Blog Question Challenge 2025

2025-02-20

Having seen quite a few of these around the place, I thought I'd give it a shot.

Why did you start blogging in the first place?

I started blogging at the onset of the pandemic. As far as I could tell at the time, your options were either to take up baking or running; and while I dabbled with the latter, I figured that then was as good a time as any to try something different.

I ambled along through 2020 with the odd post about whatever came to mind but it wasn't until my post on RSS at the start of 2021 that it really clicked what a blog could be. That post remains my most popular and still gets referenced from time to time. I'd written that post in about 20 minutes, published, and then went out for a run. I still remember coming home, checking my analytics out of sheer vanity and thinking that I was getting DDosed because I'd never seen pageviews that high. As I would find out Hacker News, Lobsters, and a host of other sites had decided to shine their spotlight on my blog that day.

That post really solidified to me that there might be something to this blogging rather than it just being a way to shout into the void.

What platform are you using to manage your blog, and why do you use it?

I use Caro, a minimum viable blog generator I built that aims to do the essentials and nothing more. It handles converting markdown to HTML, generating RSS feeds, and ordering my blog posts by date - nothing more, nothing less.

I tried out the likes of Hugo and other generators but once I had that initial thought of "I could do that" there wasn't really any way of turning back. It's always fun to add in a new feature as needed, port Caro to a new platform, or just generally refactor what already exists to make it smaller, faster, neater etc.

How do you write your posts?

Every single word and line of code on this site has been written in Vim. I've never used another editor and Vim has never given me a reason to look for one.

Do you normally publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit?

I've found that leaving drafts sitting for any length of time tends to lead to them either getting scrapped, completely rewritten, or just otherwise forgotten. In the interest of actually publishing anything at all, I've found it's better to just publish immediately.

I briefly considered a 'content calendar', batch writing posts and then publishing one each week but this just didn't work. It quickly sapped any fun out of writing about topics and felt closer to hitting a quota then trying to say anything meaningful.

Have you blogged on other platforms before?

The first iteration of this site was done using Gatsby but I've used my own tools for building this site for roughly four years now.

When do you feel most inspired to write?

Entirely at random. I might go weeks or months with nothing and then suddenly something comes. At least when I do get an idea, either luckily or unluckily, it's like they come fully formed. Then it's just a case of writing it down.

I've tried setting aside dedicated time to write and it has never worked. Either nothing happens or what does get put down is not worth posting.

What’s your favorite post on your blog?

The next one.

Any future plans for the blog?

See above.