gRegorLove.com — little g big R
gRegor Morrill

My name is gRegor Morrill, a.k.a. gRegorLove. I live in San Diego, enjoy tinkering on the web, and try to make people laugh. Yes, “Gregor is a weird name,” and I know gRegor is a weird capitalization. More about me

If you would like to keep up with my posts, check out How to Follow Me.

2025 Blog Question Challenge

Ava started a Bear Blog question challenge this month and Kev adapted them to be a bit more generic. Several indieweb pals have posted their responses. I miss these kind of meta posts, so here are my responses:

1. Why did you start blogging in the first place?

I don’t remember the exact inspiration, but it was probably when I came across Blogger or maybe it was a Xanga blog. I had been tinkering with my GeoCities site since the late 90s, but that was more of a general collection of pages than a “weblog.”

In 1999, I decided to get this domain in part because I was coming around to the “gRegorLove” nickname that my friend Phil had given me. I thought it would be funny to set up a wife application (archived) on my own site. I also wanted to experiment with things like Blogger. I remember thinking it was so cool to be able to publish posts by FTP.

Sometime in 2000 I started posting more blog-type posts. It seemed so novel and was cool to be able to share text like that in my little corner of the web.

2. What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it?

I have been using the ProcessWire CMS/framework for almost ten years now. Before that I used Nucleus CMS for a long time. And before that I briefly experimented with B2evolution and Blogger.

I switched to ProcessWire because official development on Nucleus had stopped, unfortunately. I really enjoyed Nucleus’ extensibility and I made some of my first open source contributions there, but I wasn’t in a place to take on being one of the few remaining contributors.

I had used ProcessWire professionally for several sites and I really enjoyed its flexibility for building any type of site, not just a blog system that could be hacked into other types of things. ProcessWire is built entirely on custom fields and custom templates, so it allows a lot of creativity and not just a timeline of reverse chronological posts.

3. Have you blogged on other platforms before?

I posted on Xanga for quite a while. I think most of those posts still exist on my site, though. The phrase “Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere” (POSSE) didn’t exist then, but I definitely had the desire to keep the original posts on my site and cross-post them.

4. How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?

Half the time I will write in the ProcessWire editor (like now). The other half of the time I will use Sublime Text or Obsidian. I have used Writemonkey in the past because I enjoyed the ability to type in full-screen with no distractions. It has optional typewriter sound effects, too, which was fun. I think my use of that mostly dropped off because ProcessWire has a decent visual editor.

5. When do you feel most inspired to write?

Whenever I see that the last post was a month or two ago? 😂 Though seriously, I updated my homepage to show the full content of the latest article for the first 45 days. After that, it changes to just the title + link under the “Other Recent Articles” heading. That can serve as a little visual nudge for me to write something if I notice that.

Inspirations vary. Sometimes I want to document everyday things for myself to look back on. Sometimes I want to put together various bits of information in one space and (hopefully) make it easier to digest, e.g. with some of my posts about health and safety. Sometimes I just want to vent.

6. Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?

Most posts I am pretty casual about. I might let a draft sit overnight and re-read it to tweak some phrasing. My longer or more important (to me) posts will definitely be drafted and re-written over time, like “Four Years of Blank”.

7. What’s your favorite post on your blog?

Oof, this question is unfair. You saw that I’ve been posting for almost 25 years, right? 😂I think I might have to stretch the rules on this one and give some favorites in entirely arbitrary categories.

8. Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?

I have thought several times that I should bring back and modernize the wife application. That was some good silly fun.

I have been pretty pleased with the design I’ve had since 2011. It’s definitely the longest period I’ve gone without a full redesign. I have added a lot of different types of posts since then, so the navigation probably needs some updates. I have made updates to the homepage to try to highlight some of those, like photos and notes. I don’t think I want the homepage to strictly be a reverse chronological feed of everything, though. Short notes would drown out the blog posts, so I still want to promote the blog posts by “pinning” them or something.

One of my favorite things about the design is the picture of me in the footer. That was taken in Chicago at Lake Michigan quite a while ago. Now that I live in California, I have thought about getting an updated version of that shot, but at the beach instead. I need to ask Al about that.

Bonus round: tag/nudge some other people to fill this out

This is my little addition to the prompts. If you blog, I’d love to read your responses as well. If you don’t, maybe this is a good time to start!

I’d like to nudge: Sheryl, Isha, Rachelskirts, and Tyler.

View responses or leave your own response

Other Recent Articles

Photos

Screenshot of album covers that all have a purple-ish, goth aesthetic

I appreciate The Birthday Massacre’s consistency in their album covers. #purple

Notes

🎶 It’s a TRON: Legacy soundtrack kinda day.


“We need things like RSS, the open web. We need websites back. That’s my dream is to bring back blogs.”

Taylor Lorenz on We’re Not Kidding!

ProcessWire IndieAuth v0.2.3 Released

Version 0.2.3 of the ProcessWire IndieAuth Module is released:

  • Fixed a bug when adding profile information to a token response
  • Install now attempts to add the introspection-endpoint
  • Improved admin: list of granted access tokens
  • Add an option to no longer advertise the backwards-compatible link-rels. These remain on by default; future release may change to off by default.
  • More in the changelog

Previously


Hey San Diego, some of the lovely people in Fan Favorite are presenting next week: Navigating Fractured Realities and the Need for Clean Air (“During the Pandemic” is Right Now). January 21, 6:30pm–8pm at Centro Cultural de la Raza. Masks required and provided? Air purifiers? You know it! 😷💛

Also, check out and share the Instagram post.


Thinking about the bad user experience around this emergency alert I got last night:

Emergency alert: Extreme

ENDANGERED MISSING ADVISORY. Details at https://bit.ly/EMA0022025

I was a bit suspicious, especially in light of the recent inaccurate evacuation alerts that went to all 10 million residents of Los Angeles County. A bit.ly link for an official government alert, really?

I used the bit.ly preview tool to see where the link would go before clicking (add a + after the bit.ly link). It showed the destination was the @CHPAlerts Twitter account, so it was legitimate after all.

I get that Twitter is still a good way to get out emergency alerts and you want links that pop up on phones to be short, but it would probably be better if they used a short link on ca.gov so it looks official.


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