Nearly, anyway. For the past few years (very much literally) I’ve been trying to get back into the blogging habit but have been stymied each time by slow progress and a niggling feeling that I should be prioritising something else. I’ve managed to do some posting elsewhere, but not here, and here is home.

That all changed recently, when I managed to work out what I wanted to do and figured out how to do it.

I always thought the linklog (back in the early 2000’s!) and tumblelog (in the mid-to-late 2000’s) approaches worked best for me. I was never particularly good at writing longer posts: the permanence got to me. So I’m shooting for a fusion of classic tumblelog (sorry, not microblog) and modifiable digital garden, with a sprinkling of IndieWeb. Hopefully this approach will work and fit with the internet is about to get weird again vibe.

I have - of course - made a rod for my own back by attempting to integrate posts from all my previous efforts. Fun, but all that file-wrangling takes time.

So far new tech is definitely helping. Astro is just right as a blogging tool for me: React-ish, but without the need to go all in (as I’d have to with Next). Relatively few niggles. The only feature I’m missing is Hugo-like data templates. I would have liked something like that to store my Pinboard bookmarks. I’m also getting some genuine use out of ChatGPT, particularly for file-wrangling. Surprising, but in a good way.

This new version is still going to look like crap for a long while, though, while I get the bones sorted out. Oh well!