justing.net/updates

I'm Back

2025-05-01T07:00:00-07:00

I took about 20 days off from regular posting. Instead I did a bunch of freestyle posts that I didn’t post yet. It was an experiment, a chance to feel out what else I want to write besides the Week Notes. That experiment was starting to feel quite constrained, and producing work that was not quite saying what I wanted to say. Still useful, just not along the right vector. I’m still searching.

Now I’m going to backfill all those posts I wrote over the last 3 weeks. I’m going to post them with the date I wrote them, so it will look like I didn’t take a break at all when I am done. Sorry, not sorry, about that. I’ll put a small “backfilled on [date]” at the top.

To Reply: Email me your backfilled posts.

Spring Break

2025-04-17T20:20:00-07:00

Just a quick reminder that I am on a short hiatus. I’ll be back at the beginning of May.

To Reply: Email me your posts.

Scheduled builds

2025-02-11T08:00:00-08:00

Small update to posting. I’m adding a schedule to the workflow that builds the site, and this is a test of that. I believe I have configured it so that this post, which is scheduled in the future, will be automatically built and posted later in the day. Now posts can go live when I’m not around to push.

To Reply: Email me your posts.

Bringing up webcrumbs: my annotated bookmarks

2024-09-16T09:00:00-07:00

I’m adding a new section, Webcrumbs. It’s basically raw notes from things that I’ve seen and interacted with on the web. The point is to help me find things that I remember seeing “recently”¹ so I can be sure I’m remembering it right. There’s some more details at the top of that page. For now it’s in dark launch mode, it’s the MVP for what I can use. But it won’t scale, and I’d like to be able to integrate it into the tags and categories.

Future features (unordered):

Design plan how this is going to integrate.
Add a generator for archiving by years. Right now it just dumps them all into one page, which is fine but in a month or two it won’t work anymore.
Add a generator for making posts of yesterdays webcrumbs. At some point there will be an RSS feed and integration with the everything feed.
Integrate with tags in the footer of my posts. At some point there will be a new section showing up in the footer. That footer is getting kind of big; I wonder if I should do something different there?
Consider making a Jekyll plugin for this.

For now, it’s working and helping.

Evidently my “recent” memory can span back a few months. Memory is weird. Don’t trust memory. ↑

To Reply: Email me your internet bookmarking practice.

Jekyll Update

2024-08-31T15:00:00-07:00

I updated the site Gemfile to use Jekyll 3.9 (may update to 4.whatever later). The point is that it’s no longer using the github-pages gem, it’s now using the jekyll one instead.

This caused some style things to change because the theme isn’t what it once was. I was trying override all that themey stuff anyway, so I don’t mind. But, surely I missed a thing or two, so you might notice some breakages or just changeses [sic]. If you think something isn’t right, use the email link at the bottom of the page (any page) to send me a note. I’ll update this once I think I have the mischief managed.

Some issues that I am working out:

I added a bunch of categories to posts since last week. And now all the urls are different. I really just want the first category for each post.
- I believe this mischief is also managed. Thanks inkq^a for having exactly the info I needed.
Some style issues.
- I believe this mischief is managed. The looks is not identical to before, and that’s ok with me.

Update

Later the same day…

I declare the dust settled at this point. Should you find anything amiss, please do email me.

To Reply: You can reply by email.

updated tags and categories

2024-08-26T07:00:00-07:00

Over the weekend I greatly expanded my use of tags on posts. I’ve decided that being greedy with tags is going to be a better strategy. That means that posts should be greedy about the tags that are attached. Prolific, frivolous but on topic, take a chance tags. Anything that I think of, even if it seems to duplicate information in other tags. I’ve noticed that my mind is less good at keywords, many concepts float to the top and it’s not at all likely to be the same keyword when the idea is surfacing months or years apart. This strategy leverages that tendency. It encourages more chance encounters, more likely connections to form. These are all exposed on the bottom of the posts.

I’m also exposing more of the categories. Some posts get more than one category and there isn’t any reason to keep this a secret. I am being more judicious with the categories though. Categories are broader, more thoughtful, more like library sections. I might even evolve (or append) to Johnny Decimal, but I still want to be somewhat organic rather than prescriptive about it.

To Reply: Comments by email are welcome.

added photostream

2024-06-07T00:00:00-07:00

I added a photostream page and feed. Hopefully I can share some of my random photos more easily this way.

To Reply: Comments by email are welcome.

Now and Ideas pages added

2024-03-29T00:00:00-07:00

I have added also the Now and Ideas pages (and feeds) because I guess they’re (again) all the rage. My current about page is a little dated, and now page was just copied from another place I have one. But I think the right content is coming into focus now, so expect updates. This completes the popular trio About Ideas Now, and so I’ve requested my site to be indexed there. Yay discoverability!

I think I might also add Uses and Default Apps pages in the near future. I have mixed feelings about that, it sounds a bit like advertising. But it’s also sharing knowledge so maybe it’s ok.

Here’s a little bit about my plan for all of these: they’re actually blog post categories. It’s just that the foo/ page shows the latest post in that category. The nice thing about that is I get a record of past states of the pages, something that I had always thought was missing before.

To Reply: Replies by email are appreciated.

About Page and Feed Added

2024-03-19T00:00:00-07:00

I’ve added a separate about page and rss feed. The about text still lives on the site landing page, but it also has its own dedicated page now too. The text in both places is derived from the most recent post in the about category. This way there is a record of the changes.

I don’t expect it will update very often, but I am templating an idea that I would like to extend to a few more pages in the future, specifically also “ideas”, “now”, “uses”, and “defaults”. See About Ideas Now.

To Reply: You can reply by email.

Postcards section debut

2024-02-01T00:00:00-08:00

I’ve added a new section that is called Postcards. The first postcards answers the question “What are Postcards?”. I added it so I have an excuse to share some of my photographry but not be committed to a full photos section yet.

As usual there is a dedicated rss feed for it.

To Reply: Email me a postcard.

Tags are used to link related posts

2024-01-18T00:00:00-08:00

I added two additional details at the bottom of posts: tags, and links to other posts that have the same tag.

I am trying to use them differently from categories so that they remain targeted. I mean that if I find I am adding a tag to many posts and only mean something vague by it, that is probably not going to be very helpful to future me.

The other, as yet unsolved problem, is if I should automate bidirectional links to posts. For now, I do it manually, as in the Borges and AI ↔ Hoffmann’s Wobble linking. I think manually is good enough for now. Note that some friction is good: I don’t really care if the computer knows there is a link, I want my brain to know there is a link.

To Reply: Email me if you find the related posts affordance useful.

Added Link-Roll

2023-12-22T00:00:00-08:00

I’ve added a Link Roll Section to the Interesting Links Page. It’s a blogroll. It’s got articles I want to refer to again. It bookmarks interesting sites of all kinds for later. Best of all, it’s my comments and remarks about why I added these things. And where I found the link. Maybe there are more links to be found there. I would say it captures my inputs, but at best it’s partial and incomplete.

To Reply: Email me interesting links.

Revamp index

2023-12-19T00:00:00-08:00

The main change is that I now include all new posts in the Recent Updates list, not only the Updates. Because of that, I also reconciled some of the other text on the index page.

To Reply: Email me about the index changes.