Feel a bit foolish publishing this on setting up a POSSE-based email newsletter when you read the heroic lengths some people have to go to in order to leave Substack, or how other services just don’t work as well. Do still question the network benefits of Substack, and if you’re … | Continue reading
This is fairly similar to the extent of my internet, although I subscribe to more feeds. I’ve never pruned them, but probably should – there’s a lot of technical stuff in there I rarely read. I couldn’t forego an adblocker because the Ipswich Town site I visit every day serves mo … | Continue reading
I don’t have any analytics installed on my website, so I don’t know how many people visit or what they read. Actually, that’s not quite true. I did set up a Google Search Console (GSC) account before starting my current job, just to get up to speed. GSC basically tells you: How … | Continue reading
Odd article from The Markup, this. And surprising that it recommends its readers use the Brave browser, rather than at least exploring other options as well, such as Firefox and Librewolf. | Continue reading
The thing about new web services is that they tend to be built by people in the tech bubble. It’s always worth researching the people behind a product as startup world is very individualistic – the link between a product’s success and the benefit to its founder(s) is more direct … | Continue reading
Reading this on how London became Londongrad, and the striking paradoxes of dirty money. It was Gordon Brown and the left’s very own Ken Livingstone who did most to enable City money laundering, not the Tories. Then there’s the need to move wealth from a state that can’t guarante … | Continue reading
The Syllabus is a great source of indepth and academic articles on digital/sociology/politics. You should subscribe. | Continue reading
Been following some links in my RSS feed and various websites today, and it strikes me websites have a smell that you pick up on straight away. Most indieweb sites have a basic, minimal design, or they go full in on a colourful Neocities look. The corporate web is different: smoo … | Continue reading
The biggest mystery about the wasted millions on a library single digital presence is why The Guardian insists on going to “campaigner” Tim Coates for a comment. The SDP could be useful if it saved each library service from buying its own crappy online catalogue, and replaced it … | Continue reading
I wonder if the whole concept of “monetising” an interest or pastime for a living, or even as an extra source of income, as opposed to having a job, leads inevitably to convenient, centralised services, which in turn cause a whole set of nasty problems. | Continue reading
Noise is the new censorship. It rips our communities apart from the inside and builds walls that run through the middle of them, polarizing us and rendering us unable to have a conversation about any subject — be it climate change or the war in Gaza. We are this noise. Coda’s pr … | Continue reading
So everyone’s favourite publishing middleman Substack has unapologetically gone full in on the idea that platforming nazis is the right thing to do because “free speech”, and presumably because moderation is difficult and expensive. This places a lot of publishers – and their rea … | Continue reading
Good to read Ryan Broderick is probably leaving Substack. Also interesting to note his readers often get in touch about Substack’s nazi problem. I subscribe by RSS, so hopefully he moves to a service that also offers RSS or, better still, just sets up a website. | Continue reading
I’ve been writing a post on an online publication strategy called POSSE (Publish On (your own) Site, Syndicate Elsewhere), and how email newsletter publishers could adopt it to avoid using services like Substack or, if they are already using them, easily move elsewhere. It’s got … | Continue reading
Any other Netlify users noticing their monthly build minute usage creep up, despite using the service less? My main site is no longer hosted there, but two others that autobuild a total 6 times a day in a couple of seconds at most are now using ~75% of the 500m allowance every mo … | Continue reading
Been looking at Bear, a blogging platform that nearly meets my requirements (Markdown, minimal but stylable markup, a web editor, optional tags). I say nearly. As ever, it’s other people’s code that niggles, in Bear’s case an anchor wrapping a heading, adding an to timestamps an … | Continue reading
I am reading – and enjoying – Baldur Bjarnsson’s The Intelligence Illusion, mainly because I was asked at work to “look into” how we could use AI. I do have thoughts on this, but allow me them: I did quite a lot of work on what was even then known as artificial intelligence when … | Continue reading
In the ongoing campaign to normalise my website, I’m now linking to my (unminified) stylesheet. It’s even commented. I have no idea why I bothered overengineering a simple, text heavy blog. It cost a single point on my PSI score. | Continue reading
I was one of the first Netlify users, moving my site to the service in 2015 and the Suffolk Libraries site in 2016. I have a few reasons for this seemingly odd decision: Fastmail doesn’t even offer FTP, so updating the site is somewhat less convenient than git push-ing. I may sha … | Continue reading
Possibly the best Fall song? Malevolent in the extreme, pounding drums, shredding guitars and downright evil. Always throws me that it’s just 2m40s long. #FallFriday for the 13th. | Continue reading
The original and best Spencer (to become Spencer Must Die and The House that Crack Built). Rolling Burns and Hanley drum and bass with a mid-70s Cluster organ belching all over it. Peak lost-the-plot zinc slip ambernik era Fall. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAJJGpkTbo8 | Continue reading
While there were many things to love about Top Boy – not portraying the estate as a crumbling, brutalist hell, the casting, the language – it was somewhat ruined by making the first 30 seconds of the final episode an advert for Tesla. | Continue reading
I enjoyed this piece by Cory Doctorow on getting AI to write a threatening lawyer’s letter. Of course, there are lots of times we have to write onerous, meaningless things that probably won’t be read in full. They often serve a ritualistic purpose that simply signals something to … | Continue reading
TIL today: Safari won’t allow you to add more than one value to a text-decoration property, so the dotted in text-decoration: underline dotted won’t work. You have to add a separate text-decoration-style property to your declaration. | Continue reading
This is a cover, Fall chums. And I like it because it lays bare the (ironic) pastoral nature of the song. And the fact that Mark’s vocals are so fast and clear and very hard to deliver. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTeraRBboG8&t=56s | Continue reading
Looking in Search Console, I see two posts getting visitors via search. They’re far from being the ones I – or readers — are most interested in. When people search, they want an answer or a product: blogging often doesn’t provide answers and even more rarely products. It naturall … | Continue reading
Bit of an odd one today. Leeds have fantastic players and looked like they’d score whenever they went forward, but we played well and created chances. It was more the crowd didn’t believe we could score. Return of the moaning fan two rows back was unwelcome. | Continue reading
It’s fun, this one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Bxbhj-ayTw | Continue reading
At the time of writing – and this will most likely change soon as I’m already getting bored of this “look” – this website is set using a single size, monospace typeface. This is an attempt to render it according to the rules set by a mechanical typewriter – one typeface, two colo … | Continue reading
Would have chosen Monocard for yesterday’s #FallFriday. Has the “At my peril and at my demand Monocard/From Prussia and Chiswick” lyric. Only other Prussia lyric is in Theme from Error Orror, which has a similar mileu and feel. Wonder if this was a conscious thing. https://www.yo … | Continue reading
I tinker with this blog regularly, and one thing I’ve wanted to try is a monospace font. Note, this isn’t a particularly original idea. Andy is currently using iA’s Mono S, and Thomas was using Spline Sans Mono until recently. iA themselves were experimenting with a mainly-mono t … | Continue reading
I’ve been toying with using a monospace typeface for a while, and now I’ve done it. Not sure it works. I mean, I think I like it at first glance, but that could easily change. I’ll sleep on it and then revert everything tomorrow morning . Note: just one font size too. | Continue reading
I’ve had worries about Netlify for a while now, and I never used the JAMstack (mainly because my javascript knowledge extends no further than Alpine.) I guess all these things come to an end, especially now the free credit has run out. But Jekyll → Github → Netlify was a great sy … | Continue reading
The last group + Elena on imperious, stripped back form allowed to breathe for the first half of this song and then Mark kicks in because the dry cleaning fluid erased the brain so far. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk3HtO315JU | Continue reading
Time for the #verdana revival, I reckon. | Continue reading
I thought I’d been very clever in exporting my Mastodon follows in csv format from Mastodon, using Excel to create a CSV containing rss urls and then Jekyll to output an OPML file I could import into Feedbin. Except it’s taking all day to update every one of 256 feeds. | Continue reading
I like Fastmail for email (good privacy policy, 30GB storage for $6/month etc.), and it even offers basic static website hosting with 10GB storage, which I’m going to give a spin. | Continue reading
I love this song because 1) Mark is obviously drunk but absolutely holding everything together, 2) It’s the first outing of the gargling tar sound effect, 3) It’s really profound and 4) It’s a straight down the line rip-off of I Want More by Can. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F … | Continue reading
I’ve kept a fairly regular links section going on this site for a few years now, but I’ve been neglecting it recently, mainly due to posting directly to Mastodon. Relatedly: been trying to get POSSE-ing again, so good to see how posts from the site appear elsewhere (i.e. am testi … | Continue reading
Because however much I do really like the fediverse – conceptually and practically, it turns out – just providing me with a box to type shit in and then have that shit starred and “boosted” (or not) is not a good thing. I knew this first time round. I miss good writing. I reload … | Continue reading
My last micro.blog to Mastodon test this morning. Do ignore. I’m trying an image, which I’m doubting will appear in Mastodon, but you never know. Here’s Comrade le Tissier bemoaning the slow pace of the revolution: | Continue reading
Morning. (Trying to set up a website RSS to micro.blog to Mastodon posting chain for POSSE-ing. And, to be honest, this is a test of how well that works, if at all. Will try a link with a post and a link, at some later, unspecified time.) | Continue reading
Last week, Libraries Connected published a UEA-authored report on the economic value of UK libraries, estimating libraries are “worth” about £3.4 billion to the UK economy every year. When I worked at Suffolk Libraries, we expounded the “value” of libraries to all sorts of funder … | Continue reading
It’s been a fairly slow move on my site from Tachyons, to my own set of custom properties and classes, to a largely class-free but custom element and data- attribute heavy CSS approach. I’m going to change again today, keeping to the class free, expressive element selectors and a … | Continue reading
I think I’m going to trial @Plausible on the work site (a UK university). Anyone have experience of using it in a medium-sized business? We’ll run concurrently with GA for a while and then see how (ahem) plausible migrating our analytics is. | Continue reading
Here’s an example of indieweb principles becoming important in the real world, to mainstream media outlets (in this case a football club) and people who want to read their news. As you may have noted, Twitter has failed in two major ways today: You now have to login to read twe … | Continue reading