I Meander, and Swear a Bit
I got curious about something last night. Being knee-deep in moving a website from a homegrown, static concoction to a proper content management system, I’ve become interested (in a somewhat unhealthy way) in the platforms running several blogs I follow. It’s almost unnecessary to say, since it always happens, but this effort took me way into the rabbit hole. I bounced from Apple ticking-and-tocking to life being too short for the slow Apple Watch to better living through Server-generated JavaScript Responses (SJR’s). And anyway…
Yesterday I saw Rands in Repose mention that he’s still using his blog but also selectively putting content on Medium. So he’s using WordPress? Lemme check the page source… sure enough.
I use WordPress for a couple sites I run, but not this site. If you’ve tried to figure out what I’m running here and it’s still a mystery, it’s a static site generated by Jekyll. I love it. The only drawback is not being able to post occasionally from devices besides my MacBook Pro. However, since writing on anything other than a proper keyboard is cumbersome for all but the briefest stuff, that’s not really an issue.
So I meandered a bit more and found some good writing advice, Swear A Bit:
Probably a controversial piece of advice, but fuck it, I love swearing. This is likely a sub-point to sounding like a human, but it’s worth talking about. If you’re sitting at the bar with your friends, you swear. If you’re writing for the web, you’re writing for your extended friends… who cares if you know them? Keep it familiar.
It’s likely I agree that it’s good advice because I already believe it. Then I found more tips about captivating readers who are afflicted by Nerd Attention Deficit Disorder. His entire site is loaded with good shit.
So what was I doing? Building a website, right.