About 4 months ago I started the update process to move from Statamic 3 to 4. I ran into all sorts of issues and spent a good month trying to get the whole upgrade process figured out. This has been my long-standing issue with Statamic; it’s very developer-friendly and I’m just not an active developer anymore. I have only good things to say for what the team at Statamic is doing, it’s an amazing CMS. But it had started to become a chore for me.

I’d also gotten myself into an issue with how complex I had made the CMS. As a natural tinkerer, I had been exploring all manner of complex post structures in order to make “interesting” blog posts. As the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility. I had toys and I wanted to play with them, regardless of how much worse it made things. What had been pretty simple markdown posts were now a mess and not at all human readable. This started grating on me.

And so I stopped writing. Dumb.

I decided it was time to simplify things again so that I could just write. But where to start? I needed to have some boundaries.

1. Markdown for blog posts. No crazy WYSIWYG B.S.
2. Flat file output. No database, no server admin. Screw that.
3. Understandable templating structure.
4. Something with a solid history but isn’t bleeding edge.

And so I began testing out some new things. I ran though Hugo, 11ty, Gatsby, Ghost, Kirby, Jekyll and a few others. I added in Ghost and Kirby because a few folks I follow use them and I figured it was worth looking into. In the end, Jekyll ticked all the boxes above and just felt so easy to use. The templating structure is dead simple to grasp, and even though Liquid isn’t the best tool in the world, I know it already.

Another aspect of my Statamic site that had been grating on me was Tailwind. I had redone the site and had been hearing about how amazing Tailwind was. It seemed an opportune time to learn it while redoing my site design. Looking back now, I should have known I’d hate Tailwind. I’m used to Sass and keeping my HTML templates pretty clean. It was time to strip that all out. Jekyll has built-in support for Sass, so I could go back to using something I was comfortable with.

Migrating all my posts over wasn’t simple and it took a few weeks. Instead of looking at this as a chore, I used the time to rethink how I wanted my content structured. I can now open up any of my posts in virtually any text editor and read them with ease.

I’m still making design changes to the site, which I enjoy immensely.

There are still a few rough edges though that I want to think through but overall, I’m pretty happy with the move to Jekyll. As you can see by looking at the site here, it’s not complex and I don’t write all that often. I didn’t need a super-charged CMS anymore (did I ever?). I needed a blogging tool, and so far Jekyll fits the bill nicely.

I thought I would run down all the changes to my personal tech stack this year so that next year I can look back and see what stuck and what I ditched.

Hardware Changes

NAS to Mac Mini

I’d been using a QNAP NAS for about 5 years, mostly for backups and some media storage. It worked fine for me but it was always a bit of a chore to keep updated, and I often worred about the security behind QNAP’s software. It was also hard to use for testing things out that I didn’t want to run on my laptop. I decided to ditch the QNAP and moved over to an M1 Mac Mini. I ended up gifting the NAS to my brother.

It’s been a mostly positive experience. I am way more comfortable with Macs, so this opened the door to test out some self hosting software I’d been looking at.

Apple Watch

I upgraded from an Apple Watch Series 4 to a Series 7 this year. Much larger screen and better battery life. With it running longer, I started wearing it to bed to track sleep. I can’t say that I’ve learned a lot from Apple’s sleep tracking software, but I do prefer the gentle vibrations on my wrist over an alarm sound.

Apple Homepod

We had a Homepod Mini for about a year, acting mostly as home hub and Siri for running our smart home stuff. I wanted a nicer speaker in the living room, so we added the new Homepod. It’s a decent home speaker for us, no complaints here. The sound is good, not great.

Dewalt Multi-Tool

I had a Dremel multi-tool 100 years ago and loved it. Now that I’m remodeling our new home, it was time for new tools. This simple beast made quick work of nails, drywall and more. I keep looking for things to cut with it because it’s so fun to use.

Stuff I did not upgrade

• Phone: I am still using an iPhone 11 Pro and see no reason to upgrade right now. The battery life is getting a little worse but it has yet to become a problem.
• Laptop: Still happily using my 14” M1 Macbook Pro. Most people ask me how I can work on such a small screen. I have a 16” M1 Macbook Pro for work and it feels stupidly large. This works for me.
• Tablet: iPad Air 3 is still my daily driver for reading and basic web browsing. This is the one device I keep thinking about upgrading, mostly because the new iPads just look so slick. I have no real need to update it though.

Software Changes

Homebridge

I set up Homebridge early this year so that I could get our Ring doorbell and Google Nest thermostat working through Apple Home. We added a few Wyze cameras this year and those also got pulled into Homebridge. I am super happy with this solution. I’m not thrilled about having Amazon and Google smart products, but with Homebridge I have them playing nicely with everything else.

FreshRSS

I had been paying for Feedbin and was totally happy with it as a service. But as often happens when a subscription renewal comes around, I started looking at alternatives. Getting FreshRSS set up was a breeze in Docker on the Mini. I added in a Cloudflare tunnel so that I’d have my feeds available anywhere. It does exactly what feedbin did for me at $0 cost.

Arc Browser

I jumped into Arc early this year to see what the fuss was about. I’ve been using it as my daily work browser ever since. It’s a refreshing take on browsers, and for work, it suits me very well. I still use Safari as my personal browser though.

Omnivore

I had been using Notion as a Read it Later tool for some time. It works well, but the browser extension has no way to add tags, which meant most of my saves were untagged. Omnivore has a beautiful save extension, and the app allows me to pull in newsletters as well. Enjoying this a lot, I hope the teams behind this keep up the good work.

Tailscale

Added this recently to more easily access my Mac Mini when not on the local network. Now that my brother has the QNAP, I added Tailscale to that so that I can help troubleshoot any issues he runs into for him. This app is just amazing. It really does feel just like magic.

Mimestream

My job uses Google products, including Gmail. I cannot stand the Gmail interface, so Mimestream fits the bill. It works very well with Gmail accounts, I was happy to pay for the subscription once they left beta.

Software I still use

• Text Editor: Sublime Text is still my go-to editor (and I’m writing this in it now).
• Password management: 1Password is still our family password manager. I have been thinking a lot about migrating to Apple’s built-in password management lately, as 1Password has been frustratingly slow on all my devices. I’ve been using this longer than most apps, at least 10 years now. That’s a hard habit to break.
• Email App: Apple Mail is my default email app, though I have an active Fastmail account that handles the actual email. Their app is quite good, I just never got into the habit of using it.
• Calendar: Apple Calendar for personal, Google for work. It’s a calendar, it works.
• Tasks: Apple Reminders
• RSS Reader: Reeder is still my default RSS feed reader. Hoping they add Omnivore as a share option for the Mac app. I currently have to open pages in Safari before I can save to Omnivore on the laptop.
• Backups: ArqBackup is still running daily encrypted backups to Backblase for me.
• Backups: Backblaze B2 is still my go-to cloud backup. It’s stupid cheap and just works.
• Backups/Sync: SyncThing runs on my laptop and Mac Mini, keeping everything on the laptop synced to the Mini that I want backups of. Arq then takes all that and sends it to Backblaze.
• Notes: Notion is still my work note system. It’s somewhat overkill at this stage but I’ve tweaked it to fit my workflows and the thought of finding a replacement is just a bit much right now.
• Journal: DayOne
• Social Media Apps: Currently using IceCubes for Mastodon. It works and isn’t ugly.
• VPN: Mullvad is running on all my devices. Super happy with this VPN and their stance on privacy is the best in the business. I do have to disable it from time to time as some sites have issues or block VPNs.
• Ad Blocking: Still happliy paying for NextDNS. This also runs on all my devices. I so rarely see ads these days that it’s weird when I have to disable it for a site.
• Launcher: Still fairly happy with Raycast. I was a happy paying customer of Alfred for many years, and may end up going back to it.
• Utilities: Amphetamine is what I use to keep the laptop and my Mac Mini from falling asleep.

Site Changes

This could technically fall under software but since I mess around with this site more often than the software I run on the laptop, it warrants it’s own section.

Statamic to Jekyll

I migrated from Statamic to Jekyll this year and have been very happy with it so far. It’s simplified my site management and basically gets out of my way. I loved Statamic, but it just got too cumbersome to keep updated, and I spent more time messing with it than writing.

Stuff I did not change

• Hosting: Still using Netlify as my web host. Flat file + free hosting FTW.

We spent the weekend getting the house back in order after spending the past 10+ days in Covid quarantine. I got pretty sick on November 1, and spent the better part of 5 days in a heavy flu-like state. My fiance caught it as well and thankfully did not get as sick as I did. It totally screwed up my work week. I’ll also note for future me that two people trying to work from home in a house not designed for that is way more challenging than I would have expected.

Recent Media

• I rewatched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty while sick. The feel-good vibe, even with the not-so-great writing, always makes me smile.
• I was flabergasted to find out that my fiance had never seen Fargo. Always worth a rewatch.
• We finished Band of Brothers in October. I had held off on watching this for reasons unknown. It’s a fantastic show, and we really enjoyed hearing and seeing the men who had made up the famous Easy Company. Looking forward to the upcoming Masters of the Air.
• On one of my early, super flu days, I fired up Silent Running. I had fond memories of this scifi movie. There are some pretty serious plot issues, and the music is over-the-top early 70’s with some heady Joan Baez.

Reading

• Reading How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu (B+)
• Reading The Tree-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (A-)

On the book backlog:

• The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz
• The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler
• Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor

Links of Note

• Monaspace is a new family of monospaced fonts.
• Chris Glass recounts reading a book his mother had left him. So lovely.
• Sierra Hull - Mad World (Tears For Fears) - DelFest - Cumberland, MD
• Now that I’ve transitioned this site over to Jekyll, I started paying around with some admin UI’s. TinaCMS is interesting and works with a ton of platforms. Smashing Magazine has a writeup on how they use it.
• Stumbled on the Orion browser by Kagi. Webkit, privacy-focused. I’m still using Arc as my daily for work, and Safari for my personal use.
• I set up a Cloudflare tunnel a few weeks ago for my self-hosted FreshRSS instance. This article was helpful.
• Your Blog as a Commonplace Book - Wild Rye
• I use Apple Reminders but nowhere near as deeply as Christopher Lawley does here. Fascinating in that productivity/nerdy way.

I’m taking a different, more measured approach to how I blog these days. I thought it would be good to jot these thoughts down here, mostly for me but also for anyone who is on the fence about starting a blog.

I’ve been posting my thoughts online in various formats for close to 20 years now. Blogs, tumblelogs, tweets, photos blogs have all come on gone over the years. My blogs themselves have changed through time, both in writing frequency and topical choices. My early days were all about being online and a part of this amazing web that was, and still is, shaping itself. I’ve always been drawn to online publishing. Excited by the idea that anyone can get their ideas out to be read/seen/heard by anyone across the Earth. It still excites me today!

There was a period several years back where I just stopped writing publicly. Blogs, tweets, anything. I kept the occasional Instagram post going because that felt easy enough. I stopped mostly because I got to a point where I felt I was just more noise in an already noisy world. I didn’t feel like I had anything worthwhile to add to the world with my words. This was wrong. Looking back, I probably had more to say then than I do even now. It was also wrong because my worth isn’t defined by what I write, or what people may think about what I write. There were other factors involved in this “silent period” that I went through, which may be a topic worth writing about one day.

Earlier this year I had the urge to start tinkering with a new website for myself. It started out as just a way to dust off my web design skills, which had been languishing for several years. It renewed the sense of joy I get when designing and building a site. Pouring over details like font choice, the structure of my CMS, learning Tailwind; this all just got fun again. I missed the feeling and it’s been enjoyable to tackle things anew.

But this time I decided to do things my own way and at my own pace. I’ve not told one person that I started blogging again. I’ve not pushed any of my posts to social media, and I just recently added RSS feeds here. Sure, there’s a part of me that wants to share my thoughts out with the world again, but I want to be happy with what I’m doing here on my own terms first.

So now I write here when the mood strikes. I tinker with post types, post formatting, font choices, RSS feed tweaks. Knowing full well that I am basically the only person seeing any of this. In a way it feels like a personal journal that just happens to be publicly visible should anyone stumble upon it. I write what I want to write, not what I think people may want to read. It’s refreshing and freeing to do this. 

I am also spending time following other people’s blogs. I’ve started curating my RSS reader to be more blog focused. I like seeing the normality of life written by people outside my own normality. Reading Ben Werdmuller’s short posts about his newborn son, or Peter Rakuvina’s posts about returning a sofa they didn’t care for, or Alan’s posts on coding and his beautiful Arizona sunrises.

More blogging please. More from me, more from you.

Side note: I like including images with my blog posts. It’s a designy thing for me. I dislike plain text pages, so I spend time looking for images to pair with my posts. As noted above, some people may find that silly, but it’s my choice and my blog.

Yes, it has been several months since I last posted to the site. Part of this was just life getting stupid busy, part of this was technical glitches. Busy life + technical glitches = lack of desire to fix technical glitches. Such is life.

I have been reading though, working my way through The Three-Body Problem. I had almost given up on the book at a third of the way through. It’s written so oddly that I found it difficult to enjoy. When I heard that it was being made into an online show, and the story picked up the pace a bit, I decided to stick with it. I hate seeing adaptations of books I haven’t read yet, and didn’t want this to be another.

On life getting stupid busy: we’re buying a house! I am simultaneously terrified and beyond excited. We’ve only been looking for 2.5 years, and in every city within 15 miles of Los Angeles. The past 3 months we spent nearly every weekend looking at houses, visiting open houses, putting in offers, getting rejected… Buying a home these days is an emotional rollercoaster. It sort of takes the fun out of something that should be fun.

I visited my first Karaoke bar last month. Is that the right term, “visited”? I certainly did not partake. I’m way to stodgy and boring to do anything that exciting and fun. It was a friends birthday party and thankfully many more people were not stodgy and boring, so it was mostly fun.

We enjoyed some Shakespeare in the park last month. It was Twelfth Night, one I hadn’t seen before. Thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and made a decision to do more of these fun things more often. Although a new home may get in the way of that for a bit.

Stopped in at Brouwerij West in San Pedro this Saturday to check out the Bus Bros. and get some fine beers. Gorgeous day in LA and some really amazing buses on display.

7 days in Maui was just the right amount of vacation time to relax and cut off from regular life. This was my second trip to Hawaii and my fiancé’s first, but both of our first time in Maui. It’s a gorgeous island, it seems there are photo opportunities everywhere you go.