I stealth launched a new microblog on this here website last week. You can subscribe to my microblog RSS feed — do it! My main blog is for longer, more considered content. I don’t want to drown the good stuff in mid takes, so to speak. That’s not to say my microblog isn’t worth following, it’ll be spicier and more frequent. TL;DR:
Format
I hacked the blog into my SSSG (scuffed static site generator). There is no database I’m just using a date delimited markdown format. Timestamps mark the start of a new note.
2024-07-04T10:40Z
**Note** with markdown formatting.
2024-07-08T15:00Z
[Subscribe to the RSS feed](https://dbushell.com/notes/rss.xml).I’m appending notes to files named by year, 2024.md for example. Everything is merged and sorted, so name and order don’t technically matter. I think this will be convenient for organisation and quick updates. My notes have no titles — “Titles are a lot of pressure”.
I expect this blog will be read from the RSS feed or the index page. However, the ability to link to a single note is important. Links are the backbone of the web. Each note has a permalink structure like so:
/notes/2024-07-04T10:40Z/I’m using the UTC timestamp as I don’t have a title to ‘slugify’ like my blog:
/2024/06/18/carousel-web-component/My blog uses a structure I inherited from WordPress many moons ago. Not sure I’d go for a full date hierarchy today, but as they say, “cool URIs don’t change”. Cool URIs are also written for humans. A timestamp is at least more meaningful than a random ID, I guess?
RSS
RSS is alive and well despite the bizarre obsession in declaring it dead.
I now have my blog RSS feed and notes RSS feed. They’re two separate feeds for now. Should I merge them into a single feed? I worry about diluting and burying my higher effort content. What about a third combined feed? For now there will be two feeds.
I do want to syndicate to Mastodon; need to figure that part out.
Side Projects
Ahh! I’ve found myself trying to maintain too many side projects again. My blogs here at dbushell.com are essentially side projects. They’re my primary focus. Side projects hosted elsewhere are beginning to collect dust.
I started a bookmark blog back in January. I’m going to bin it. I like the name and domain but I keep forgetting to update it. I had more ambitious plans for Cotton Coder but paid work got busy and I doubt anything will change this year. I may end up doing a note for weekly bookmarks.
I really should stop buying domains for every idea…