a stream

Cleaning up a bit to begin actively using and sharing this site in 2024.

• Home page:
  • slightly modified introductory blurb
  • created a placeholder for my unfinished “Why he/they?” essay
  • created a “Featured Note” section on the home page and populated it using a new taxonomic parameter
  • temporarily reduced numbers of ‘recent updates’ displayed so that only updates that are actually recent are displayed
  • temporarily hid gallery images until I share more recent images in future updates
  • temporarily hid the “Featured / Longer Things” links as I evaluate whether I want to feature those things going forward.
• Updated the menu, clearing out “digital garden references”
• Updated the header to display differently on all pages except the home page
• Updated the title and blurb for the taxonomy tree page
• Updated the ‘Now’ page, making it a ‘Now and Next’ page

Standalone post link: joshuawxyz changelog 20240101

A new year, a new arbitrary occasion to start up this website again and think about sharing things and engaging with people on the internet again.

Let’s do it!

I’m going to first practice sharing daily or frequent notes and status updates exclusively here on my own website, and see how it feels.

I’m going to continue to read and lurk and learn in some places and from some people who inspire me and are doing the types of things I want and hope to do on the internet; I’m going to try not to be parasocial or toxic about it. Maybe awkward and a little bit weird about it, though. I can’t really help that.

If my practice here feels right I’ll start engaging with more blogs/networks/platforms directly, and possibly start a syndication process.

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while - I’m just using the new year designation (not to mention the impending end of my holiday work break) as an occasion to act.

Standalone post link: New Year's Day 2024 Website Note

Some things I’m working on and thinking about now…

Now

• I’ve started up this website again.

Next

• Winter break is almost gone - I’m returning to work later this week.

• Taking up snowshoeing.

• Might still actually plant perennial/wildflower seeds in my front garden on New Year’s Day in hopes they will cold stratify in the ground and sprout in the coming spring and summer.

• Create and update activity logs on this website and on topic-specific social media platforms such as AllTrails, Goodreads, Last.fm, and Letterboxd.

• Cultivate a more consistent writing and learning practice through notemaking and zettelkasten-ish methods, and share some of the results on this website.

This page was last updated on January 1, 2024. See my prior ‘now’ updates here.

Credit for the ‘now’ page concept goes to Derek Sivers. I tend to get aspirational when I update it, so I’ve decided to embrace that by calling it ‘now and next.’ +

Standalone post link: Now and Next (January 1, 2024)

This is a placeholder for an essay I hope to finish and publish here someday exploring my thoughts on this topic.

Standalone post link: Why He/They?

Standalone post link: My 2023 Reading Log

I kind of forgot how my website works. Oops.

And if anyone out there actually subscribes to this RSS, just a heads up that I am messing with it and it is about to change to be more conventially formatted…

Standalone post link: Forgot

Here are some of the things I’m working on and thinking about now…

• Finishing up a winter holiday break and starting the new year with this ‘now’ update. Spent a lot of nice, casual time with my family, and successfully avoided doing any work off the clock, other than glancing at my email occasionally and making a few notes and plans (see below.)

• I’m trying my hand at digital gardening and note-making in earnest, using Obsidian as my primary tool. My new digital garden is private, but I may publish elements of it here once I get things more established.

• Winter break work plan, which I hope I can hold to once actually back at work: also adopt a digital gardening approach at work, with a view to develop a new knowledgebase for library and technology staff, create and curate more learning resources, etc. Our websites and instructions are showing their years.

• Developing new workflows and methods for MARC record acquisition/creation/editing and other obscure but necessary library and technology inventory tasks so as to be able to focus more energy on digital collection development and the resource creation mentioned above.

• Trying to predict the Newbery by focusing a lot of my reading on middle grade books, especially some of the likely contenders. Goal is to predict the Newbery or at least to have a good chance of already having read the winner before it wins. Underlying, better goal is simply to find/read/recommend good books for kids.

• Getting beyond overthinking and overreading about films and finally just going to see a bunch of movies. I’ve joined a flexible 2023 watch challenge on Letterboxd, and then I’ve created two other watch challenges for myself: the Silent Films x Public Domain Challenge 2023 and Spielberg 2023.

This page was last updated on January 3, 2023. See my prior ‘now’ updates here.

Credit for the ‘now’ page concept goes to Derek Sivers. +

Standalone post link: Now (January 2, 2023)

It has only been two days since I started posting on my site again and also syndicating the posts to various places, and I’m finally ready to admit:

1. it is in fact a huge pain in the ass to use Hugo as a microblog (at least the way I have mine set up)

2. my syndications to twitter and tumblr don’t quite work like I hoped they would, and I’m not sure what the point of them is, even if I could get them working better

3. I started obsessively looking at my old twitter account feed yesterday after being off it for a couple of years, and I think I still don’t want to re-engage with that at this point in time

My micro.blog syndication works okay, but I’m not following anyone there offficially and probably not posting stuff that will get featured in their “discover” feed. Still flirting with the idea of going all-in on micro.blog, though, because it would be easy and because whenever I look at the discover feed I learn stuff and am inspired by the people who share there. Have followed a bunch of people I’ve found there via RSS or newsletter subscriptions.

I admit I also still learned stuff from scrolling my old twitter feed yesterday, but I also saw a whole lot of garbage and got nearly sucked into several dramas and controversies that don’t actually concern or interest me. It took too much time and drained too much energy sifting for gold on twitter. I need to go through all my good twitter follows and find their blogs or what not, move the ones I like into RSS where I can avoid some of the junk.

Standalone post link: RE: Scattering

Finished reading Kwame Alexander’s The Door of No Return last night, and then started on Christina Soontornvat’s The Last Mapmaker. (I’m only at ~8% on Mapmaker so I’m breaking my self-imposed “only post an update if you are at least 20% of the way through the book” rule.)

Standalone post link: ''readingthedoorofnoreturn''

Finished reading Windswept by Margi Preus last night, and then started in on The Door of No Return by Kwame Alexander [~35%].

Getting into an active reading mode with books of my own choosing. It has been awhile.

Standalone post link: Reading Update - November 26, 2022