Blogging Queue and Eh
I’ve been enjoying blogs a lot more, especially as a way of staying connected and up to date with friends, a slew of which have been tagging each other to write up their answers to some blogging questions. Susan tagged me and thus, here’s my entry.
Why did you start blogging in the first place?
I started getting into developing web sites professionally in 1999 and would write down solutions to problems I had run into. In 2001, when the .CA domain became open to all Canadians, I registered and moved my technical articles over. It wasn’t until 2003 before I discovered that “blogging” and blogging platforms was a thing.
Have you blogged on other platforms before?
I started with Blogger but very quickly moved to MovableType to manage my blog.
What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it?
From what I remember, MovableType had wanted to start charging for their platform, which quickly drove people to other platforms, leading to the quick ascent of WordPress.
(It’s been 15–20 years since then so my apologies if I’m misremembering things. Sure, I could look up the details but let’s just pretend we’re shooting the shit in a cafe somewhere. [Also, shooting the shit is an odd colloquialism.])
I had shifted into PHP development and chose CakePHP as my framework of choice. As such, I built my own blogging platform on top of CakePHP and have been running on that ever since.
How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?
I write everything in Markdown first, then convert to HTML and paste into a web interface for my server. It’s not ideal because I need to upload my images via FTP. Ugh. There’s a reason most of my posts are text only.
When do you feel most inspired to write?
I used to be spurred by technical hurdles that I’d do research on and wanted to share. I’d also weigh in on the technical topic du jour. The blog was subtitled “tips, tricks, and bookmarks on web development” and that’s what I did.
These days, it’s whenever creativity strikes me. Travel often triggers my creativity and so I’ll take notes so that when I’m back at home, I can refine my thoughts.
Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?
Ninety percent of the time, I publish write away. I’m not overly precious about my writing. Things will sit as a draft when I have a post that has a bunch of thoughts but seems to lack a good conclusion or a good thread for all the thoughts to hang on. Eventually, I’ll either find some inspiration to tie it altogether or I delete it for good.
What are you generally interested in writing about?
On a scale of technical (10) to personal (1), my current writing sits around a 4. It’s not so personal as to talk about intimate details about my life. It’s not a personal journal; I have an offline journal for that. But it’s no longer about web development and as such, the stuff I’m writing about is often personal but still reaching into my history of web development. An example is my post on Rituals where it’s a general post but connects to my love of web development towards the end.
Who are you writing for?
At this point, I’m writing for me. Kinda sorta. I know other people read this. Friends and foes, lovers and haters, colleagues and confidants. I’m getting older. We’re all getting older. Perhaps my stories amuse you. Perhaps they’ll make you consider an idea one way or another. Perhaps they’ll distract you from the world for a brief moment. And if nobody reads my words, that’s okay, too. So, I say again that I’m writing for me—but I’m writing to you.
What’s your favourite post on your blog?
I’m really proud of my post on the Creative Use of Bitwise Operators. That post is 16 years old and in that time, I seem to have misplaced the images. But I was and am very proud of the solution I came up with for laying out the events. I revisited the concept 8 years ago by redoing it using CSS Grid.
Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?
I’d love to simplify things as I’ve done with a number of my other sites and switch to using Eleventy. The “problem” with having a nearly 25 year old site is the level of cruft I’ve built up over that time. This site is a mishmash of dynamic and static content. I’ve found remnants of things recently that I had long forgotten about, like a resume from 2009. Revamping this site is so daunting that I’ve avoided it.
I would like to redesign it, though, to stretch my design skills some more, and play with browser goodies. The popularity of my blog really took off because of those experimentations. I used CSS fixed positioning in a creative way. I love seeing people—like Lynn—do really cool things. Perhaps it’s time to bring back Flash loaders.