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.

• Favorite look back/in-the-feels: “Ten Years On”
• Favorite short fiction: “Drabble: A Paradox”
• Favorite visual creative stuff: “Don’t Multitask with Fire”
• Favorite weird: “Top Five Worst Ways to Refer to Human Hair”

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.

In late 2023, I gave myself a very loose challenge to listen to one distinct album each day(-ish). I wrote a post about the first week and after that I tried to keep track of them offline in Obsidian. I didn’t do it every day or always keep track of it very well, but that’s alright.

The handful that I did track were pretty balanced between new-to-me albums and new releases by artists I follow. I had forgotten about a couple of these since they were one-listens — not usually because I didn’t enjoy it, but it’s easy to get distracted by old and new favorites. There’s always so much music!

New to me

• Sleater-Kinney, Little Rope (2024): A band I’ve known of for a while, but had never really listened to much.
• The Rentals, Lost in Alphaville (2014): A vinyl guy on TikTok was raving about this album. It lived up to the hype and is one of my favorite finds of the year. Somehow I had not heard of The Rentals, despite it being Matt Sharp, formerly of Weezer.
• The Warning, Keep Me Fed (2024): A really solid rock album by some mujeres Mexicanas. I’m a sucker for ladies who rock.
• Chappell Roan, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess (2023): Another favorite of the year. I hope it wins the Grammy. “Um, can you play a song with a fucking beat?!”
• julie, my anti-aircraft friend (2024): I came across a fellow GenX on TikTok who publishes the blog “New Music for Old Heads” and this album in one of their best-of posts caught my attention because shoegaze.

Aside: I love the idea of that blog and recommend it:

“This is a place for people who want to get into new music but feel overwhelmed by it, or maybe even think it hasn’t been good since [insert whatever decade it was that you were in your 20s]. Basically, I’m trying to get you excited about music discovery again.”

— New Music for Old Heads

New-ish by artists I follow

Interestingly, several of these were one-listens, but writing this reminds me to listen to them more.

• Oh Land, Loop Soup (2023)
• Casandra Jenkins, My Light, My Detroyer (2024)
• DK the Drummer, Lockers Volume 1 (2024): Darren King, former drummer of Mutemath. This is a fun, high energy album with a lot of great collaborations.
• Thomas Powers, A Tyrant Crying in Private (2024): solo album from singer of The Naked and Famous
• Lauren Mayberry, Vicious Creature (2024): solo album from the singer of Chvrches

Concerts

I only attended a couple concerts this year: Zoe Boekbinder’s Covid cautious backyard concert and Five Iron Frenzy with their old-school set. Both were a lot of fun!

I had a ticket for Sixpence None the Richer at the end of the year but unfortunately missed it. :/

Scrobbles

If you’re not familiar, “scrobbles” are the song listening data you can send to Libre.fm, Last.fm, or similar services. I’ve been on Last.fm for a long time, but I haven’t checked it in quite a while. There was a time when scrobbling stopped working on Android due to some security updates, so a good chunk of my listens from my phone weren’t reported. I just played around with some settings and got it working again, though! That’s why my 2024 listening report is kind of slim.

• My top artist was Cinnamon Chasers, mostly Dopamine (2024): great electronic music to work to
• Runner up was BT, The Secret Language of Trees (2023): some chill ambient music, also great to work to
• 2,791 listens; 309 artists; 452 albums; 2,154 tracks
• 54% new artists; 72% new albums; 55% new tracks; among my small set of friends on Last.fm, I apparently came in first for percentage of new artists
• My first track of the year was apparently “Speak to Me” by Pink Floyd. I’m not a huge Pink Floyd fan, but I was talking to someone who had never listened to them before so decided to give it another listen.
• I apparently listened to 14 tracks with “fire” in the title

I joined Libre.fm in September, so only have a few months of listens in my 2024 recap. I’m glad there’s an indieweb version of services like this. Boards of Canada came in first over there, since I finally listened to most of their catalog for the first time (I know).

What were some of your (new or old) favorites that you listened to last year? Happy new year of music!

Last weekend was the second IndieWebCamp San Diego. I think it was a really successful and productive event. My friend Joe organized it, though he kept insisting (playfully) that I was a co-organizer due to my contributions. I resisted the label mainly because I’m not ready to take on that responsibility again. I am good with the wiki, though, and a lot of the processes from attending and organizing past IndieWebCamp events.

I advocated for a stronger health and safety policy for this event and really appreciated Joe being fully supportive. I borrowed parts of the policies from North Bay Python, XOXO, E&W, a local board game group, and mine. I think we did pretty well with the two policy aspects I wrote about before:

“1. They should be in place well before the event and communicated clearly in key places: on the website, during registration, in announcements, and discussed during the event.”

— More on Health and Safety

There wasn’t a formal registration process other than RSVPs on the event page, so I made sure to include the Health and Safety subheading with a one-line summary and link to the full policy on the wiki. I don’t think we discussed it during the event, but all attendees were masking indoors without being reminded, so I think having the policy in those places worked well.

The venue was this lovely little risograph publisher/zine shop/zine archive called Burn All Books, which I think was very well aligned with the IndieWeb principles. They very graciously provided the space for free, so I encourage attendees to support them with a Mail Bag membership — get art, poetry, and “real risograph magic” mailed to you monthly!

I didn’t go into the event with a solid idea of what I wanted to work on for my site. One of the things I love about these events, though, is that the attendees propose and facilitate the sessions. There’s a lot of opportunity to get inspired and that’s exactly what happened for me. There was a session on venue recommendations because Foursquare is imminently shutting down their City Guide app. Tantek wanted to find the simplest way he could export his recommendations and start sharing them on his own site. That inspired me to start sharing my own recommendations, so I started a food and drink recommendations page with subsections for different cities. I think this will be just as helpful to remind myself of places as it is to suggest places to others who ask.

The schedule page has links to all of the session notes. Most sessions were recorded, so videos will be eventually be posted on there as well.

If you’re interested in learning more about the IndieWeb, I recommend one of the virtual Zoom meetups, called Homebrew Website Club. There are regular ones held in the Pacific and London timezones; check the HWC tag on the events site and stop in sometime! Joe also regularly hosts a Front End Study Hall meetup focused on HTML and CSS, with all skill levels welcome.