Herman's Resurfacing posts about bringing back older work was a fun read and a nice idea. None of my writing here is 'old' but this is my three hundredth post so I thought I would look back at some of my favourites.

• Paintings of paintings was in a 'cool things from around the internet' newsletter - it's always fun to encounter one's own posts out in the wild. It also apparently made its way onto some sort of Spanish Reddit? The internet, you know
• I really enjoyed making Joyride into something very different from the rest of my posts
• Creativity and curiosity kicked off some very fun thoughts
• Victorian etiquette manuals has been a real talking point and I love that
• Too much fun with CSS really was too much fun and I've done a bunch more styles and new pages since then (sitemap)
• my community posts thinking about community, good community, ready to bury bodies, we are the village, and social batteries. They felt like big vulnerable stretches and then so many people were so lovely about them, it was great
• a minor theme has been dishonouring the ghost of Gertrude Stein: forget grammar apps and think about potatoes, scenes, on her biography, and probably elsewhere
• everything I've written as a response to other people, whether it was a carnival, a direct prompt, or inspired by their post. Also the links posts, I love doing them
• people seemed to especially enjoy conversations with a five-year-old about parties and I still love conversations with a two-year-old about witches

A couple of months ago I wrote Things I want to do with my website and I think I've done pretty well with those ideas. Working on the digital garden side in Notes, writing about books, some zines. Yesterday I wrote about what I've learned from blogging, which is a lot.

Next up I'm working on more ideas about community, books I've read, and personal canon entries. More pages collecting things together. I'd like to do a challenge, Blaugust probably. I enjoy the constraint and the pressure of writing frequently and I think that would be really fun.

•

When I announced that I was open-sourcing a quiz maker earlier this week, I noted that there were several limitations to what I had built. Most importantly, my quiz maker was a Python script, which substantially limits how many people can use it.

After writing the blog post, Kami has made a HTML quiz maker that works in the browser. You can read the write-up on her blog, and try out the quiz maker for yourself. I helped out with the styles, which I really enjoyed. It is always nice to have a new design challenge!

How to use the quiz maker

To use the quiz maker, you need to first set a name for your quiz. Next, you can add all of the potential results that your quiz. For example, the blogger archetype quiz had results like “Author” and “Culture maker”, each with their own descriptions.

Then, you can create as many questions as you like. Each question can have one of several answers, and you can choose whether or not a player should be able to select one or multiple choices. You can then set which end result each answer contributes to. For example, the answer “ Watch the world go by” to the question “When you are spending time outdoors, what do you like to do best?” contributes to the answer “Explorer” in the blogger archetype quiz.

When you have configured your quiz, you can click the “Show code” button to get the code for your quiz. This code contains semantic HTML and all of the JavaScript needed to make the quiz work.

Kami built the quiz maker so that if you refresh your quiz will save. You can also click the “Show code” button to export a JSON version of the quiz, so you can keep a local copy that you can then import back into the website at any time.

Make a quiz

Thank you Kami for making such a wonderful tool! If you are reading this and have wanted to make a quiz like my “Which HTML element are you?” quiz or blogger archetype quiz, Kami’s tool will let you do just that.

If you make a quiz with the tool, please do send me an email. I'd love to fill out the quiz that you make.

Heya!

So, James recently made a blogpost opensourcing the python script he used to generate his various personality quizzes! (Blogger Archetype quiz, what microformat are you, etc.)

At the end of the post, he says this:

And if you feel inspired to make a better generator that gives someone HTML they can use on their own site (rather than being an embedded service), please bring the idea to life.

And, yeah, I did feel pretty inspired!
I had actually wanted to make a personality quiz like the ones James did for a while myself, ever since he published the first one. At the time his blogpost came out though, I didn't have access to my laptop, or any other computer I could run the script on. So, I really wanted a quiz generator website at the time as well.

Long story short, that's what I made. You can go and check out the quiz maker over here.

Had a look at it? Great!
Alrighty, time to talk about it for a bit.
So, I actually ended up using alpineJs for this project, which is a bit unusual for me because I'm not the biggest fan of javascript. In this case however, it was pretty much a perfect fit.

James quiz generator works by taking a bunch of JSON and then using that to generate the script. And alpine JS with its x-data directive is pretty dang good at creating a responsive UI from JSON. I can just do whatever operations I want on the big stupid JSON object that James' quiz script needs anyways, and it'll just work™ and update the UI correctly without me really needing to care much about state or whatever. It is so nice.

I didn't exactly write amazing alpine code or anything, due to it being my first time using the framework, but even then, the speed at which i could get this done was so, so much faster than if i just did all this stuff by hand - and like a billion times faster than if i used something like react.

Anyways, there's not much here left to say. I might go a bit more in-depth into the code behind this in another blogpost, but in all honesty, parts of it are fairly clunky due to this being the first thing I've actually made in alpine. Still, it works, and it works well, so that's nice. I could also explain how to use the quiz maker, but I feel like that's fairly intuitive. Go and mess around with it for a bit, have some fun. If you wanna copy the code for your finished quiz, go click the "Show code" button in the corner. Also everything auto-saves, so you don't have to worry about accidentally refreshing.

So, that's it for now! I might make another blogpost about this at some point, but for now, have fun! Go forth and make some quizzes. Also, again, thank you to James for taking care of most of the CSS for me. It looks really good.

Cya next post!

Some stuff I learnt, or rediscovered, through blogging and having this site. I don't often metablog so I'm indulging today and tomorrow.

How weird and wonderful people's interests are. I've read so many fascinating posts, discovered so many new ideas, got so many book recommendations. I love putting together links posts. I love people geeking out over their interests. The weirder the better.

How often I could write. I don't post every day, but most days. And honestly I find that easier than in the beginning when I was doing it haphazardly maybe once a week. Doing creativity makes me more creative. I just have to ride that cycle. I'd like to do Blaugust and blog every day for a while, but not permanently. Having that bit of space to breathe is nice too.

How weird I could get. I've definitely relaxed into the writing the more I write. My voice feels more like myself, not that I was ever trying to be formal. The stuff I write about has become more personal. I've taken more risks. And generally it's the more niche or vulnerable stuff that people connect best with.

I need optimism. Shit is fucked, I know that. But I can't be in that all the time. I need optimism and positivity and forward momentum. Hope. In what I write and what I read.

How much fun making a site is. I've not had this much fun putting together a site since 2001. Coming up with silly ideas for pages, making tweaks, and solving annoyances. (I finally got everything in the footer onto one line!) I didn't know, when I started, how hard I was going to get into the CSS and design stuff.

Themes can just emerge. I knew I write to find out what I'm thinking, as Joan Didion said, but I didn't realise quite how themes would crop up, posts would follow on from themselves, ideas would continue and grow and come together. And that's just in my own writing - never mind all the input from reading other posts and bouncing off other people's ideas. Collecting my posts, thoughts, and other links into more thematic pages has been very helpful in this, as has the serial and interlinked nature of blogging itself.

We all want human connection. Online, offline, we all want to feel connected to other people. It seems pretty well proven that 'social media' isn't the best way to provide that. But blogs and emails, that's the perfect pace for me.

On James's Blogger Archetypes quiz I got author with a side of explorer. Though all the outcomes are lovely and important.

•

(image courtesy of eliapelle)

"how do you stay connected while practicing digital minimalism, and how did you/do you plan make the switch to more intentional digital interactions?"

wow, what a juicy question, past me! i'm so glad you asked :3.

i find the concept of "minimalism" in and of itself a tad puzzling. because as humans, we have this (irritatingly) unending tendency to gravitate towards a ceaseless pushing for any semblance of "progress", of "the next best thing", of just... "more". seeing the production of something, a net/tangible outcome, as the end goal of any endeavour worth a damn.

and, like all good counter-culture movements, "minimalism" aims to push back against that notion by stripping back. however, in doing so, it can cultivate and perpetuate a kind of a flat, bland, and ironically consumerist lifestyle; buying the "latest" phone turns to buying the "latest"... dumbphone. or whatever antique media player, or games console, is the flavour of the month. subscriptions to apps to lock away features on your phone that you could just... not use.

i'm not saying this movement, or acts of digital minimalism, are fruitless, pointless or even detrimental. but i feel as the practice and promotion of digital minimalism becomes a bit more commonplace and "mainstream", we have to be more wary than ever to not "buy into" a whole new slew of slop designed not to entertain us, but to dangle the echoes of entertainment in front of us and deliver the dopamine in another, arguably easier but equally insidious way. to generate satisfaction and pride at one's own "self control" in a world of distractions... after paying for a monthly-subscription-based app (because honestly, that's the reality at this point) that functionally achieves the same outcome as throwing your phone at a brick wall until half of the features are busted.

small rant about the topic-that-this-girl-picked-in-the-first-place aside, i'd like to reframe the commercially co-opted and commodified moniker of "digital minimalism" into "bringing intention and slowness back into elements of your online life."

it's a little lighter, and calmer, i think. and you don't have to have any specific gadget, app, or smoothie the colour of shrek to qualify as a participant.

staying connected with intentional tech use: relationships & people:

this is probably my biggest struggle, the age-old problem epitomised by the "green bubble"/"blue bubble" divide. navigating the messy reality that is different people within one's life using different social or messaging platforms.

typically, I try and direct the bulk of my closest contacts to signal, as it's the only (truly) end-to-end encrypted by default messenger that i both somewhat trust, and balances it's security & privacy benefits with a simple & intuitive UI. if someone doesn't have it, i'll always politely suggest that they download it and add me, citing the security & privacy benefits of choosing a privacy-focused messenger and associated development team.

however, sometimes this doesn't work and I have to resort to using instagram (ick) and facebook messenger (even bigger ick), as that's what the majority of people in my area use. whilst not ideal, i value the ability to connect with and stay in touch with others more than my own pride & principles, and i just try and check them less often than signal, for the sake of my mental health (the reel-cesspit that's one mistaken swipe away) and privacy.

on the note of those apps, i unfortunately still have a presence on each of them, as (once again) it seems to be the most common place where i can "meet"/"get in touch" with people where i live. the phrase "oh, add me on signal!" unfortunately begets a larger conversation about what that is, why i use it etc. for passerbys/new acquaintances that are unfamiliar with it, and many don't have the time or energy to bring a "whole new app" into their life.

anyway. i use instagram to get initial contact with people i meet irl, and then switch to signal once i've dropped enough hints/convinced them/got to know them more. i also stay "up to date" (-ish, as i rarely ever intentionally look on my feed unless i'm loaded in there or sent a reel) with a few artists, creative, fandom & tech meme accounts on there, but am usually left in the dark with the latest trends and such when brought up irl.

and to be honest? i don't mind not knowing, sometimes. my unfamiliarity with the buzz word/topic/meme of the moment often prompts a subsequent and often funny conversation as the other party attempts to explain it and, in doing so, realise the absolute absurdity and nonsensicality of what they were referencing in the first place. or, i learn something new that i can look up later and investigate in my own time, should i be interested! i'd like to embrace asking questions & "not knowing" more, and i think this helps. plus, being the friend with a reputation for being a little off-grid/offline when it comes to trends & viral memes whist still caring about maintaining relationships with people is more than fine, in my eyes. my priorities are straight, in my eyes at least.

i attempted to wrap all of these services into one with Beem, but found that it was a little unwieldy/unreliable, and the thought of giving an external random linux box access to several of my messaging platforms and associated accounts at once was a little out of my comfort zone in the end. i'd also like to try FeurStagram at one stage (as recommended by Moose) for a de-bloated instagram experience, but as my reels use isn't much of a problem at present, & serves as a way to connect socially through what people send to me (a curated feed based on my interests, by other humans - i couldn't ask for more!), it's not a priority for me at the moment. plus, random android APK's & new(ish) projects scare me sometimes... paranoia and all.

like many people, i still loathe the amount of time i spend picking up and checking my phone. I average around 2-2.5hrs per day, which is a jump since i took time off work for my health. Most of that is eaten up by YouTube, an app i both love and hate due to finding so many fulfilling creations on there that I hesitate to give it up, but also waste so much time each day on there. however, it's rarely ever "idle time" - it's always while doing something else, notably walking (for exercise, pleasure, and from place to place) and eating. however, i'm slowly trying to make more conscious decisions to switch to an audiobook (self hosted via audiobookshelf, a stellar project to check out!) or just take out my earbuds and listen to nature, and letting my thoughts wander in step with my legs. i try and do this "brain emptying" mindful listening for at least 10min before i get to work or an event, which serves to both clear my head for the upcoming day and occasionally also assuage some of the anxiety that i get in the lead-up to the impending project or task.

aside from that, i don't have screen timers or app locks anymore. the soul-sucking moments of cyclical realisation that come from flicking up and down on my screen to open and close various apps, refresh notifications, and do nothing fulfilling are slowly piling up. cumulatively deteriorating my will to even pick up the damn thing, and for that... i'm glad. i think this is finally retraining my brain. i've been trying to prompt myself to answer the question "why am i picking up my phone right now?" before i look at the thing, and this has helped (when i remember to do so) identify when i'm just using it as a means to combat (but ironically increase) anxiety, or assuage boredom that i actually cherish and want to use for other things (including just... sitting in!).

i've silenced all notifications, asked people to call me if urgent (and checked my phone will ring or at least light up and vibrate for select contacts), and trained myself to respond fastest to Signal messages & SMS (for those who don't have signal), so my loved ones know how to reach me if need be.

once my Nothing Phone 2 dies (the last great Nothing, if they continue to descend into the AI-bloat hole...) I'll be looking to get a fairly recent Pixel (for extended security support) with a decent chunk of storage to run GrapheneOS as a daily phone driver. i've a big fan of the project and all they do, especially after trialing it on my second hand Pixel 6a (which i'd use if support didn't run out for it mid next year), with the biggest "inconvenience" for me being the lack of digital wallet support, which is by no means a dealbreaker.

i would also like to switch my daily laptop driver to linux (either debian or arch, from past usage... two sides of the coin lol), as i currently use multiple laptops with all three OS's for various things, but spend most of my time on my M1 2020 MacBook Air, which is just... such a well-optimised and functioning device for me. Once it dies, then it'll be full send to Linux.

how i'd like to consolidate my digital life:

i've somewhat barely scratched the surface with the above deconstruction of my digital life; messaging services make up the majority of it, but my digital remnants are spread far and wide across multiple platforms. much like the scattered fragments from a frag grenade, i have... a lot of digital cleaning to do.

at one stage, most likely when i stabilise my mental & physical health enough to move out of home, i will take some dedicated time off from work to do this. spending dedicated time to trace the places where i exist both offline and online, and assess whether or not they (still) serve me.

i've made a date in my calendar for a year from now (ambitious, given my current state, but a girl should dream) to remind me to schedule time for this journey. this would extend beyond just social sites, but also to my digital storage, backups, devices (creating an asset list of those currently used/in storage), subscriptions, etc.

spring cleaning of stray & excess 1s and 0s, in a way.

maintaining & forming connections with people:

this is, ironically (but sadly not surprising, given the state of some parts of the physical/digital world) the part i struggle with the most, when balancing intentional digital interactions with maintaining and forming connections in an increasingly "online" society.

especially as an adult, as many of the all-too-seamless "friends by proximity" arrangements fade away as high school & uni slip by, meeting people without spending half your life (and wallet) on several dating apps seems to be getting increasingly difficult. i also suspect that a combination of my anticipatory anxiety for social situations (despite having relatively little whilst there), the decision not to constantly broadcast a highlights reel of myself online, or spend hours chatting/calling on XYZ, also contributes to my perceived lack of "meeting new people" or "finding a relationship".

however, i'm slowly coming to realise that... it's perhaps also, largely, because i'm in an intense process of healing, and haven't yet learned to love myself. so making space for & finding others to share my life with is just... a little out of reach right now. not impossible, but rather the next step in my journey, that i'll arrive at when the time is right.

but, that all said, i'm fairly happy with how i create and form connections both online and offline, and am trying to reign back in my constant notification-hopping with carving out dedicated time to respond to my message backlog per day, when i feel like it. communicating this to and establishing boundaries with people is also something i strive to do, and all of the important folk in my life respect and understand that i may not always respond immediately, or to them first, but that i always will eventually and if there's anything urgent, to send a follow up or call to get my attention.

i also have an eternal amount of gratitude for the indieweb, the blogosphere, as well as stumbling upon the Grizzly Gazette for meeting new folk and connecting with a diverse range of people and perspectives. Especially after being invited by Pirate into their little circle, i've slowly grown to love the moments i find (at 1am my time lol) to share with them, and this extends to all of those who email me or message me on signal, too. Internet penpals (distinct from back and forth real time messaging!) are what fill up my Happi Meter the most, out of all online connections.

on our physical plane, i'm always trying to ask friends to let me know if they have any mutual friends that are looking to meet people, or whether they're going to any open invite events/parties (that aren't in town). i also follow & attend a few social meet-up groups (both dating and interest-based), and am hoping to get back into some social sport & hobby groups once i'm further along in my recovery.

meeting people is hard, but worth it. and at the end of the day, it always ends up being a random tuesday afternoon where you meet your new best friend, the love of your life, or your future career partner.

so here's to continuing on with intention, both digitally and physically, for those future afternoons. because to me, true connection is what our humanity is all about, in the end, and finding it amongst several thousand digital haystacks is a difficult but worthwhile endeavour.

~ juni.

Reply via email here ~ ! (◕‿◕)

I'm currently at my desk, listening to the discography of Elliot Smith from the very start. I'm on the latter half of Roman Candle right now. He's one of those artists that I know the hits from, and a few deeper cuts by virtue of recommendations or lucky finds, but I've never truly sat through everything he's put out. This album fascination of mine has had an unexpected but very welcome side effect: I barely use streaming for music at home anymore. I've rediscovered the joys of listening to records, and thank my 16-year-old self every night for blowing my library paychecks in high school on albums of all kinds. Here are some records that I'm listening to lately at home:

• Blowout Comb by Digable Planets (jazz hip-hop/rap, 90s Brooklyn)
• How Sad, How Lovely by Connie Converse (pure singer-songwriter folk, 50s New York)
• Butterfly by Kimiko Kasai and Herbie Hancock (Disco disco disco.)
• Um Violao em Primeiro Plano By Rosinha Valencia (Bossa, 70s Rio de Janeiro)
  • Ever since I started seriously collecting records in 2019-2020, my absolute number one want was this album. Every record store I've ever walked into, the first spot I've darted to is the Brazilian, and every time until 2 weeks ago, I have walked away disappointed. There's been a few finds throughout my collecting career that have made my knees buckle (Hosono House by Haruomi Hosono and Next Time Might Be Your Time by Blue Gene Tyranny are highlights), but none have stunned me quite like this one. Seriously, picture it. Flipping through, feeling like a gambler always one visit away from jackpot, just to land on a white album with that sweet, sweet caps helvetica.

It was mildly muggy on my walk to the train this morning, and I was reminded by my father to bring an umbrella. I have a habit of bringing umbrellas when I don't need them at all, and forgetting them when it's pouring a river. The weather in this city is so unpredictable that even the weather apps struggle to guess the forecast right.

From 9 till lunch, the strip of windows across from me have grown greyer and greyer. Just this morning, I could see all the way across the lake to the next few cities. Now, all I can see is the faintest lines of the buildings around me, and streaks of rain slashing across the panes. If I wasn't planning to walk to the market during my lunch to hunt for olives, I'd be much happier watching the clouds engulf my office. Umbrellas can't restrain the misery of rushing through the wet of summer rain.

I've lived a very architecture-less life lately, a mildly less artful life lately. I can only blame it on the suffocation of working hours for so long before I confront the imbalance between my gathering of inspiration and my dispelling of it, that being: spending time with my friends, family, and becoming a hermit for the sake of creating. The two cannot coexist no matter how much I try. All this to say, for anyone that I've slated plans with only to disappear, it's not you, it's me trying to kick myself back into gear!

I mentioned this to someone who is slipping my mind now, but I have learned that if I talk about anything that I'm going to do before it's completely done and out into the world, it's simply not going to get done. It's a lesson I've really been trying to hammer into myself because it's simply fun to theorize and plot, but lofty words do not an action make. So that's the last of my lamenting, start of my doing. Hopefully that's not saying too much already. What an endless loop.

Today marks the day Mrs. Pirate and I have been married for 4 years, and have been a couple for 8. In that time, I've learned SO damn much about what it means to love and be loved. I've learned what an effective partnership is, and how to keep said relationship growing. So, I'd like to share some of that.

For start, don't chase the "honeymoon phase". You're not gonna feel the way you did when you first started dating your partner. At the start, everything is new and exciting, and you're probably hot and heavy for one another. That's going to naturally fade away over time as you fall into familiarity and routine. Love is companionship, being happy in that person's presence. Love doesn't always look like 2 people jumping each other's bones all the time, it more often than not looks like 2 people sitting on a couch watching TV and holding each other's hand. Love is about being content with living a pretty boring life with that person.

Get in with a couples counselor early when you start being really serious. I'd say a good time to consider this would be after you and your partner start living together. Mrs. Pirate and I started doing couples counseling right around the time we moved in together, and it was probably one of the smartest things we did. Therapy helped us iron out kinks before they became actual problems. There's kinda a stigma around this, you tell people you're going to couples counseling and they think your relationship is over. It only becomes an issue when you go to counseling when it's already too late. There's nothing wrong with building strong foundations.

Values are more important than personalities. My wife and I are borderline polar opposites when it comes to interests and personality. Mrs. Pirate and I are the living example of "opposites attract". She's the collected organized type, and I'm the spontaneous energetic type. You should always have SOMETHING you both enjoy doing together, but at the end of the day what matters is where you are aligned in terms of core values. Helping others, how you want to raise your children (if you plan on having any), approaches to house management, etc. You can have all the same interests you want, but if one person thinks spanking your kid is okay and the other hates the thought of it, you're gonna run into a lot of issues.

Attraction transcends looks. As Mrs. Pirate and I have gotten older, we went from fit teens to having mom/dad bods and I'm sure that as we get older our looks will fade. That's just what happens. However, attraction and love transcends looks. I know old couples who still think their person is the sexiest person they've ever laid eyes on. When you're attracted to someone, like truly attracted to them, they're beautiful regardless of age and superficialities. If you can't imagine loving that person when they're 89, wrinkly, and flabby, you don't love them enough.

When you're committed to each other, all money is "our" money. When you start living together and are formed in a long-term partnership. Combining finances is a pretty good idea. It stops a lot of fights because it stops becoming "your money vs. my money" and more "this is our money". This becomes critical if one side, for one reason or another, takes up most of the domestic labor. I work full time and Mrs. Pirate is a housewife. My labor is financially compensated, but hers isn't. There has to be that manageable balance. So finances become a joint operation, rather than a yours vs. mine. We've negated so many fights that my parents had (who did separate their finances).

Sometimes their needs come before your comfort. I've held Mrs. Pirate's hair as she threw up into a bowl repeatedly post hip surgery. She's gone out to the store and cooked me comfort food when I'm sick. In sickness and in health and all that. You're there to support each other, and when they're at their worst, you step up for them.

If you're not in a relationship with your best friend, you're in the wrong relationship. Your partner should be your best friend, they're the person who catches you when you fall. They're the person who builds you up and keeps you grounded. I always found it annoying when people say they don't wanna date their best friend because it'll ruin the friendship, but if you're not married to your best friend then who the hell did you marry?

For the love of god, talk to each other. Communication is key and a lot of couples are really fucking bad at it. Most problems stem from people not saying what they need. My wife has learned that I am damn near incapable of taking a hint, so if she needs something or have something done a certain way she has to tell me. Once we got that figured out, the fights in that realm stopped... for the most part. She still gets annoyed at how oblivious I can be sometimes. Sometimes you just wish the other person could read your mind.

Things get a lot easier when you get along with each others in-laws. There's a stereotype of the in-laws that hate each other. It happens often. Shit happens, and sometimes one side just doesn't have a good relationship with their parents. But life is a lot easier when you get along with your partners parents, and vice versa (within reason). You don't have to be best friends with them, but having a positive relationship with them makes life a lot less stressful.

Things change when kids enter the picture. One of the things that separates a relationship from one that will go the distance from one that doesn't is how the couple operates after a kid enters the picture. Mrs. Pirate and I's marriage and partnership only got stronger after our daughter came into our lives. When a child enters your lives, there's gonna be a lot of chaos initially. This is where the foundation comes in and where partnership becomes crucial. When my daughter was born, I would spend hours figuring out proper breastfeeding positioning because it was causing my wife a lot of pain initially, and we figured it out. My daughter slept with Mrs. Pirate a lot the first year or so, and when nights got hard and she got restless I busted out the guitar and played until she settled down. When I was getting into an overstimulated meltdown Mrs. Pirate came to my rescue. We supported each other when things got hard, and that's what mattered most.

Anyway, it's been a long adventure with Mrs. Pirate. We started dating when we were both teenagers. We're not kids anymore, we're not the same people we were 8 years ago. Through that though, our relationship has only gotten stronger. We've gotten through long-distance, her parents' divorce, death of loved ones, arguments, having a child, and more. We've gone through a lot together, and have always come out on top. I'm grateful for her, and look forward to the rest of our lives together.

If you're reading this, honey, I love you. You are my favorite person. Happy anniversary.

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Reply via email: me@absurdpirate.com

Content warning: This poem is about the ongoing heat in Europe. I strike an optimistic tone toward the end, but if you would prefer not to read about the heat, I offer you one of the Scottish poems I have written in stead.

Nature’s weary tears fill the air;
invisible, warming.
Relentlessly, days proceed.

Hours pass; Celsius rises.
Midnights: warm like day.
We stay inside.
Blinds closed, water glasses full, cookers off.

Flowers bloom early.
Eyelids weigh; we yearn
for rest that does not come.

Heat ravages the continent.
London is Rome.

Roads reduce to liquid, power lines sag:
infrastructure is under stress.
Headlines depress.

Hope: We come together, reaching
with open eyes.
Her resiliency:
Our future?

The things I write the most are thoughts, ideas, introspections, because for me is hard to write about my life. It doesn't have to do with the fact of if I publish it or not, generally I can't write about my life even in my private notebook. Every attempt to have a journal hasn't been successful because of this reason, it stays blank most of the time. My life is pretty calm and I don't do a lot of things every day, I usually do the same routine, so I don't see the point of writing about it. At the same time, I find it hard to talk about myself, it takes me a lot of time to figure out how to express what I'm feeling. I only have a couple of pages in my notebook to write the highlights of important days, last year I think I only used about 4 pages, small pages.

I didn't know if this was something I wanted to change, I don't like to force my writing but I did want to be more consistent and don't forget to write to the point of writing only about one day for an entire month. There were months were I didn't wrote anything. I thought then of this idea, write a haiku for every day, sounded fun, write about anything really, use a haiku to express the feeling of the day.

More than a week has passed since I started to do this and I think is going well. Some days I really don't have anything to write about so I'll have to be creative and find the most interesting thing even if is small, that works for me because haikus are short and I can shortly describe a feeling, when in the other way, when I used to try journaling, I'd get lost in the words, the space for words was infinite. With limited syllables I can trick myself to think that writing about the day would be easy. "It will only take a couple of minutes", "write what first comes to your mind", so I'd take the pen and magically write an entry to my log. It's also a fun activity to practice, I'm wishing to improve my haiku writing like this, since as for today, I still have to focus and slowly count the syllables.

I'd recommend this, if like me, someone finds it hard to write about their day.

For this month's Bearblog carnival Juni asks How do you stay connected while practicing digital minimalism, and how did you make the switch? which is something indieweb bloggers can definitely get their teeth into.

I never had to quit social media because I was never on social media. My digital minimalism is like my location in the Midlands - to many people I look like some sort of hermit whereas to actual digital minimalists I'm one of the hopelessly compromised by the system, unsecured sheeple.

How do I stay connected with people without any of that? With difficulty. It's harder to be connected. Even if those connections can be harmful or superficial.

It's hard to find things without social media. It's wild to me how many businesses only have a social media presence, not a website. Or the website points to social media for important stuff like menus or opening times.

Clubs, groups and so on... Good luck finding an up-to-date website for them! I lean on my wife here - she's not particularly active on social media but she does have accounts and she'll mention interesting things to me from the local Facebook group or whatever.

WhatsApp is fully ubiquitous in the UK, over texting. I use it strictly as a messaging app. I'm only in groups with people I have been in a room with offline. I don't know all the people super well but we have met. I can't even figure out how you use WhatsApp otherwise, but apparently people very much do. I make liberal use of the mute option.

Discord and the like I tend to keep off my phone. On my tablet or laptop, no notifications. Just a little bit of separation, a bit of distance. I'm not a heavy user anyway but I'm part of some lovely communities that I appreciate.

I have very few notifications on my phone generally and my phone is always on silent. My phone being on silent is a joke amongst my family. My sister even got me a birthday card of two antelope trying to phone another to warn them about being stalked by a lion. Phone's on silent, shrug.

That's part of the intentionality of Juni's prompt I guess. I use my phone a lot so I pick up whatever I need to pretty quickly - except when I'm not using my phone, which is a deliberate choice or a necessity and I don't need interrupting. My phone is pretty barebones - the least amount of apps I can get away with, five icons in the tray on my homescreen. And I keep an eye on myself. If I find myself checking for messages a lot it's a sign I'm getting a bit twitchy anxious and I need to slow down.

At the same time, I think the connections that can hold out are stronger ones. And this is just me, what suits my situation and temperament. Everyone has to find their own balance and what works best for them.

•

I've been collecting physical media for over 5 years at this point. It started as exclusively games, then became music, and then movies. However, my love of collecting has kinda dwindled or has made me outright anxious, which means I'm doing something wrong.

I got to a point where I was kinda collecting whatever, albums that I wanted to listen to, but after listening didn't really care for. Owning games that were hot collector items, but ones I'm not super passionate about. Buying games that were strange, but not actually worth playing. Buying games that were just the disc or disc + case, and so on. Buying movies that were only worth a 1-time watch.

Collecting lost its luster after I started to just pirate everything. At that point it became a guilt. Why am I spending money on something that I could just get for free? So, I sailed the high seas and snagged a LOT of media. Games, movies, music, and so on. My library got huge. Tons of movies, Hundreds of games, thousands of songs. But I started to get decision fatigue every time I opened up my library. Music was easy enough, just hit shuffle and you're off, but stuff that takes a time commitment like games and movies was a lot harder to make a choice on.

The games stopped feeling special, and it felt like something was missing. My collection wasn't satisfying, and was filled with a bunch of games I really had no interest in. I decided I needed a change.

I traded in a lot of the games I had into a retro game store and used the credit I got to buy my wife a Switch 2. I traded in every game that didn't hold nostalgic/sentimental/enjoyment value. I essentially cut my collection down to 1/4 of its size. I've also traded the handful of movies/CDs that I didn't really care to own.

I then decided to set rules for collecting.

Setting Ground Rules

So, with wanting to restart my collection. I decided to set some rules for myself to keep it from getting out of control.

I first started by (re)moving most of the games I had pre-installed on my system. Putting them in an archival folder on my 4TB HDD. I've set the rule that I'm only keeping games that are way too expensive ($70+) or games I want to demo before purchase downloaded onto my jailbroken console. So games like Parappa the Rapper on the PS1 (which costs $100+) would get downloaded onto the console, but games like GTA III (which costs like $10) I would own physically. This rule also applies to movies/music that is way too expensive (seriously, $800 for "Anyone For A Doomsday?", I know it's rare but goddamn!"

The budgeting side is already figured out. With being the sole financial provider in my house, I already don't have the expendable income I used to. Which means I have to think REAL hard what I wanna spend my money on. I can really only afford 1-2 additions anyway.

When acquiring games, I have a few rules. Games have to have their case and manual in good condition. No manual, no purchase. If the game in question has a steel book variant, I opt for that. I also look for the more "definitive" version of the game. GTA: San Andreas looks "better" on Original XBOX, but the PS2 version has that iconic orange hue to it which adds way more atmosphere. Also, if a game is multi-platform, I'm not buying it on multiple platforms, one and done. If I want it on another platform, it is getting downloaded.

I also wanna prioritize collection a game in a series for the console it was originally home to with some exceptions. Spyro for example started on the Playstation, so any game in the franchise I buy, I buy for Playstation. Series like Need for Speed started on the 3DO... I'm not buying a fucking 3DO, so I just buy for whatever console "feels" best. I bought NFS: Underground the other day for the OGX for example.

I am also limiting buying games/movies/music online. This forces the "hunting" aspect of collecting which is like half of the enjoyment in collecting.

For example: I had the Halo 2 Volume 2 soundtrack on my list for a while. I hesitated buying off of eBay because prices were kinda absurd. I went to one of my favorite music stores for my birthday one day, and what do I find? That exact CD. I was over the fucking moon. Same thing with my Hybrid Theory Deluxe Box Set, prices were at like $500 at the time, but I saw it at a local record shop for $225. I scrounged up money and got it.

If I'm deciding on if I wanna buy a new console, I've set the rule that I have to have at least 5 games that I would play on that console before I do. I ran into this problem when I got a GameBoy Advanced... had the console, but only really had 1 game on it that interested me... it was Tetris.

For music, my rule goes as follows. If I'm discovering the album for the first time, I give it an initial listen on youtube while at work, or I burn it to a CD to listen on my drive up. If I like most of the tracks on the album, I'll buy it on CD. If I LOVE the album, I'll buy it on vinyl. This method has saved me from buying an album I think I'll like, but only end up liking maybe 1/3 of the tracks. The Essential Simon and Garfunkel comes to mind, I only like about 4 of the songs on there.

For Movies, I opt for DVDs. Why not blu-ray you may ask? Because A) I like watching movies on my CRT. B) the DVD tends to be cheaper and have more bonus features than the Blu-Ray version. C) If I cared about audio/visual quality I'd download the 4K UHD variant online (which buying physically is pointless as they tend to not have any special features). If I buy blu-ray, it's because it also comes with a DVD copy in the case, which is the case with my copies of Zombieland and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

Now I also collect the odd VHS tape (I have 1), where does that fit in? I put that on a more vibes-based feel. Campy horror movies and 80s classics (like back to the future) would feel right at home on VHS. I did grow up with VHS more than I did DVDs (DVD was NOT cheap in the early 2000s), so some acquisitions would be nostalgia-focused. I wanna get the classic Disney VHS tapes, the Star Wars VHS tapes I had as a kid, and so on.

I'm also following a rule of "not getting the same format twice in a row". This basically means if I bought a DVD most recently, I'm not buying a DVD again the next time I'm in a spot to add to my curation and am instead going to go for a game or album that's on my list.

Rules for Consumption

I've set a few rules of consumption for myself to prevent me from doing the perpetual "I'll get to it later". When buying a game, that is THE game I play for the week. Nothing else. Exception being if I'm doing a game event like for my weekly Wednesday Halo 3 multiplayer with friends. When buying a new album/movie, that is the next thing I watch/listen to.

If I have an album on multiple platforms, I consume it this way. CDs I play in on my console w/ the music visualizer or in my car on my commute, this rule forces me to actually use my CDs more frequently. If I have it on iPod, that is strictly for home/train commute/on-the-go listening. Vinyl is easy because I can only play it in one place, and my daughter loves listening to records.

Anyway, that's my plan. I've enacted some of this already and it's brought back the fun in curating my collection again.

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Reply via email: me@absurdpirate.com

as of writing this...

I'm heading to the record store after work. I wanna grab a DVD and a CD, I have a couple of options on my list, so it's gonna come down to which one speaks to me the most. I'm kinda thinking "Dirt" or "Facelift" from Alice in Chains, or maybe something from Soundgarden. Not sure yet. I wanna get home and play some of the games I got too. It's my wife and I's anniversary tomorrow. Mrs. Pirate and I will have been married for 4 years, and have been a couple for about 8 years. We don't have anything too special planned, we're planning on getting sushi for dinner and then over the weekend my MIL will be taking my daughter to give us some time without having to be parents.

David at Forking Mad asks an intriguing question: If you could be transported back in history to a period of time, when would it be and why?

David chose 1850s to 1900s, a time of rapid technological process. Which is extremely fair and very tempting to me also.

The recipient of this question, Elena, chose university in the mid 1990s to see the birth of the internet and live without mobile phones. A great answer, how exciting would that be.

Elena raises the point that anything pre-1970s would not be safe for a woman. The phrasing of the question isn't entirely clear and I don't fancy leaving everyone I've ever known to go catch a plague or get burned at the stake.

But in David's longer blog post he mentions being a fly on the wall rather than live in the time and also wanting to 'hop about.' So let us not trouble ourselves too much with reality.

Basically, I'd go anywhere and do anything. Even times and places that seemed uneventful. Just to see what it was like - less uneventful than the history books would have us believe. Humans are human.

Then I thought maybe bash around and solve some mysteries bugging archaeologists and historians.

Maybe I would go back to the building of Stonehenge. Knowing who, how, and why would knock a lot of boring debate on the head. Similarly, what happened to the princes in the tower? There are plenty of other mysteries. Who wrote the Voynich manuscript? Does Atlantis have any basis in fact? Who was Homer? What were those Roman dodecahedrons used for? What is the Antikythera mechanism?

All that got me thinking about books with a time-travelling historical mystery-solving agency. Which, lucky me, is a whole genre.

Filed under history and time travel

•

If you looked at collages of photos of the "older brother core" aesthetic, you'd get a pretty close approximation to my lifestyle. Even though I fit really heavily with this, I'm a bit too old to really identify with it. It doesn't really feel like a modern lifestyle more than it does if you gave NostalgiaCore a caffeine addiction. I tried finding something in that realm of "POV: Your Gen X parent is blasting Hair/Heavy Metal in the car while you ride in the back seat" vibe, but for the late Millennial-early Gen Z. As bands like Linkin Park, Green Day, Powerman 5000, Blink-182, and such become the new "dad rock", I decided to use a new term, "Zillennial Dad Core".

Zillennial Dad Core is like if you took older brother core, gave it a full-time job, a wife and kids, and all the BS of modern life. He works a shit corporate job, flips off a cybertruck every chance he gets, and goes home to play on a PS2 with his kid(s). It's the guy who's playing Need for Speed Underground while their kid plays with a lego set they bought and occasionally watches what dad is doing. It's "POV: Your Gen Z/Millennial dad is blasting Pop-Punk/Nu-Metal in the car while you ride in the back seat".

The Zillennial Dad walks around with an iPod, wired headphones, maybe a dumbphone. Dressing in baggier clothes and a tee shirt of their favorite band/game series. Could be listening to 90s grunge and pop punk or 00s Nu-Metal and Emo. They're daydreaming about going home to play GTA: San Andreas on their PS2, or playing Pokemon: Heart Gold on their DS on their trainride home, or bumping Pearl Jam with their kid. They may even have that artificial fish tank lamp or a Windows 7 PC Build.

I say this sort of "core" is my antidepressant, because in spite of the chaos of the outside world, here I have the joys of interests I've had since childhood mixed with the joys of adulthood (i.e. my wife and daughter). While I'll never be able to live in a pre-2008 financial crisis life, I can bring aspects of that into my life with a decent-sized degree of success.

I got such a dopamine spike playing Smackdown: Just Bring It, playing as the Undertaker with Limp Bizkit's "Rollin'" as his entrance music.

My Hair-metal fan Gen X mom has videos of me dancing and singing to "Detroit Rock City" by KISS. I have videos of my daughter dancing and singing along to "Geek Stink Breath" by Green Day.

There's a growing number of people roughly my age who would feel at home with Zillennial Dad Core, some of them are making videos about Frutiger Aero, others are making "Hell Yeah" core videos, others are reminiscing about the social gaming scene of the 2000s.

Anyway, this was a really stupid post that took me way too long to write. I'm just putting my stamp on this before it lands in the Aesthetics Wiki and gets put on TikTok compilations with the caption of "POV: You're with your dad who was born in 1998".

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Reply via email: me@absurdpirate.com

as of writing this...

I'm tired. I spent a decent amount of time over the weekend getting games onto my modded PS2 memory card to great success. I was worried the PS1 games wouldn't play well, but so far it's been pretty on point. I've been listening through Alice in Chains' "Jar of Flies" and Soundgarden's "Badmotorfinger". Ready to just be home and unwind for a while.

(image courtesy of avogado)

i know that change is the easiest way out, deep down, too. i just feel absolutely powerless at the behest of my mind, especially right now, and wish that i was strong enough to enact such change.

but when change is the thing that terrifies me the most, where routine and structure are the only things that keep v feeling "safe", or "right", the days shift to become cyclical, paralysing, my mind feeling every ounce of stagnation echoing through the body and berating me for it: "you can't even rest right you're broken and don't deserve an ounce of sympathy from the people and structures you cling to and leech off of-"

that constant dialogue becomes near-impossible not to internalise as both a world and as a wholistic truth about one and one's own existence. the resulting punishment one goes through, whether self-inflicted or not, feels perversely warranted. as if necessary repentance for the mind's very act of turning itself inwards and corrupting some part of another living being. the fact that I have these thoughts, think these things, and lash out at (myself) so viciously, is enough of a sign to justify the hell i'm swathed in.

this was a series of passages i wrote, in a frustrated attempt to capture the pure calamity that has been raging within my head over the past few weeks. yet, it came (characteristically) nowhere close to encapsulating the true depth of this paradoxical state of being i've come to reside in.

i believe the poetic and structured nature of the prose was what was inevitably limited the depth of exploration into my thoughts. iron bars imposed by words, sentence structure, syllabic balance and the litany of rules underpinning the english language. bars which i am both able to sing through

so, in an attempt to do so, i have given myself a few minutes. to pour my thoughts out, unfiltered, unrefined, and uncensored. the fact that i feel compelled to even preface such a section with this winding and long-winded introduction is likely enough of a sign that this is pushing far beyond my comfort zone. no hiding behind lyrical, self-indulgent flowery prose.

just a pure, unbridled, glimpse at insanity.

and at the same time, humanity.

all at once.

my first thought is that i'm terrified. and i have been for a long time, the fear has bubbled within me since my very early days, but only within the last few years has it finally reached it's boiling point. i feel simultaneously aware of everything that's happening around me all at once, and crippled by a deep-seated sense of disconnect from life itself. as if i'm a spectre floating three feet behind my own body, puppeting it with sagging strings that i have to almost reel in like fishing wire before i get any form of control. 
my life, and very existence at present, feels like a contraiction. everything in my day moves in slow motion, i drift aimlessly through the world with only my wandering feet and half-distinguishable audiobooks to guide me, wasting away hours of time that i used to lap up, cherish every drop of, when i was younger. happier.
endlessly recycling a hollow variation of the same day over and over and over again, expecting that something will miraculously change. 
but when there are so many parts of you that you not only want to, but NEED to change, where on earth do you start?
and how much of "you" is left after that?

pivoting aside, i'm terrified of our innate, ceaseless drive for competition and domination. it breeds this feeling of eternal dissatisfaction with oneself and one's performance in the world, be it in your career, health, social or personal life. when our sphere of experience and exptectations are ever-expanding, the concept of "happiness" shifts further and further towards the same horizon. because the more we know, the more we understand what we don't have, and the vastness of space, time, possibility and opportunities beyond us. 

this can be invogorating to some.

it even used to be, to me. and it sometimes, in rare glimpses of light peeking through drawn curtains, it still is.

but it's become increasingly crippling over the last few months, despite having "meaningfully" re-entered the world and being in an incredibly fortunate position both financially and socially (with family support).

possibilities used to excite me. now they terrify me. because i no longer trust myself, have proven to myself that i cannot be trusted in many otensibly basic areas (exhibit a: fucking feeding myself) such that every decision, big or small, comes with the niggling doubt and question of:

"...but is that the *best* option?"

"the best". "optimal". i hate these words with a passion that adjectives alone fail to encapsulate. 

i want to go back to a world where, as a society, our objectives were not so rigidly aligned with these principles. 

i want to go back to a world where the notion of an "optimal life" was seen in its true form; a never-ending compromise trading external and internal metric-based validation for... happiness.

i want, i hope, to begin to embrace and create a world——if not for others, for myself——in which such a reversion is possible. 

i must have hope, because without that, the sands of time will continue to trickle endlessly through the gaps between my trembling, icy fingers.

it may not be much, but there is rarly any favourable resolution without holding on to hope.

~ juni

quotes:

There are many practices that promise to transform and improve us—therapy, meditation, psychedelics—, but that branding doesn’t mean that they actually do much for us: it is common to see people use these techniques for years without any obvious progress on their problems. If you want to achieve a particular outcome, it is important to start from that goal and evaluate which practices actually help you.

• how not to forget what matters

Beliefs are taught through action and experiences, and ingrained through thought and repetition. Recovery has to be the same.

• how to recover when there's no motivation

The merciful lie that I lived to this day Has crumbled to dusk and There's no other way. Cause some things are simply Meant to be contained. ...And one of them is me.

Opposite action is what disproves the beliefs that prevent us from being motivated. Taking that action, despite the way we feel, is what changes the belief itself.

... Please take this song as my goodbye.

• KT, in KT's OFFICIAL GUIDE TO COOLNESS

The light is gone The thought keeps running through your mind. But fearing life Is easier that fighting, right?

• STRIKE 3 (PAFL)

During video calls, I traced people’s pixelated outlines with my cursor as the extension of my hand, as if to touch, to hug, to be arm in arm.
Scrolling for hours, I wondered if gentrification was a term that could be applied to the internet. I couldn’t look away, but digital spaces didn’t look or feel the same anymore.

• ascii bedroom archive - a heartening, nostalgic interactive time capsule of a korean girl growing up in the budding years of the internet, growing alongside it and reflecting on how it shaped and left a mark on her.

The only ray of hope throughout the whole ordeal was the knowledge that, despite the fact I really felt things were totally hopeless, I was obviously mad and thus in no position to judge whether things were hopeless.

Take as much caring as you can get. It's fine. Pay it forward when you can. Try to give more than you take in the long-run, but it's okay if you don't. It's okay to be angry, or sad, or to feel nothing at all even when you think you should... Just help one person at a time, as unscalable as that approach is, even when that one person is you. I certainly can't do it all myself, but collectively we can make a dent, one problem at a time.

• On Burnout, Mental Health and Not Being Okay (Ludic)

misc. internet wonders

• Wonders of Web Weaving Ep #3: Herman, of bearblog.dev (by James)
• mcgachapon! - discover & collect virtual historic mcdonalds happy meal toys!
• Ludic's Guide To Getting Software Engineering Jobs
• Being Piledriven: Thoughts after Contracting with Hermit Tech
• The Butterfly Effect of Reading
• so long, Spotify (tiramisu)
• The fear of becoming lazy by resting (Amalia Lee)
• She won a religious exemption from using AI at work. The Pope's remarks could fuel similar appeals.
• There is no such thing as f**ked.
• I want my friends to have blogs, too
• how my website changed my life
• Manga (Mostly Queer) That Made Me Feel Wanted, Understood and Valid
• I don’t feel safe crying at hospital

video essays

• say goodbye to the internet
• The Untold History of Nintendo DS Hacking...
• I built my own Phone... because innovation is sad rn
• HOW TO SOLDER! (Beginner's Guide)

cybersec:

• Stealing Passwords via HTML Injection Under a Strict CSP
• BUMSRAKETE™ - "The HUGEST, the MOST TREMENDOUS FreeBSD page-cache write primitive in the history of computing. Many people are saying it. Many. Believe me."
• The Instructure Canvas Breach (2026): How XSS in a Support Ticket Compromised 275 Million Students
• CrankGPT
• humiliating iis servers for fun and jail time

Reply via email here ~ ! (◕‿◕)

I am continuing to experiment with writing some fiction on this blog. Here is a story I wrote today.

Where were words when you needed them the most? Lena had been searching for the answer to that question for her whole life.

For Lena, telling a story to light coming from a million miles away felt somehow easier, more comforting, than looking someone in the eye. A woman of few words since childhood, when “please” and “thank you” comprised most of what she said, the light of the stars opened Lena's heart and mind.

“Orion, Jupiter, I am lost. I can navigate by your glow but you are hidden when I need you the most. What do I say?” Lena opened a white letter she held in her hand. A note left by a man who frequents the library at which she works. Jason, the same age as Lena, walks in every Friday at 3pm – promptly, always – to check out a new book to read over the weekend. When their eyes meet, the reciprocal smiles that ensue create a warm glow bright enough to match that of the stars. He always checks out books on astronomy. Jason once thought he was destined to be a stargazer, until he discovered his love of poetry. To know where the stars were was one thing, but he was much more interested in how the stars feel. Now he reads about astronomy to know how to talk about what they mean.

The note contains twelve numbers, a latitude and longitude. Lena sits now where the numbers point. It is 2:57am. Orion’s belt shines brilliantly. Gazing at the North Star, Lena continues her dialogue with the stars. “I like him, but I resolved that I would never enter a relationship. I am hurt. I am lost. I don’t know why I am here. I wish feelings were as easy to navigate as your constellations.”

Lena was never sure what to say, so, except for under the blanket of night, she said nothing at all. And so many people left her; they moved on. She didn’t reach out. She didn't know what to say. As a result, she believed that relationships were impossible to maintain – that surely one day Circumstance would step in and create distance between anyone she loved.

It was thus comforting to look at the stars: they may be a million miles away, but at least their distance wasn’t her fault. The stars could go away as far as they wanted and Lena would still be able to stay close to them because of how far their light travels. Lena wondered if stars felt lonely. She wasn’t willing to accept a world in which they did, and so she would speak, openly, at first with trepidation and then with increasing confidence, telling them the stories of her life. The skies opened Lena’s heart. Enough on this evening to make her say, with a tone of passionate oratory like that she imagined would be used by the Romantics, “I like him.”

“I like you, too,” said a familiar voice from nearby. Lena said nothing. Jason, the man from the library, approached holding a torch. He, too, said nothing. Lena looked into his eyes with a tear, carrying the weight of being unable to say how she felt to those around her. Her teary blue eyes glistened like Polaris, twinkling in the light of Nature and from the torch Jason held.

Comforted by the stars, Lena, on her tip-toes, to her greatest surprise, lent in for a kiss. Her anxieties melted away as she closed her eyes and embraced a moment that nobody except Lena, Jason, and the stars were there to see.

No more words were said that night. For hours Jason and Lena both stared into the stars, Lena’s left hand gently holding onto Jason’ right. Occasionally, Lena would point to a constellation and Jason would nod, recognising the pattern from his studies. With every moment that passed, Jason thought of Lena, the stars, and of poetry. What do the stars mean? What do they mean to us?

As the sun begun to rise, their hearts created enough warmth to bring forth a new day.

I'm in need for some lighthearted stuff. I finally finished a painting from a few months ago, and did a quick gouache doodle in my notebook using the Google captcha look (but slightly wrong).

Gonna redo that on proper paper some time with taping off sections, nicer letters and the correct amount of squares; but I think that is so fun, I can think of so many things to draw in this design.

I really wanna make (and post) more art.

Over the weekend, we hosted friends for some MtG. Baked a cake, bought some snacks, and made a huge portion of spaghetti. Look at his cool shirt:

and my other friend's cool phone case:

Generally, MtG is the best thing that has ever happened to my social life. I've never had a hobby where I just clicked with so many people I met through it. Seems to attract my kind. Everything else was hit or miss, or I often stood out because of some identity aspect or upbringing. And it makes socializing so much easier! No awkward silences, you can all just focus on the game, and have chitchat on the side, if wanted, not forced.

You never have to ask yourself "Shit, if I ask them to hang out, what will we do? What do they like?". You can just invite them to play and go from there, finding other shared interests. If you wanna go meet new people, you can just go to an LGS. You don't first have to build rapport to do some activity with someone, like it would otherwise be; you can just go to the store and sit at a table. Nothing has to grow into a proper friendship. Sometimes it's just enough to talk to someone for a couple hours for one evening and then never again. That still combats loneliness and social anxiety. And when you invite people over and host at your place, it feels so good to feed them and make them have a good time, and is a great excuse to keep your space extra tidy.

I've lived in my current area since 2019, and I was just never able to build a network locally. Covid happened, and all kinds of events or Bumble BFF meets just left me empty. All I had later was my wife (who has been living here for 3 years now) and her friends (who live very far away), and we can only visit each other sparingly. So it's been nice how we have made more of an effort to find people here by visiting multiple LGS and my wife starting to participate in a weekly tabletop event.

It feels like these are one of the only third spaces left. Which can be unfortunate depending on how expensive the game is and if there are any participation fees or table renting fees, so it is not ideal; but it oftentimes is cheaper and more fun than staying for hours at a cafe and ending up having talked to no one. :)

On another note, I spent time trying to spot some specimens of my favorite beetle, the European stag beetle. I have seen them in my area before (and always report sightings), and it is just the right time of the year.

Here's an older gif of one of my interactions last year (I was trying to get him off the street, and he was intimidating me):

I set out to find a bigger one, with more impressive mandibles, and maybe even spot an oak tree with multiple on it. :) They love oak trees.

I was already lucky on the first area I picked; the stag unfortunately wasn't. Just about 15 seconds earlier, a bike that passed me had run it over partially. I could see at the scene that it was fresh. Crushed a few legs and broke a mandible off. I flipped him and sat him into the bushes away from the path, but he kept flipping and squirming, unable to function. No hope for that guy.

I took the mandible with me. It's now on my shelf.

I am very very sad that I wasn't there even half a minute earlier to save him. They are an endangered species and need to be protected (which is why you should report their sightings, alive or dead). It's very hard for them to survive because they are so huge and therefore easy prey, and they lay their eggs very deep into the ground, buried below dead trees, preferably oak trees that have a fungal infestation. After hatching, their larvae can take 3-5, sometimes up to 8 years of development in the ground before emerging and trying to find a mate.

In general, while my area is lucky to have so many stags that you can find some if you go looking, the food situation doesn't seem to be optimal for them. The better the food, the bigger their general body and especially their mandibles, so starvation can actually cause the males to remain very small with tiny mandibles ("Hungermännchen" in German). I have seen some impressive sizes online. Ours are only okay-ish in size.

I'll keep looking in other areas over the next few weeks :)

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Published 23 Jun, 2026

The seventh episode of Wonders of Web Weaving is out:

In Episode 7, I chat with Ana, the author of ohhelloana.blog. We talk about, among other things, the growth we see in our websites over time, finding an in-person indie web community, and connecting with people using personal websites.

I hope you enjoy the episode!

Wonders of Web Weaving has an RSS feed you can use to follow along from wherever you get your podcasts.

I used to live above a corner shop and when this corner shop changed hands the new owners had new signage put up. Revealing, in the interim, a ghost sign. Painted onto the corner of the building, covered by the modern external signs. Just hanging out there all that time.

I love that they are called ghost signs because that's exactly how they look and feel. There are a few I see regularly in my city and I think I might cry if anything happened to them. I really ought to check they are on a database somewhere.

Hovis are really embracing this. They have a map of their ghost signs and a blog post The Fading Legacy of Hovis Ghost Signs: A Testament to Time and Tradition which is pretty cool of them. I've had a quick look around and can't see any other brand that does this, though Hovis always leans hard on the heritage angle.

Ghost signs aren't protected, unless they happen to be on a protected building or in a conservation area. Though they can be taken into account as part of the planning process. The idea, when they were first painted, that however many decades or a century later, people would care about them or want to preserve them as history is probably laughable to their painters. The Victorians were brutal about heritage. Many of the signs were painted over in their heyday, now double or triple ghosts.

The actual advertisements are a whole other kettle of fish, I love a vintage advert as I have mentioned before.

Ghosts all over our buildings, selling us soap.

• Ghostsigns.co.uk has tonnes of articles, photos, books, and run tours
• the same chap's more general signs blog: Sam Roberts
• and particularly Ghost Signs: London's Fading Spectacle of History
• Historic England's Ghost Signs: Spooky Remains of a Hidden Past
• a short Wikipedia article with a few photos

Filed under History and heritage

•

Looking idly out the window of my favourite coffee shop, sipping on a cool iced latte that I needed after a long walk on a warm summer’s afternoon, a thought came to mind: Why am I so fascinated by the outside world when I just sat down inside?

Even now, back at my desk, I find my eyes occasionally looking out the window. I see a black cat walking slowly on the pavement, someone leaning into a friend’s car window to chat, and the vistas of greens – the dark greens of trees and the lighter greens of the fields and the grass.

“The world is magnetic,” I thought to myself, sitting in the calm cafe. Looking out the window, I noticed the pink of a flower, a colour that sings loudly among the greenery of summer. I think about how Nature is a multi-coloured canvas: the greens of countryside, reds of autumn, yellows of sands, blues of seas and skies. If Nature were to be a song, it would be all songs.

I look up to the sky and recall conversations with friends about what there is to see when we look up and around and admire the world – in Nature there is friendship.

I also hear the rhythm of the day: the faint sound of people talking in the background, the music on the radio – all the sights and sounds of the coffee shop are relaxing after a long walk. The rhythm inside is different to the rhythm of the outside, relative calm now complementing the stimulation of the fast-paced walk.

Writing now, I think back to my original question: why was I so fascinated by the outdoor world after I had just sat down? Part of it was anxiety: it’s easier for me to look to Nature than it is to look around indoors sometimes. But maybe I looked out the window because, sitting down, I could now focus my attention on a part of Nature – on the pinks of the flowers and the cobbled walls and the high hills. Whereas, on my walk, I was always trying to moving forward, now I had a moment to be still and admire a single view.

Have you ever wondered which microformat best suits your personality? If so, this quiz is for you!

Answer the following questions to find out which microformats2 classes best embody your personality.

Also: happy belated 21st dt-bday to microformats! (Celebrated on 20 June, 2026)

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