/random

DHH wrote about Bandcamp closing down the Signal v Noise blog. I may have read the odd post over the years but never followed it – that's not the point of this.

He and Jason Fried "lost some of the energy and nerve for writing there" but not because their "intrinsic energy or nerve had vanished". The project ran its course but, with the launch of Hey World blogs, they are writing again:

"That's the spirit of Signal v Noise, the writing."

Venkatesh Rao is considering adopting new rules for projects he undertakes including having a ten-year commitment to them:

"you must be comfortable with the idea of committing steady, continuous attention to the project for the next 10 years"

He explains that continuity of attention means continuity of memory: "[t]he memory may be ported to a new medium, but it will be the same memory." Rao uses the example of having a project in ten years called Ribbonfarm that may no longer be on WordPress and possibly not even a blog.

The serendipity of two posts on consecutive days. Rao's concept of memory is akin to David's notion of spirit. The things we do may have a natural lifespan but the ideas behind them, their personalities, persist – they come from within us and that part of ourselves is reflected in them.