💬 Building a Digital Homestead, Bit by Brick
From these meditations on the architecture of blogging three questions emerge:
- How do you create pathways (and desire paths?) through your site? How do people start, journey, get lost and ultimately find their way through your site? I recently added a “start here” section to my writing page but I’ve been tinkering with blogchains and series of writing. What other structures emerge?
- How to archive, index and search? I recently re-architected how search works on my site. It’s not finished yet but I hope to use search as a way to search not only my site but all kinds of other stuff: my bookmarks, my wiki, my notes, my tweets even. Search can be a way to go down rabbitholes. Inspiration: Building Monocle, a universal personal search engine for life.
- Using a combination of static site and tachyons.css I find it extremely easy to iterate my way forward. Tinkering with my blog is possible piecemeal, there are no databases, no monolithic CSS files, very few dependencies.. It’s clunky at times but I have this sense that every time I build I don’t accumulate tech debt and that’s actually remarkably powerful for a site that’s been running for a decade or so…
Thinking about my blog as a ‘homestead’, I feel like it is one of those houses that has progressively been tacked onto over time. An extension here, a renovation there. It does not always make sense on the outside, but it makes sense to me.
Welcome back to another month of the new normal. This month feels like it has had a bit of everything. It started with a visit from my father, who I had not seen since for a few years. While it ended with COVID. In addition to a whole lot of prizes and freebies, my wife brought COVID home from a conference she attended. Somehow my daughters and I managed to escape by isolating, even if everyone suggested we all just get it together as it is inevitable. No thanks. I am sure my time will come, but not this day (or month).
On the work front, I finally finished end of year activities. I also found a whole heap of tasks and incidents that had become lost in triage. As the organisation grows and morphs, some old groups are merged and made obsolete. The problem is that changing a name does not magically change a habit meaning that these incidents remain unresolved and unaccounted for. The funniest thing I find about working with technology is the human variability. So much time is spent managing the product, making sure that everything is right and correct, but this can sometimes be at the expense of clear processes and procedures.
Personally, I finally got around to writing my reflection on my top albums from last year. I read John Hirst’s The Shortest History of Europe and Richard Glover’s memoir Flesh Wounds. I also binged quite a bit, including Altered Carbon, The Witcher, Don’t Look Up, ABC series What is Music.
Here then are some of the posts that have had me thinking:
Education
Key concepts for leading professional learning
Deborah Netolicky shares her thoughts on the key concepts associated with professional learning, including holonmy, a holding environment, meaningful collaboration and semantic space.
Belonging is inconvenient
Dave White unpacks the differences between independent, communal and networked learning, and how this is more than being face-to-face or online.
Waiting for Gonski with Tom Greenwell and Chris Bonnor
Cameron Malcher speaks with Tom Greenwell and Chris Bonnor about Australia’s long history of failed educational reform.
Rare Thoughts on Writing From Cormac McCarthy in This Unlikely Interview
Cormac McCarthy reflects upon the notion of inspiration when writing, as well as purpose of audience.
Google Magic
Ben Williamson pulls the curtain back on the magic associated with Google’s new Google Classroom feature ‘Practice Set’, which provides adaptive learning technology.
Technology
Are We Measuring Our Lives in All the Wrong Ways?
In an interview with Ezra Klein, C. Thi Nguyen discusses how Twitter gamifies communication.
“My Own Little Fiefdom”: Why Some Famous Novelists Are All About Substack
Adrienne Westenfeld discusses the way in which some novelists, such as George Saunders, Salman Rushdie and Chuck Palahniuk, have turned to Substack as a means of serializing fiction, teaching the craft of writing and generally engaging with readers.
Building a Digital Homestead, Bit by Brick
In a meditation on the architecture of blogging, Tom Critchlow wonders about pathways, archives and iterations.
A systemic (not individual) approach to content moderation
Cory Doctorow unpacks the idea of focusing on systemic speech acts as an answer for content management.
General
Forgetting, not memory, moves us forward
Antony Funnell explores the importance of forgetting when it comes to memory.
How To Make A Book Come To Life
Steve Brophy reflects upon the technical aspects associated with producing a book, including purchasing an ISBN, selecting art for the cover and choosing a platform to publish the book.
Our holiday from history is over
John Naughton wonders if the situation in Ukraine is history repeating and whether our post-1946 holiday is over.
Why We Listen to Music With Lyrics We Don’t Understand
Romano Santos explains that our appreciation of music goes beyond just the lyrics with meaning coming in many different ways.
Exploring the deep sea
Kerry Howell discusses the history associated with mapping our oceans.
Read Write Respond #074
So that was March for me, how about you? As always, hope you are safe and well.
Image by Bryan Mathers
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