Simon Woods

I’ve made a few updates over the last few days and as much as I’m enjoying working on the site it’s unlikely that they’ll continue at this scale; after all, my focus is on writing and I’ve got other projects in the works.

Here’s a rundown:

• Feeds
  • A new page listing all of my available feeds.
• Now
  • Major edit to properly activate the page, covering what I am currently doing.
• About
  • Minor edits.
• Recommended Reading widget
  • A couple of additions.
• About widget ("Hi")
  • Extended for an up-to-date status.

The other decision I’ve made, tied into some of these updates, is that I’m going to use my hosted Micro.blog as a pure Twitter (and general social media) replacement. Whilst some of my micro blog posts on here go directly through to Micro.blog, with the full posts going through as a feed, I’ll also be posting exclusively to the Micro.blog blog itself.

These posts will be incremental status and general social updates, much more of a moment-to-moment version of my Now page. There is a great community growing on Micro.blog and it has been a fresh of breath air for me to have access to such an alternative to social media, also blending as it can so well with my blog.

There’s more about how my new social feed works alongside my blog on the Now and Feeds pages. In the meantime, I’ll be back with more posts soon.

Bye!

(Note: This was originally written on the 31st of January, 2017.)

Today I took Writer into Offline Mode for the first time. It worked out well.

This is in fact the first thing I have written in Writer whilst offline, or at least the first time in which I did not have access to the internet by necessity rather than choice. If that doesn’t speak to how lazy my current decision making for subjects is then nothing ever will.

Either way, here I am without even the ability to become distracted by such delights as social media or email or… well, just about anything. It is odd to say the least but I am definitely enjoying it; this makes me think that it is therefore perhaps time to use software to restrict my access to such distractions – there is certainly not shortage of options for that.

On previous occasions I have been relieved to have purchased the lifetime version of Writer and today is no different; in fact, it is a lifesaver. To have a reliable text editor with such flexibility as to be at home both offline and online has given me a direct line to feeling altogether less useless during this day. For better context, let’s talk about the computer I am using.

The Chromebook I am currently using is the first small laptop I have ever used of the modern generation; it leaves the short-lived “netbook” category from a decade ago looking like the cheap con that it undoubtedly was, such is the quality I find throughout. Even the browser-based OS outshines the so-called desktop-class machines in a shameful spot.

With all of that in mind, it’s fair to say that it is down to the software to do most of the talking with this machine; the hardware is little more than a thin case through which you interact with the apps built for Google’s own OS. From this point, Writer shines, delivering me everything I need for what I am doing right now whilst not getting in my way; it might be seem like an obvious required function for a text editor but when you consider that Writer is primarily made for a browser, the app’s robust performance is startling for those of us with longer memories.

Despite my meandering into the realm of notebooks, Chromebooks, and my old age the fact remains that Writer has done exactly what I need, when I need, and I could not be happier as a lifetime customer.

Thanks John Watson, like a man in a blue box you’ve given me time where none existed before.

Links: Writer, John Watson, Chromebooks

Becky Hansmeyer’s thoughts about keeping old posts made me think of the posts I have written over the past few years and failed to save. Now that I am focusing much more on my own site it has become clear just how infuriating it is that I was so casual with the things I wrote.

Fortunately I have a few posts from the recent past saved so I’ll post those over the next few days. It won’t necessarily do much to subdue the annoyance at my past-self but at least it’s something.

By IndieWeb I mean in an informal way as a general idea, since I’m not yet au fait with official standards.

This is my personal progress:

• This site is up and running with regular posts.
• Twitter account is archived, pending deletion depending on how Jack and co. decide to tackle obvious problems.
• Only other social profiles are Apple Music, Vimeo, and YouTube.
  • Last one remains because Google have well and truly destroyed open web video with this monopoly.
• Micro.blog is now my regular haunt for commenting, social web things.
• Using RSS to read more than I ever have.
  • Actively working on my preferred set-up for this, which is work on my web tools that I am actually enjoying!
• Signed up to Pinboard.
• Maintained my Fastmail account.
• Setting aside time for focused research on managing my own site from the server level.
  • WP-hosted is okay but I need to decide if I have enough time and energy to do my own thing as opposed to spending money for similar results. Right now I favour the latter, mostly because I just want to write.

It’s one thing to think about making something and putting it out into the world but quite another to actually do it. For a number of people this would be beyond obvious and yet knowledge of the fact did not stop me from hesitating to both make this site public and post something on it.

I suppose it’s comforting to be so predictable. ¯(ツ)/¯

Anyway there's a lot about the site that I'm not happy about and also a certain amount of friction making me unhappy with my setup but hey, at least it's here.

So yeah. Hi.👋