Weblog

A computer hardware refresh

This morning I had some thoughts about maybe doing a refresh of my main computer system. That series of thoughts quickly dissipated. Custom computer building has gotten more complex over the years. At least, it feels like things have gotten more complex. It might be getting easier at some point here in the next couple of years [1]. Within my current computer setup two potential changes are possible. First, I might swap out the hard drives at some point for larger ones depending on how much video editing I end up doing over the next year. Second, now that the price of the RAM this system uses has gone down it might be time to add more. None of that required me to put on my thinking hat this morning to get going. 

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A focus on research notes

Right now I have a rubric of all the content that is scheduled for creation each week. My commitment to produce things has grown to 15 blocks a week. Gearing up to creating that stream of content was not really that interesting of a process. Things just started to get added a little bit at a time. Now that the framework exists the content writing part is really just about persistence. That is a far cry from the activities of all those content farmers right now that are flooding the world with content. My content is really very targeted to the things that I personally tend to enjoy. Maybe that creates a natural limit on what will get created. A lot of that content creation is based on maintaining two different backlogs of content that I’m going to build block by block. 

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A backlog without any order

A lot of news stories are picking up the news about Platformer moving off of Substack this weekend. I’m still looking at Ghost and trying to figure out if I just need to watch a couple videos about getting started on that platform. I’ll be really curious to see what happens here in the next 90 days. Yesterday, I shared my 3 year recap of publishing on Substack as both a podcast and a post. Right now I’m looking at the backlog and trying to figure out what order I want to set for the next few posts. I committed to writing my 2024 predictions post, but outside of that I just have over 100 topics in a backlog that are not really in any particular order. 

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All that Substack drama

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been following the drama on Substack and things are starting to become more fluid on that front. It turns out that the Platformer publication is going to leave this weekend and move over to Ghost. I did set up an account on the Ghost platform, but the setup is a lot more complex and involved than what Substack requires. I’m going to have to do some research about how the Ghost platform handles RSS feeds for podcasts as well. More updates will be provided on what I end up deciding. 

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The best writing adventure

They day accidently started out with a demo video of the NUX B-8 guitar tuner/boost pedal. The guitar singularity that is Rob Chapman stole 10 minutes of my most productive window this morning with that review [1]. Perhaps it is better to remember to turn on some music at the start of the day instead of letting YouTube be a part of the start. Sometimes one of those videos will just pull my attention to it instead of being background noise. That is exactly what happened today. 

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Considering advertisements and prompts

This week I tried enabling ads on the weblog and it turns out I just don’t like the placement. Apparently, the advertisements when enabled show up above or below and are very large. Right now I’m not willing to leave those running on the old weblog. They have been turned off, but maybe I’ll do some testing on them again later this year. Based on volume it is not a big deal to turn them off or on for that matter. Right now that type of monetization scheme is not material to this effort to engage in daily weblog writing. For the last few days at the start of the day I have been sitting down to actively write. It’s a pure stream of consciousness exercise at this point. It may have some direct aim at writing about things that are happening, but that is not a disruptive guide to creating content at this point. 

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The subscription system is now running

Yesterday, I was able to complete my first subscription based post here on the old weblog. It took me a few minutes to learn how to insert the first paywall blocker widget. I’m not ready to engage in the active process of daily writing and publishing within the weblog. I’ll make sure the opening paragraph is always ready to be visible and that the rest goes a bit deeper after the paywall. It’s a strange thing to consider, but I figure that this could be interesting if the newsletter had to move over to the weblog. Right now it looks like Substack might be making some changes and could keep existing throughout 2024. A lot of turbulence has occurred and that makes me wonder if people might jump to some alternative if one presents itself. Now would be the time for a great online writer migration. 

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Testing the subscription model

Yesterday, I was able to get a subscription model setup on the weblog. I’m not entirely sure the weblog subscription market will ever end up being like the Substack market. Some market advantage exists for Substack as a marketplace of readers interested in independent writing. You see people who subscribe to a few different writers and that amplification effect helps build wider audiences for some writers. Certainly, some writers have audiences that are bigger than any one platform and they can go just about anywhere and be successful. Somebody in that category might very well be able to run a WordPress newsletter with a subscription model. They would have to make sure it is always up and running. Consistency and stability would be a necessary part of keeping that system running in the long term.

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Engaging focus and creativity

At some point this morning, I’m going to work on setting up subscription options for the weblog here. It’s possible at some point (that is rapidly approaching) a lot of people are going to be leaving Substack. I’m 3 years into weekly publishing on Substack with The Lindahl Letter. Separating the weblog into a managed stack of newsletter technology made total sense at the time. We will see how that one plays out probably within the next 30 days. To that end I am going to start getting some things ready just in case [1]. 

We are three days into my latest plan to engage in the act of writing daily in a weblog format. It was a wonderful plan to think deeply about what to do and what to create each day. I’m not directly writing out a stack of 5 big things to work on each day. That list is getting made, but I’m not directly working to blog about it. Instead I’m trying to warm up my writing processes and get things ready to go at the start of the day. That might sound like a productivity hack, but it is something a little bit different. I’m trying to zoom out a little bit and allow my focus and creativity to engage on bigger concepts. 

For the most part I’m considering 2024 to be the great year of code writing. At the end of the year in 2023, I started sharing out more code efforts on GitHub and that will continue moving forward. This upcoming week I’m going to spend some time doing a bit of a code walk on a few Google Colab notebooks. That should be a fun thing to work on this week. It’s entirely possible that videos also get created for a desk tour and my current guitar pedalboard setup. My video output is going to increase. Everything is all set up for recording. Having things set up does not guarantee that video recording will occur, but the right things are in place for that to happen. 

Footnotes:
[1] https://wordpress.com/support/paid-newsletters/

Keyboards keep getting better

I’m still rocking the Corsair K65 RGB 60% size mechanical gaming keyboard as my primary daily driver. Using it does require in my opinion a Kensington duo gel keyboard wrist rest or some other type of ergonomic wrist riser. For me the keyboard needs to be about an inch in front of the wrist rest and I can type throughout the day without any problems. Earlier today I spent some time writing and thinking about how to best move forward. Certainly the keyboard helped deliver those thoughts from ideation to fill in the blank page. 

I’m striving to spend some time writing a blog post every day and thinking about what things deserve my time. A bit of writing each day is a great way to actively engage in thinking. Over the last couple of decades I have found that the act of writing for a long period of time is enough to really help me think deeply about something. From time to time a pure type of stream of consciousness can be productive while it does open the door to some extremely useless prose generation. Imagine a lot of derivative writing about the nature of writing. Certainly, that is something that does not really have to be imagined. It exists everywhere. 

I think 2024 will be the year that the internet fundamentally changes. We may see a shift in the way internet usage is occurring. We may very well interact and make requests differently going forward. We are going to see a lot of disruptive technology landing this year. We may look back at this next year as the year of big pivots in base technology.