Weather is here, wish you were fine

Hi folks! This is a quick status update to catch you up on what’s been going on, why I’ve been quiet, and—most importantly—to assure you the blog isn’t dead. I realise my last post was all the way back in... MARCH OF LAST YEAR? wow, that's even worse than I thought.

The biggest thing is that I moved to a new apartment. Moving is consistently rated as one of the most stressful events in a human life, and yet, somehow, everytime I think I can do it better. Well, turns out I can't. The new apartment I moved to needed a LOT of work, such as replacing all the power sockets and heating system, which is why it took about an entire year from my offer to moving in. For the year or so that this move was going on, it consumed most of my time energy and money, which meant I just didn't have the bandwidth required for hobbies like blogging.

Thankfully I've well and truly moved in now. Except for stuff like hanging pictures on the walls, it's all done, which means that I'll hopefully have more time to keep this show on the road going forward. I've never been one of those "never missed an upload day in 10 years" kind of people, even at the best of times. I'm more Hbomberguy and less Linus Tech Tips if you will. So I won't make promises, but I do have some ideas of things I want to talk about so, life permitting, hopefully I'll be posting again sometime in the future.

I also realised that the majority of my blog posts are capital B-Big Ideas: deep dives into big, complex topics that can be very insightful, but also take a long time to polish. While I don't think those posts will ever go away, I also thought that it might be nice to have some more smaller content, that I can produce a bit more frequently. Things like how I use a few scripts to set up a new computer in minutes, (something I’ve refined over years of trial and error), to the editor & other tools I use, some of my open source contributions, maybe slight life updates, stuff like that.

Speaking of producing content, another reason why I haven't taken the time to blog in a while, is that I've been working on an other, much bigger writing project. This project, if I manage to get it across the finish line, will be the biggest one writing wise I'll have done with some margin. I don't want to spoil what it is yet, but it's quite a different beast to my usual work and in a medium I've never attempted before, which is as exciting as it is nerve-wrecking to me. Let's just say, watch this space...

By now, you also may have noticed that the website has a new lick of paint. One of the coolest bits is the new logo. I worked with Samuel Darbouze, (and by "worked with" I mean "I gave him some vague instructions, some money, and then he did all the work for me" but who's keeping track, right?) to create it and I'm incredibly happy with it! Not just because, let's be honest, it looks stunning, but also because Samuel was a joy to work with. He was very helpful in guiding me through the process, so if you ever find yourself in need of some pretty shapes, I would highly recommend his services. (Samuel didn’t ask for this shoutout—it’s just a personal recommendation)

Lastly, I'm also going to do something new: mention the Ko-Fi page I have. I've actually had it for a long time, but I never actually mentioned it, or done much with it before. Ko-Fi, for the uninitiated, is a website where you can tip someone directly. It's the proverbial cap on the ground in front of a street musician.

If you've been around for a while, you might recall that I blogged in the past about why there are no interactables on this website such as comments. I still stand by what I wrote in that post. However, I have also come to accept that does leave some people without a good way to keep up with the blog. So I'm going to be announcing blog posts there as well as monthly updates about the stuff I've been reading, writing and coding for free. So if you want a way to keep up with me, and RSS doesn't gel with you for whatever reason you can follow me there. And hey, if you like what I do, and want to get me a coffee as a thank you, then you can!

All my work is publicly available, ad-free, tracker-free, and popup-free, and I want to keep it that way. However, the move and larger trends have done a number on my financial situation, making it just that bit harder to keep this blog and other hobby projects going. So if you enjoy what I do and want to help me keep it open and skeezy free, consider throwing me a tip! It will help me pay for hosting this website, feed my never ending hunger for books that inspire me to talk about interesting topics, get me an actual coffee while I'm writing, and keep my motivation high.

For those that want a little extra, I'll be trying to flesh it out more over the comming weeks, but I'm still very much working out how I want to run it, so if there are things you would like to see I would love to hear about it!

Moving was a huge challenge, but now that it's behind me I'm excited to come back to blogging. Thanks for sticking around and I'll see you soon (hopefully before march of next year this time).