"I do wonder though, won’t this ‘blank slate’ metaphor work better if you are editing your homepage as-is? The way Dave (Winer) can? Do you do that? If not, isn’t the homepage primarily for the readers, who may not appreciate a blank page?"
As this is WordPress I am not literally editing a blank page so we are definitely in the realms of metaphor but, as I replied, I visit my blog every day to see what's thrown up by "On this day" - I get to experience the blank page just as a reader would.
Not only that, but knowing the Today page is blank until I post something gives me a sense of freedom to do whatever I want unencumbered by previous posts.
But what of the reader experiencing a blank page?
I previously listed "yesterday's" posts (and before that the last 3 posts and before that the last 5) but this always felt like I was doing it for the sake of having something there, as though I needed to appease the reader and give them something to look at even if I hadn't posted that day.
I suppose from the perspective of wanting people who stumble upon your blog to dive straight in and, maybe, stick around this makes a lot of sense. That, however, is not why the blog exists. It is a very personal thing that has been evolving for some time - I'm just lucky enough to have people subscribe to the feeds or visit from time to time to see what's going on and experience the journey with me.
I just recalled episode 38 of the Internet Friends podcast in which Jon says (about 50 minutes in) that he would like to check someone's page to see what they wrote that day, as if that was the only thing that mattered, and then it is replaced by something new. And that he is intrigued by the idea of a site:
"wiping itself out at midnight that person's time... so that... there is nothing there if they didn't write anything that day"
The blog is doing just that, although there is still the option to go back over older posts rather than doing away with archives and things being completely ephemeral. In a way, the groundwork has been laid ever since I first considered a Today page nearly three years ago. I think it's now reached the logical conclusion of the path it's been on for all this time, and why everything has shifted towards the "daily unit" with the feed and emails.
It feels almost like a Zen thing: the past is behind me - I can't change it only learn from it, link to it - all that matters is the now, the current moment (in this case pushed out to 24 hours) and tomorrow will take care of itself when we get there.
Comments
# Liked: Churchill’s “K.B.O.” (Or something like that.) – Steven Pressfield...
# The way I strip @mentions from the start of micro.blog replies in comments only worked for the first mention. If a reply included more than one mention at the beginning the rest would still be shown. I've now included the process in a while loop so that all are removed from display. It's still non-destructive so they're still in the database, just not displayed.
# If you've been paying attention recently you'll have noticed that things have been changing. Take this recent screenshot:
It looks like four posts when it is, in fact, only one divided into sections with each one linkable. So, why do this? I wrote in the latest muse-letter that I was 'considering taking the "blank slate" metaphor for each day even further', something that has been developing over time - the logical conclusion is for each day to become a single post along similar lines to Dave Winer's scripting.com - Winer uses his own purpose built software creating each day in an outliner. I have now created a version of my Daily page template that takes the inline editing to the next level; the previous content filters originally designed for the digital garden are fully available and have been extended to add more functionality. If I choose to go this route I will, unlike before, be literally editing a blank page. A couple of challenges presented themselves:
how to create sections and make them linkable how to retain the ability to post webmention 'likes'
Both have been solved by adding additional content filters. To send a 'Like' I just need to enclose a link in double bracket delimiters '(())' - the filter simply replaces them with the relevant code. Creating linkable sections needed a slightly different approach and I was initially unsure as to what markup to use but settled on adding two @ symbols. Why? Because two @s together are not used anywhere else in common parlance, at least as far as I can see. Markdown has a monopoly on a number of characters (#*->) and I've already used [, {, ( and ~ (I have two tildes as delimiters for strikethrough) so needed another option. The filter counts the instances of double @s and then replaces each one with sequential links so that each section can be referenced separately. I've already set the daily RSS feed as the default so that isn't an issue, the only thing it means is that there will not be the ability for comments on individual sections unless I can find a way round that. Now I just need to think about when to make the switch.