I was thinking of hiring someone to help me distribute the content, but a) I didn’t produce much of it and b) I didn’t hire anyone. ❎ Build an audience (recurring readers, Twitter, newsletter?) Did not do this at all. ❎ Publish something on at least two other sites Did not do this. And I think I will not focus on this going forward. Quantity I published 14 posts, totaling approximately 9700 words. The average blog post length is 695 words. Working on legacy code is the longest post at ~729 words, followed by Lie still in bed with 679. The sample size isn’t sufficient to comment on whether the average length is adequate. Popularity Lie still in bed was the most popular substantial article. That’s encouraging because it’s not about tech, it’s just generic advice. MIT No AI was fairly popular but got flagged on HackerNews which killed it. It was also very quick to write. Interestingly Reddit’s disrespectful design and Big tech should help tackle misinformation on smaller platforms made a comeback. I don’t have detailed tracking anymore, it’s all based on server logs, so I can’t dig deeper into where the traffic is coming from. Editing the source markdown of a generated static site in the browser had some traffic as well which is interesting. It’s probably the most interesting post I wrote in a long while. Feedly reports 18 followers. Up three. What I’ve learnt I think I got better at writing more clearly. I’m more comfortable, at least at the moment, with publishing posts and not worrying too much about whether they’re perfect. I think that’s at least partly because I wrote so many posts in December. I made one pass with the rough draft. Then another pass that finalized the content. Then a final one where I didn’t change the content but just proofread and ensured clarity. Then I published the post. I took to heart the 2022 objective to frame posts positively more positively and have done that for several of them. Targets for 2024 Publish at least 40 posts Reach at least 200k readers Have at least 6 posts on the front page of something Make at least $50 from writing. I’m not sure if this is a good objective but maybe it might motivate me to think of monetization alternatives. A review of the blog in 2023 was originally published by Ognjen Regoje at Ognjen Regoje • ognjen.io on January 01, 2024.
As much as working remotely is a competitive hiring advantage again, not wanting to work remotely is now an advantage for getting hired. A lot of companies are mandating returns to the office. Many more are scrapping fully remote positions, with some even rescinding fully-remote offers. So, for better or worse, not wanting to work remotely is now a competitive advantage. If that’s not one of your requirements you’re likely to pick up more offers. Not wanting to work remotely is now a competitive advantage was originally published by Ognjen Regoje at Ognjen Regoje • ognjen.io on October 15, 2023.
More in programming
I’ve been taking a break from Mastodon as my social home on the web for about six weeks. It has been more difficult than I’d usually admit. I have an amazing local community in my town that I love and am deeply involved in. But nobody here is a programmer, or even a computer nerd, so it doesn’t serve my need for a tech community. I work alone, for myself, in my house. It’s a fortunate lifestyle with many upsides, but it means I don’t get that form of community at work, either. I’ve had this feeling before… as a teenager in the 1990s. It’s profoundly lonely. But when I got internet access, that started to change. I found my people. First in the Total Annihilation community (RIP, Annihilated), then the HardOCP Forum, then the Something Awful Forums, then Tumblr, then Twitter and our community of Apple bloggers, and then Mastodon. Communities form, change, and dissolve over time. None of those are, today, anything like what they were when I most enjoyed them. We change, too. I didn’t move on from most of those solely because they changed — it was usually because we both changed, and it was no longer a good fit. My break from Mastodon has been a relief in some ways, as I’ve felt increasing divergence between what I wanted and what I was getting from it, but I didn’t know where else to go. Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube are all more video-broadcast platforms than communities. All I’ve found on Bluesky is even more anger and politics, the last things I need or want. Threads hasn’t yet stuck for me, and it’s owned by an asshole. Twitter was an amazing product and community that was previously owned by assholes, and now it’s X, which has a strong but different tech community, and is owned by different assholes. So I’ve just been… nowhere, for the first time since the 1990s. It has been, once again, quite lonely. Sure, it’s been relaxing, too, but in the way a vacation is relaxing. It’s great to take breaks, but after a long vacation, I’m ready to turn my brain back on. Without participating in a large, broad tech community, I’m exposed to fewer new ideas, both of my main jobs (app development and podcasting) are much harder, the quality and reach of my work have suffered, my skills aren’t improving as much, my mind is less stimulated, and I feel disconnected from my professions and passions. My world has gotten smaller. I could keep going like this to prove a stubborn victory or purity test, but I’d mostly just be hurting myself. Communities change, conditions change, and we change. We’re all better off if we’re willing to change our minds, and if our communities let us, no matter how strongly our younger selves declared a previous position. So I’m going to wade back in and see how it goes, trying to find a better balance to hopefully have better results, including on Mastodon. My people are spread across multiple services, and I’m going to explore them all, despite most of them being owned by assholes. I’d love to participate in communities without any assholes benefiting from it, but in the modern world, that simply isn’t possible. The only alternative is to isolate myself and not have a community at all (or a job, or a smartphone, or a computer, or internet access, or a car, or most of my food, or my country). That’s neither a price I’m willing to pay nor a condition I’d try to impose on anyone else. I’d love to have your support, forgiveness, and grace as I try to find my people again, and I strive to offer the same to all of you. Everyone deserves to be part of a community. And as I grow, I’m learning to declare fewer absolutes in a complex, imperfect, and constantly changing world.
My now-traditional “summary” of the conference along with my own commentary and thoughts.
Every year, browser vendors collaborate via the Interop project to synchronize their efforts on new HTML/CSS/JS features. This year, there’s a ton of super exciting features being considered! In this blog post, we’ll explore the CSS of the future, to get a glimpse of what we’ll soon be able to do.
