Update: my wife referred to this as my “moveable grotto,” which is ridiculous, but probably better. Definitely better.

Original: a view from my backyard “desk” just as I was creating the home page for my new “digital” garden.

It started raining a minute or two after this, so I put away my laptop and waited it out because I didn’t want to go back in. It stopped, and now I’m posting this.

Standalone post link: My Backyard Desk

I just corrected an error in my RSS template and site configuration, and now, after months of transmission failure, my notes on this site are propagating to micro.blog. Now that it is working I’m not sure how I actually feel about it.

Actually, I am sure how I feel about it - super vulnerable and shy, and like I might delete that connection any second now, even obscure as it is. I’m still wanting to hide in the dark forest.

Update: I turned it back off. I was just frustrated that it wasn’t working and wanted to figure it out, didn’t think through the ramifications. I’m not ready to re-engage with even that little tiniest corner of the world quite yet.

Standalone post link: mbs

I’m reading The Hobbit with my son at bedtime now.

We hit 21% completion tonight, so according to my new reading update ‘best practices’ I can post about it now.

Standalone post link: Reading The Hobbit with my son

I apparently live in a version of the internet where Derrida’s 1995 lecture-turned-book Archive Fever is trending.

Not long ago, in thinking about the various possibilities of nonfiction writing (more exploration on that later on this site if I turn this into a real digital garden and get around to it) I suddenly recalled reading Derrida’s Dessemination back as a college sophomore in Intro to Critical Theory with a weird sort of fondness for the puns and linguistic games he played. That playfulness kind of infuriated me at the time, but now I think I’m ready for it. (Also the stakes are low for me now - I don’t have a grade to get.) I thought I should maybe read it again or try some more Derrida sometime, just for kicks and weird writing ideas. Looks like Archive Fever may be the thing to read.

I found it, or some version of it, on JSTOR: https://www.jstor.org/stable/465144

(You can read 100 articles a month for free on JSTOR if you are not associated with an institution of higher learning or library which provides access to JSTOR, and I am not associated with such an institution. Like I said, stakes are low.)

Or you could probably find a PDF by a little Googling and clicking around on stuff. A sketchy link to some artist’s PDF download that was probably for some old class and that they probably don’t even realize is publicly accessible seems like an appropriate way to access something called Archive Fever, anyway.

Standalone post link: archivefever.eth

I’m going forward by going back…

I let this site go dormant again, but that was not for lack of unpublished notes, pictures, ideas, etc. – I have physical and digital notebooks full of stuff.

Basically: I get busy, and I also get shy.

What to do about all that could’ve / would’ve stuff?

This a perennial quandary for me, and typically an impediment to moving forward with adding new things to the site.

But this time I’m going to try to not let it hold me back. My intentions are to just start posting things if I feel like it, even if they are “outdated.”

So I may be posting some backdated items.

But more than that, I’m gradually going to build and surface more topic-based static pages on this site, and de-emphasize the reverse-chronological-status-update feed tyranny of the “notes.”

I’m starting to think and design in terms of digital gardening, though I still have a lot to read and learn and look at before I implement.

One of my first plots/beds should probably be documenting this learning and exploring I am doing in regards to digital gardening and site design. Need to build the raised bed and add compost before I plant the seeds, though…

Standalone post link: Going Forward / Going Back

This post’s notes about breadcrumbs helped me figure out some things with my taxonomy list pages today.

In other words, I updated my taxonomy list page template, so as to prepare for a move toward building and surfacing more topic-based pages, supplemented by changelogs such as this.

I also added another instance of the Taxonomy Tree (a.k.a. Tree of Life, a.k.a. Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, a.k.a. Cast Out from the Digital Garden, a.k.a. Site Taxonomy) to the home page of the website, utilizing my now increasingly ubiquitous [+/-] toggle buttons. Again, a move I’m making as I explore ideas around digital gardening. I’m not actually doing digital gardening yet so I don’t have anything to link to - yet.

This is the first semi-official changelog for joshuaw.xyz, and is also the start of me trying to be better about documenting and crediting people when I learn something or pilfer code and ideas from their blog posts.

Standalone post link: 20220613 Changelog - Taxonomy List Pages

Just read the June 2022 issue of Poetry.

Longer, with details: just seriously injured my knee by tripping and falling over my daughter’s bike in the garage - I was rushing through while doing maintenance on our water heater. So, instead of continuing with the water heater, I am laid up with an ice pack in my son’s bedroom, reading the June 2022 issue of Poetry until I feel rested enough to try to go upstairs to my own bedroom.

My favorite entry in the magazine was actually the closing prose essay from Shelby Handler about translating ancient Hebrew texts - “Astrological Speculum,” and Other Objects Found on My Way to the Ancestors

I might write and share more thoughts on the essay at some point - besides being beautifully written and thought provoking, it made me cognizant of some of the Jewish/Hebrew cultural appropriation I once engaged in as a Mormon.

Standalone post link: Reading June 2022 Issue of Poetry

These are:

• two of my favorite albums
• two of my favorite albums to listen to on vinyl, that I own on vinyl¹
• two of my favorite albums that sound like spring to me, though I can’t say why²
• two of my favorite albums that I am listening to on vinyl right now, and noting on my website on this day, for these reasons

Standalone post link: Spring Listening 2022: Turn Into and Everybody Works by Jay Som

I went to Little Dell a month ago, and this is what it was like.

I should go back and see what it is like now.

Standalone post link: Little Dell February

Upgraded the primary domain for this site to its final form here at the end of the internet:

Welcome to joshuaw.xyz

(Also updated the introductory text of my home page a bit to reflect this change.)

Standalone post link: welcome to joshua w dot xyz