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Let's start from the basics: can you introduce yourself?

Most people call me Naz, like the rapper, but with a z. I'm Malaysian-American and a third culture kid: I spent the first decade of my life in London, United Kingdom, the second in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and the last twenty-six years in the United States. I live in San Francisco, California, with my wife, Jen Schuetz, and our dog, Barbara.

I've been a designer for my entire 26+ year career and came into the industry during the first dot-com boom just as it went bust. There was a period I call the wilderness years, trying to do any kind of design work to pay for a roof over my head and to feed myself. Eventually, I founded Weightshift, which served some of the best clients in the industry and where I got to work with some of my favorite people. Today, I'm a creative director for a VC firm and also lead product design and product at an early-stage edtech startup. I enjoy working on 0-1 product work and am fortunate to do what I do, though I have a lot of criticism and skepticism about where technology is headed. It's healthy.

I have given talks about work-life balance, and to that end, as much as I spend time in front of screens, I absolutely love to get away from them. I used to spend a lot of time cycling, which has transitioned to running/trail running, rock climbing, and overlanding/camping. I need nature and physicality to balance my screen-centered physical inertia.

What's the story behind your blog?

I was inspired by various early bloggers at the time: the Pyra Labs crew who created Blogger (Evan Williams, Meg Hourihan, Matt Haughey, Paul Busch, Derek Powazek, Jack Saturn, and others) as well as Jason Kottke, and more.

I originally started with absenter.org back in 1999 (which I still own — you never let go of your first domain). I also had boochakanan.com, which was a pure photoblog, and before it became the name of the studio, weightshift.net (I didn't own the .com until later), which was design experiments and a portfolio inspired by early design news/playgrounds/sites like Surfstation, NewsToday, Design is Kinky, Pixelsurgeon, Praytation, VolumeOne, Prate, YouWorkForThem, etc. The amount of pure creation on the web was still experimental and unbound by optimization and analytics. Making stuff was just fun. I had another journal at toybird.org about my start getting into racing bicycles, and then later NZRN.com. I also co-founded GapersBlock.com, a popular and well-regarded long-running city blog and publication about all things Chicago with Andrew Huff.

Eventually, Weightshift and running a design studio took up all of my focus and energy, and I stopped blogging as social media came to prominence. My current blog is an attempt to recapture what I lost by not documenting and writing on my own space for many years. I'm very encouraged and happy to see so many return to it, and that this very series showcases so many of the wonderful people that are more than just a hashtag or their one lane. Blogs and personal sites have always been more well-rounded to me. More human.

I don't have the time to publish daily like I did in my early 20s, though I do write every day, but I have written more on my own site in the last year than I have in over a decade. I have always envied great writing (my wife being a copywriter and editor also keeps standards high) and I aspire to have it be effortless, but it's a lot of work for me. I try my best.

nazhamid.com is my current blog and personal site for the foreseeable future.

What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?

The writing tends to follow whatever is of interest at the moment, or something I learned that I want to share, or an experience. For a bit, Weightshift had its own blog and I've written about design, which I like to imagine people want me to write about given my lengthy tenure in it, but I do so much of that kind of writing for the work itself (product and design management and documentation) that I just want to write about my hobbies or something personal.

The corpus is currently small, and when I recently extracted my old blog posts from my various sites out of MySQL databases into Markdown files, I realized just how personal I was in those. And in a lot of cases, embarrassingly so, reflecting youth and naivety. I've picked one or two to republish on the current site. The one thing I did appreciate about them all was how honest and genuine I was. I'd like to recapture that, and think I am to some degree in the current writing.

I keep a decent list in Bear of ideas. Some are years old, some are recent as I have thoughts that warrant deeper research and discovery. When I start drafts, I link those notes back to this master list and go in and out of them when inspired or when some new insight or information warrants it. Speaking of research: I'm really trying to do more with better structure and discipline. When I feel a theme or topic, is there actual research that's been done to support it? I did this with my post about the lack of public bathrooms in the US. It wasn't just something I’d experienced — it's true, and rooted in classism and racism.

I write for myself to some degree, but also what I think would be worth sharing in the world. And again, I've tried to bring more clarity to my written words, as the ideas in my mind are much clearer than how they come across on the page. I sometimes feel there's a disconnect there — that I can't quite translate the two things to be the same. It's work, but worthy work. My wife, Jen, will look over my work when I know it's a lengthier piece or one I know needs editing. She can really elevate what I write and make magic. I am very thankful and grateful for her skill.

Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical space influences your creativity?

I don't have an idealized space. Posts and drafts are written at length during a long bath, during a long wait before an appointment, or wherever they strike. They're finished, however, at my desk for the most part.

When Jen and I did season 2 of Weightshifting, our newsletter about overlanding and camping, we were on a month-long road trip to the Midwest to visit her family. I made it a challenge to write, photograph, and publish every day. We mostly met our goal, with a few days requiring double the effort, but we remarkably managed to stick to our plan.

Each day by 8 or 9 pm, we'd be in our tent or camp chairs, and I'd be downloading photos, culling them quickly to chart the course of the day, then write a draft. Jen would dutifully (and thankfully) edit those words that night or the next morning. I'd then sequence the photos and text, and hit publish in Buttondown.

We'd sneak the editing and publishing time while in the car, at a gas stop, or whenever we had service. It was a lot of work, but when I look back at that batch of work, I'm proud of what we were able to do: 27 entries of words and photos. I'd like to think that the beauty, challenges, and journey made it easier to produce. So yes, that constant movement and novelty of the day-to-day inspired us to get them done.

A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack?

It's remarkable what publishing options are available today. I started primarily with Movable Type, then switched to the late Dean Allen's Textpattern. Today, there is so much choice, as well as ways to host.

A few years ago when I started to think about blogging again, I knew I wanted a static site for speed and low maintenance. I tried Jekyll for a bit, but heard great things about 11ty, so switched to that, and found it relatively easy to set up. I enjoy front-end development, and learning Nunjucks and futzing my way through JS files seemed simple enough. I needed a host and Netlify provides a great free plan that serves my modest needs. It's all managed via a GitHub repository that pushes to Netlify when I commit.

I used to code in SublimeText, then got into Atom for the GitHub integration but they sunset that, and switched to VSCode which I just didn't get into because the interface is very Microsoft. I suppose I like software that has some care and craft around it.

I remembered that years ago I used Panic's Coda, and realized that Coda became Nova. I love everything about Panic, and so it was an easy switch to use one of their products. Nova is great.

Photos are a thing for me: a mix of capture via iOS RAW, a Sony A7III, a Sony RX100 M3 or MVI, edited in Adobe Lightroom or an alpha app a friend is currently making, and exported and optimized very well in one of the best pieces of software that exists: ImageOptim.

All of my domains are managed via hover.com.

Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?

No. Only that I wish I continued writing consistently during the entire time. To look back at some 20+ years of content would be something though. And to have committed to one of my domains and its name. But that's also the beauty of being human: being able to change, evolve, and adapt. So, no regrets.

I could cobble together some master corpus between archives of my social media platforms (I left Twitter long ago, and downloaded my archive) and make some sort of site that encompasses it all. I do, however, value "the edit." Much like a portfolio of selected work, I want to invest in the writing or publishing of higher impact and valuable pieces so I can reward the reader. Otherwise, I'd write privately (and I do keep a more personal and at times, banal, journal). If I'm sharing, hopefully it's of value to someone.

Financial question since the Web is obsessed with money: how much does it cost to run your blog? Is it just a cost, or does it generate some revenue? And what's your position on people monetising personal blogs?

The domain is USD$17.99. GitHub costs me nothing now since they were acquired by Microsoft. And neither does Netlify since I have no traffic or bandwidth needs. Outside of my other tools, which I use for my work, that's it.

It doesn't generate revenue. Though, like others interviewed, my early sites led to design work. In that sense, nurturing a personal site or blog about things you care about, can lead to work depending on your positioning. For me, it's just a way for me to play and write about things I'm interested or curious about, that don't have to do with my work.

I don't mind at all if people want to monetize their blogs if it's their livelihood or work, or can help supplement or augment their day jobs. I support a few YouTube creators through Patreon, and I'm happy to do so to see more of their content. I do Ko-fi too for some blogs and newsletters. I'm a little iffy on Substack due to the controversy there so while I'd like to support some writers there, I can't bring myself to. They could always use Buttondown instead. ;)

Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And also, who do you think I should be interviewing next?

I am biased here as these are all people I know, but they've also been publishing consistently and for so long that I love that they've had these sites for as long as they have. Any of them would be great to interview (in last name alphabetical order): Scott Boms, Mandy Brown, Simon Collison, and Chris Glass. They have so much personality and craft in each of their sites and I've enjoyed experiencing them for all of these years.

Final question: is there anything you want to share with us?

I'm encouraged by younger generations discovering older work and media. Whether it's music, books, or literally old media like vinyl records, vintage camcorders, or used clothing. There's likely a tangible piece they're missing that I got to experience, because they've grown up online and in front of screens. Friction and manual experiences really make you appreciate things more.

More people are also finding space to embrace their physical selves — whether it's taking walks, working out, and moving their bodies in any small way. It's so important to me for my well-being that I really encourage some kind of movement if one is able to do so. I know not everyone can, and I am grateful that despite my injuries and health issues over the decades, I'm still able to run, climb, and be present in this body, while I have it. Movement is meditation.

Start a blog! Start a website. Make fun things. Make anything. Make a thing that's yours, and that makes you happy, challenged, or curious. Make it on your space, not on someone else's.

P.S. Long live RSS!

This was the 55th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Naz. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.

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I’m a user of Apple products. I’m writing this on a Mac, I have two iPhones on my desk. I’m also in the EU. Personally, I couldn’t give less of a fuck about being able to change all these defaults or deleting apps or whatnot. My life won’t improve drastically if opening up a camera app takes 1 second instead of 3 because I can change the default one. And yet, even if I don’t care, I’m happy that other people, who might care, are getting more options. Good for them! And it would be good for them even if those people were only living in the US. Or Australia. Or on the fucking moon.

In an attempt to run your tally, you wrote

On the rest-of-the-world side we have the imminent release of iPhone Mirroring and Apple Intelligence.

Well, guess what? I couldn’t care less about those two things the same way I didn’t care about Siri. So now what? You have your opinion on the cool features you’re getting, other people have their own opinions on the cool features they’re getting. Is that a productive discussion you’re having? And why the pettiness? Why dragging people into this stupid discussion? Why can’t you just do your part as a supposedly respectable online writer and try to highlight that having options is a good thing?

Should we judge how much fun each side of the continental divide is having by how much fun they theoretically could be having, or by how much fun they are having? As it stands, the fun side is not the EU. But hope springs eternal.

Are you incapable of taking the high road? Or is it that you just spent so much time trapped in your own little bubble that you can’t see how sad you sound? You’re a 50-year-old grownup. Why are you behaving like a child, trying to convince others that your toy is the best? We’re living in 2024. Aren’t you tired of keeping these stupid tribalistic sentiments alive? Because frankly, you should.

Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.

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