Why Do We Blog?
A few days ago, I was reading someone's blog (I don't remember who)* that was talking about the art and the "why" of blogging (or it might've been in a chat conversation, I'm not sure). I had been thinking of posting something about it, because when I told someone IRL that I have a blog, they asked me if I had monetized it, and my answer was, "Why in the world would I sell my soul and my readers for a few measly dollars a month?"
So, if money isn't the reason (and it really shouldn't be—it is the most servile motivation for doing anything), what is?
I think of the old adage of the mountain climbers: "Why do you climb?" The obvious response, "Because it's there!" As an old joke goes, when asked "Why do you do what you do?" the spelunker answers, "Because it isn't there!"
I think of blogging like spelunking: We look to what isn't there. We write what hasn't been written; we capture in a moment of inspiration words that have been waiting the entire age of the universe until now to be inscribed with pen, pencil, charcoal, or bytes for the betterment of all.
Now, the necessarily wizened among us would likely retort, "What do you mean, 'it hasn't been written yet'?!? It's all been written: by better authors, by AI slopvalanche, or if nothing else, The Library of Babel!"
True, true. But ultimately, I'm not competing with Borges, Shakespeare, Hemingway, an AI-automated room full of furious typewriter-pounding monkeys, or even you, gentle reader.
I am competing with me. To see if I can produce beauty from the ashes of life all around me.
And that is why I write.
Addendum
*Silly me, it was the excellent OrbitalMartian, of course!
100 Days to Offload 2025 - Day 48
My Favorite GUI Programs, Part II
Background
In yesterday's article, I went over the GUI programs that I enjoyed using over the years and remembered fondly. While I was going to go over TUI programs today, I realized that there's a category of GUI that straddles the line between GUI and TUI that deserved its own …
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My Favorite GUI Programs
Background
Yesterday, I wrote about why I loved the command-line, and one of my good Fedifriends commented that while he appreciated a good command-line program, he generally preferred GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces).
My personal history in computing started with what you might call command-line computers, although I think it's more …
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Why I Love the Command Line
I was going to post a much more serious blog post about anhedonia yesterday, but I didn't get to do so, as I was feeling... anhedonic!
One thing I do when I'm struggling to feel... anything (because I've spent way too much time feeling way too much, but that's a …
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Songs to Improve Your Mental Health
Background
I'd be fooling myself to think that I could be the first person on the earth to note music's incredible ability to heal and salve the tormented human soul. My own journey with music is, well, unsurprisingly, about as old as I am. Most everyone on one side of …
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Anker SoundCore P30i mini-review
Time for another little hardware review.
Background
I've been getting complaints that the small, inexpensive bluetooth earbuds (Skullcandy Dime XT/XT2) I had been carrying around for the past five years have pretty poor audio quality during phone calls (likely no microphone noise cancellation), so I started looking around again …
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Why I love vim
Disclaimer: I will be using the name/term vim in this blog post, but I actually mean any command-line editor based on or inspired by vi, or "vi-style editors." This includes the original vi, nvi (which IIRC was the basis of the vi that comes with the various BSDs), elVIs …
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My Approach to Online Notes
Note: When I say "Online" in this context, I literally mean "on a computer," vs. "on paper." This is the older, more classic meaning of the word, similar to "on-line documentation" (i.e., "on the computer," not "on the internet").
Background
I know a lot of folks like solutions like …
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A Fine Vintage of Sass
Just now, I was doing what all great bloggers do when they run out of (easily) actionable blog post ideas:
I got around to cruising my RSS feeds!
To be fair, there are many wonderful bloggers that keep up with their RSS feeds and dutifully read and comment on all …
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A Time-Traveler's Guide to Affordable Computing
Greetings! If you are reading this, it means you were selected by TODD (the Temporal Observation Directorate Division) for a temporal excursion. Since you're a member of the Computing Sciences History Reading Room, you will no doubt want to brush up on how to procure computing resources in your assigned …
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