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Excursions

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I am happy with the format that I’ve settled on for my newsletter Slanting Nib. A regular personal update followed by the recommended reads. Plus a colorful artwork from India. It’s simple enough for me to curate and I feel should be clean enough for the readers to follow.

“The happiness of loneliness” - such a curious phrase from my yesterday’s post. I really enjoyed reading this one a day after. I like to reflect on my posts from past. There’s on this day for the yearly reflection; for the daily one, I’ve setup an email digest. Tinkering time.

Revisiting 2020 through the /now page

I updated my /now page today after a long time. I usually maintain a thought's archive as part of the page for the updates that are no longer relevant. The idea behind is revisiting the thoughts that once were at the top of my mind is another way for me to retrospect.

Today I've reset that section for 2021. And below is an unadulterated list of the thought archive from 2020 -- so in a way a snapshot (incomplete, sure) of the year that went by.

  • I’m trying to get into a habit of regular meditation. I want to give it a chance again.
  • I'm in love with the Hamilton soundtrack. I keep going back to it every now and then.
  • Study Café Album on Spotify has been my go-to album every time I want to focus. If that fails, the real café ambient noise from Coffitivity does the job.
  • I have started writing frequently now. The simpler writing workflow with WordPress is helping.
  • Need to get the backup solution for posts (probably in WordPress) addressed.
  • Focus on deciding on the format, the frequency and the tone of the newsletter.
  • Where would my blog go next? Or will it stay here? It would most probably not be WordPress
  • I want a better writing interface. Or maybe not? Why do I want to create something perfect myself?
  • Need to get to the improvements planned for Wall.
  • Read. Read. Read. Write. Write. Write.
  • I need to finish the couple of books I had started reading in the last month
  • Implement a micropub client. Get anything working. Without UI. Dropped the idea
  • Getting used to the new normal.
  • Write about and share details about Wall. Feedback and issues.
  • Get IndieLogin working -- just been too long now
  • Get distracted with the side projects, again. IndieWeb's done.
  • Start reading and writing again
  • Stop procrastinating items from *must-do* list
  • Fix issue with webmentions from Brid.gy
  • Send webmentions to target on replies/likes
  • Support for updates in blotpub
  • Decision on upcoming nearby travel
  • Handle crossposting to Twitter and Mastodon for longer posts
  • Style webmentions section to my liking. It is too bloated in the current form
  • Start `\now` page to be updated regularly
  • Consolidate all my online content onto a single place (*most probably blot*)
  • Move old content from Hugo to archive (a Hugo site)
  • Change stuff around

If you maintain a /now page like I do, what do you write in there? What’s a good enough update? I keep swinging between very text-heavy and too terse – I haven’t found the right balance yet.

Another day when I think about all the meta stuff around my blog and how I swing between complete control over the setup and no control at all. Another day when I admire the folks who have custom-made solutions for each part. That level of dedication’s not trivial.

Here’s a word cloud of my posts created in 2008 – I had been writing for around 2 years then. I find it funny that even then I wrote the most about “blog”. Meta commentary never goes out of fashion.