Colin Walker

From The Weblog Handbook:

The Audience of One

If you allow yourself to begin posting entries based on what you think someone else wants you to write, you are missing the point of having a weblog. Even more destructive is the numbers game. It is always flattering to discover that someone else likes reading what you write, but if you begin to focus in gaining the largest audience you can, you will destroy whatever pleasure you may otherwise derive from your work … The surest way to sabotage your enjoyment of your weblog is to start caring about how many people a day look at your site. So understand that the attention you pay to your audience is not aimed at impressing them. Your only objective is to avoid sorely offending them.

(Emphasis mine.)

Be yourself, don't try to impress and don't offend. Sage advice that's just as applicable now (probably even more so) than it was when published in 2002. It's especially interesting to see a warning about 'the numbers game' even for the pre-social web.

Kev has built his own self-hosted microblogging system based on WordPress, using iOS shortcuts for automation.

I may no longer use WordPress but agree that it's a lot easier to get it hooked up with webmentions and ActivityPub. I also used to love Workflow (as it was called before Apple bought it and built it into iOS) as a way to handle certain things. That and Drafts actions.

He had some nice things to say about hyblog — "It ticked pretty much all the boxes, and I very nearly went with it" — but it would have needed a lot of work.

I could quite easily repurpose the webmention endpoint used here on the blog but, as I've said before, ActivityPub gives me a headache.

Like A word in defense of solitude // jabel...

"I’m mostly writing this, though, because I want to emphasize the value of solitude, without denigrating the beauty of relationships. In fact, not just the value of solitude as an occasional practice, but as a deliberate choice of life."