Excursions

I started working on a side project today that I know, deep down, I do not have time or energy for. Yet, I began because I wanted hard not to change too many things with my writing process. But I am not happy with how things are set up today. It’s the same old battle.

I get bored with the setup I have. I find faults. And Micro.blog, my primary hosting platform, doesn’t want to fix the editor. I don’t gravitate to the posting page, so I write less. This platform needs a good editor (at least I am), and I wanted to attempt to build one. A couple of hours down the rabbit hole, I know I don’t want to do that. There’s a reason why I stopped hosting my blogging engines. It requires attention that my life cannot afford.

Some might say I don’t write much because I don’t want to. Never blame the tools and like that. But then I open the editor here at write.as, and the place feels welcoming – with its blinking cursor waiting for my thoughts, unformed as they may be. I start writing, and before I know it, I have a few thoughts jotted down. Sure, often they are #meta thoughts, as of now.

But that’s blogging to me. No fixed pattern, no predefined topics, and no forced post lengths. So the editor need not be so bare that I lose interest. It also need not be so polished that I feel burdened. This place looks to have got the balance right.

My writing has changed a lot over the years. I read a post from 14 years ago, and it reads.. carefree. In a good way.

I love the writing interface for write.as platform. No-nonsense. It does what it is supposed to do. Plus, all the other options, though available, get out of the way while I write. Grammarly works as expected. The posts are auto-saved in an intelligent way. At the same time, I can also build a list of drafts while working on them. The word count is visible, not the character count, as with Micro.blog that hosts my main website.

That last point tells you about the priority of these two #platforms that are very similar, yet different in many ways. Micro.blog compares itself to Twitter; hence considers itself closer to microblogging (well, it’s in the name). So the writing interface looks similar to the one on Twitter. Or, for that matter, most social media platforms. A bare text box that accepts Markdown text.

Write.as, on the other hand, calls itself “a place for focused writing”. This shows with the editor. Every time I use it, I want to write long. I can’t say the same for the text box that Micro.blog provides. It’s suitable only for microblogging.

Sure. Given the platform’s well-supported APIs, a list of clients already supports publishing to Micro.blog. So this is not an issue that many may face. However, most are only written for the Apple ecosystem, something I am not part of.

I love almost everything about Micro.blog. But I hate its writing interface and love the one provided by write.as. No surprise, then, that I am publishing most of my thoughts here.

This leaves me very confused. Which is my primary platform?

[L]earning to write is about more than learning to write. For one thing, it’s about learning to turn a loose assemblage of thoughts into a clear line of reasoning—a skill that is useful for everyone, not just those who enjoy writing or need to do a lot of it for work.

Source: What ChatGPT Can’t Teach My Writing Students →

I love my Chromebook a lot more than my Mac. The whole experience feels straightforward, no-nonsense and light. Starting/restarting is a breeze. With smart-lock, logging in and out is polished. There are no long update cycles; instead, it is always up-to-date. I have hardly seen the loading bar while using it. It is commendable, given that the underlying hardware is not as highly configured as my i9 MacBook Pro at work.

Sure, I do a lot more with the office Mac. But then, why would I ever need such a powerful machine for the stuff I do on my laptop? It’s mostly the browser I use, so Chromebook is perfect.

Plus, this has a terminal, one thing I miss on a Windows laptop.

I wish I could convince more people to give ChromeOS a try. Especially, my parents could benefit a lot from this simple device. But, they are worried whenever I tell them to stop using their Windows laptop. They hated Linux (of course, what was I even thinking). They can’t make any sense of macOS. iPad is too bare for them, and the onscreen keyboard is a pain. Chromebook is the best fit for them. If only they would listen to me.

Instead of playing whac-a-mole with passwords, why not eliminate that avenue of attack outright? That’s our mission.

Source: Goodbye, passwords | 1Password →

When I write something these days, I replace every “you should..” with “I am..”. If what I wrote doesn’t hold true, I don’t publish.

After avoiding it for weeks, I began the 7-day trial for Ivory. Why did I do that? I know I will start liking this bloody app and pay for it 🤦🏽‍♂

Day One on the Web. Finally!

Over the years, critics and audiences alike have re-examined the film and found, like the ship itself, it is a bit of a wreck.

Source: Titanic at 25: like the ship itself, James Cameron’s film is a bit of a wreck →