Blog Questions challenge
Without shame I hereby challenge myself in the ongoing Blog Questions Challenge, which I have enjoyed as a reader of Adactio, Rachel Andrew and Ethan Marcotte.
Disclaimer: although I consume much English content on a daily basis, it is not my native language as a swede. Since this is my blog, I decided to not let AI or a friend proof read this blog post. So take it for what it is. :)
Why did you start blogging in the first place?
I made my first website, in Swedish "hemsida" (literally "home page") as a child, 13 years of age. This was in 1997-1998, before the blog as a publishing concept had been introduced. Being a teenager and later a young University student, redesigns and new ideas were created in bursts of spontaneous creativity as time went by. Around 2003-2005, a series of such redesigns honored the blog trend. I started to write more, about things my websites covered: programming, web design, linux findings and metal music.
This website, madr.se, was a blog from the very start: I made it to publish stuff I had written, and share thoughts of other stuff I had found interesting. This was before the general public used social media, in the short-lived blog era of the web.
In short, I started blogging because
- It was a way to show-case my personality and skills.
- Everyone else was doing it.
What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it? Have you blogged on other platforms before?
In this iteration, I manage my blog's content with [Directus]. I choose it out of pure curiosity, since a former college told me about it. After fiddling around with it, I decided it was worth keeping.
The content is published by a Phoenix site, with a basic Directus client written by me. I choose Phoenix since I like Elixir. All this is deployed in a podman pod on a VPS.
Historically, this website has been on a wide range of technologies:
- It started as a model-view-controller framework written by me in PHP and MySQL, with a primitive admin interface to publish blog posts. This as hosted by on Apache HTTPD a home server with Gentoo linux.
- For a brief time, It was migrated to Wordpress (sep-oct 2009).
- A couple of years, the blog was hosted on Posterous due to lack of inspiration to make something own. RIP Posterous, btw.
- When Posterous shut down, The site was migrated to a Django project (1.3 I think), and was once again deployed to and hosted on a home server running Debian.
- In a "less is more" move, The Django site was replaced by a static site, generated by Metalsmith. This collection of HTML documents were hosted in different places, Github Pages for example.
- Eventually, the static site was migrated to a VPS and deployed using Podman. This fact made the Directus migration easy.
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 all text in markdown. I create drafts in Directus and do the most writing in the Directus interface. Longer posts that needs time to be written, I type in the editor at hand, which mostly is either Helix or Vim.
When do you feel most inspired to write?
When I stumble upon something inspiring or something that I want to express feelings or thoughts about. Or, like Keith, when I am supposed to do something else and can't prevent my thoughts from wondering off.
Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?
To avoid too much procrastination, I usually type down a quick note to revisit later. Some notes are turned into blog posts, but most of them are discarded.
Usually, posts may be stored as unpublished draft for days, sometimes weeks or even months.
What’s your favourite post on your blog?
Unfortunately, only swedish posts here.
- Apparna, webbläsaren och det stora innehållet: A post about the state of the web vs "apps" at the time. It addresses a frustration that eventually let to the rice of React for web, as well as the Blink dominance.
- Facebook hämmar relationer (eller: nätidentitet och det egna jaget) : The first time I addressed my Facebook frustation. I write about my feelings of Facebook turning human iteration to something lesser, mainly by force-merging the online persona with the real life person. 13 years later, I left all social media where I was present.
- 1000lbs challenge: A series of posts where I wrote about my journey to join 1000 lbs club. It took me 3 years, and remain one of my biggest personal achievements.
- Jag vill vara kreatör, inte systemadmin: A post where I declare I rather be a creator of music or code instead of a system administrator, in regards of how the Linux experience was around 2015. Glad to see so much have improved :)
- Bädda in externt webbinnehåll med Shadow DOM: A write-up about how to successfully embed external content on any website with JavaScript and make Google index it. One of the rare occurrences where the content of this blog was truly innovative and sensational.
Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?
Recently, I have decided to commit more to creativity. I have ideas of incorporating procedural generated graphics to the design. I have an urge to make a unique design that incorporates my passions more, rather than being an ultra-accessible people pleaser.
Typical such element would be a penguin driving an american muscle cars alongside the footer, headbanging to loud Death Metal.
That kind of stuff. :)