Thoughts
Think of this like tweets but on my own website. I haven’t used this in a while but wanted to keep it up for posterity.
If you’re looking for longer form content check out my blog.
Does anyone actually keep their digital garden?
The more I look at people’s digital gardens from lists of examples the more I just find abandoned ones. I suspect abandonment is because of the mental overhead of having to do bidirectional linking.
PermalinkI Dont Like Dark Mode
Why are so many people obsessed with dark mode on the web? It makes web pages claustrophobic and a visual mess. Give me light mode any day of the week.
PermalinkTesting Hugo migration
I just moved my site to Hugo. Checking my iOS shortcut still works!
PermalinkFamily and Community are equally important
The opposite ends of the political spectrum emphasise community and family more than the other.
Both miss the point. We can’t reduce ourselves down to individual units within a community as the communists and socialists would do.
But we also can’t segregate ourselves by family as those on the right would.
We need to have families as the smallest social unit, that is God given. But we then need those families to be linked in like-minded communities.
Ideally those communities are based around something like a church. It sets a basic expectation of belief in the same things and holding the same values.
Two challenges to this are consumerism and the ease of movement. We treat churches like a product to consume, not a community to enter into. We also live further from our churches and those we should form community with.
PermalinkIt must be hard to see God’s glory in the cities
We’re told that nature proclaims God’s glory. When people are stuck in cities they are deprived of that. I’m convinced more and more that cities should be avoided as they are turning into modern Babylons.
PermalinkIdle Farming Game
It would be super cool to have an idle farming game with similar aesthetics/vibes to Coral Island. Something you can have running throughout the day while to work that you just keep an eye on.
PermalinkThe beauty of owning your social media
Owning the algorithm or your own social media means you don’t have to listen to people you don’t want to.
Pearl clutchers will say “what about echo chambers?!”. I don’t really care. I don’t have a duty to ensure my SOCIALmedia is diverse. I have a duty to ensure my general life is not an echo chamber.
PermalinkPolygamist restorationism was not on the bingo card
The weirdest Twitter debate I’ve had to endure is with “Christian” polygamists who claim that monogamy was grafted in from Roman beliefs.
PermalinkThe Biggest Red Flag of Modern Churches
The biggest red flag is husband/wife co-pastors. When they face opposition they will not hesitate to back each other up even if they’re wrong.
Also the fact that it’s unbiblical.
PermalinkI am Thankful
Spending my evening listening to my favourite artists and songs. Pulling out the ones that touch my soul, that remind of all the goodness God has given me.
PermalinkHome At Last
Who is there at the end of lonesome roads? All of us hope there’s a home. A place to rest where wounds get dressed, the table’s full. The sound of laughter in the halls.
Light the fire, gather ‘round. Join together, sing it loud. Raise the glass and joyful be. Home at last, one family.
A vision of what I want my family to be.
PermalinkSuper productive day
For the first time in a while I’ve managed to clear the days todo list!
PermalinkSystems free us from goals
“It’s simply no fun to predicate your happiness on whether you reach your goals. Failing to reach your goals will lead to disappointment and dwindling motivation levels. Even reaching your goals can lead to a dead end and a flawed mentality. Many “winners”—in sports or other competitive arenas, such as business—develop a distorted sense of self-worth, leaving them vulnerable to up-and-coming opponents or negligent about behaving themselves in ordinary society because of our twisted hero-worship of winners and the wealthy.”
— The Primal Blueprint, Mark Sisson
Systems and habits when built around quality of life free us from the dread of reaching goals.
If we trust our systems then we don’t need to set goals. They will just happen.
PermalinkFood quality over food quantity
Growing up I developed the mindset to choose food that allowed me to eat the most. Going out for food was an exercise in “how unhealthy can I eat?”.
This wasn’t started or encouraged by anyone other than myself. Now that I’m learning more about food health I am learning to focus on food quality. I can eat less and healthier and still be satisfied.
PermalinkPrimal Blueprint exercise
This is pulled from The Primal Blueprint.
- Day 1: Two-hour low intesity hike/walk
- Day 2: Easy 45 minute spin bike & 15 minute walk
- Day 3: 15-30 minute strength session (8/10 on scale). Focus on pull-ups, push-ups, squats and planks. 15 minute walk
- Day 4: Rest
- Day 5: Easy 45 minute spin bike or hike
- Day 6: Sprint session, 20 minutes including warmup and cooldown
- Day 7: 10 minute strength session (6/7 on scale)
Write code just for yourself
When you code a tool for yourself, open source it but don’t sweat over making it work for everyone. Focus on your own use cases first. Make the tool something YOU want to use.
PermalinkOur brains like a challenge
Instead of outsourcing as much brain function as possible to technology, make a habit of challenging your brain during your routine daily endeavors. Replay your favorite song and try to memorize the lyrics, bust out your school yearbook and try to recall the names of your long-lost classmates, or add up numbers in your head instead of always relying on a calculator.
— The Primal Blueprint, Mark Sisson
This is something I can identify quite clearly. I enjoy trying to remember names from school and look them up on Facebook. Recall is a fun thing to do!
PermalinkWe consume but we don’t chew
”In the workplace, the mismanagement of information overload from email, text, instant chat, and the like—all available on mobile devices to boot—can stifle creativity and innovation, not to mention diminish our energy levels, motivation, and health. Consequently, many of us operate in a reactive mode, constantly—and often futilely—trying to keep pace with the information with which we are bombarded.”
– The Primal Blueprint, Mark Sisson
We gorge ourselves on information but never take the time to chew it and truly take it in, giving ourselves an “intellectual tummy ache”.
PermalinkI love my website
It’s like an epiphany. I’ve made website look like something I enjoy! I just like visiting it to look at it!
PermalinkCan safety make things more dangerous?
“For example, the removal of bike lane striping on a roadway may actually make cycling safer by increasing driver vigilance. This seemingly counterintuitive concept speaks to the power of nurturing our natural instincts to navigate potentially hazardous situations effectively when we are not pacified by excessive safety measures.” - The Primal Blueprint, Mark Sisson
PermalinkHomestead imagery to explain self hosting
The idea of a Homestead being this productive space that supports you and is built by you could be a good analogy for self-hosting and owning your identity online. Self-hosted services are like the working part of the homestead. Your personal website is like your house. Your social accounts are like going off the homestead to connect and exchange with other homesteads.
PermalinkWhat do I want out of content online?
- Spiritually fed
- Intellectually stimulated (caveat: on things of significance to my life)
- Aware of the news locally
- Entertained by high quality (not doomscrolling dopamine hits)
We need to rewire our brains
The gap between technological innovation and psychological preparation is increasingly widening. We are letting our technology shape us and not the other way around. How do we instil an ethic in children that technology/AI is a servant not a master?
PermalinkMarkdown is superior for blogging
Markdown definitely has the advantage of database-based methods of blogging. To interact with your content you have to have a layer of DB software over the top. Markdown is plain text. On the flip side you need more code to mould Markdown into a structured website, but I think this is a good trade off. The most important stuff (your thoughts) are immediately accessible.
PermalinkIndieWeb seems a bit old
Something I’ve noticed looking at different IndieWeb implementations is that lots of them are OLD. Many have stopped being maintained or are straight up not used anymore.
PermalinkTreat Mastodon like RSS
I’m starting to learn that Mastodon relies much more heavily on your curation of following, hashtags and mute list. Twitter algorithmically helps you along but Mastodon does not. Spending time being intentional about who and what you listen to goes a long way. This is similar to RSS where you make a conscious decision to add more noise (or signal) to your reading list. Maybe Nostr should have better controls like this
PermalinkNot enough hours in the day?
If there aren’t enough hours in the day, maybe we’re trying to do too much?
PermalinkFresh air helps a lot
Being away this week taking in scenic views and fresh air is good for the soul. It’s a reminder that we are made to experience God’s creation and not just be stuck indoors. Thank you God for the wonder of the world you’ve made.
PermalinkRSS makes life better
RSS and a smidge of willpower stops me from doom scrolling and constantly checking the news. This is the way the internet needs to be now. Sifting the chaff to find the wheat.
PermalinkPersonal sites vs Personal brands
It’s refreshing to view my website as my own rather than building a brand. It’s more authentic, it shows who I am over time. Building brands around ourselves is purely vain and glory seeking.
PermalinkPermission to read something more than once
I’m on holiday. I can read something I’ve read before if I enjoyed it!
PermalinkNostr website integrations
It would be cool to integrate pulling nostr notes into a page on a website. I guess this ties in with the idea of creating a “unified feed” that shows all your posts from across the internet.
PermalinkGrape nuts, now in Tesco
Grape nuts, a distinctively American cereal are now in Tesco. Maybe now I can understand why John Piper is such a fan of them.
PermalinkDoes static work for IndieWeb?
Ive been learning about IndieWeb today and it seems very interesting. I also really enjoyed reading 100 things you can do on your personal website.
It seems to me though that the only way to do a lot of the things listed is to have a server side generated website. Having a statically generated website doesn’t allow for some of the things suggested.
This has got me thinking about how we view personal websites. They can either be static, fairly unchanging, notice boards or they can be a space for ourselves on the internet. Server side generated websites allow the flexibility on the fly for this idea of a space on the internet.
PermalinkChristians shouldn't be always online.
The fragmentation of discourse social media into X, Mastodon, Bluesky and Nostr has only served to increasingly politicise conversations on them.
This is unhealthy for me and Christians in general. We start to interpret the world through politics which then shapes our faith, rather than the other way around.
Leveraging tools such as RSS we can be more selective with what we see and also control its frequency.
PermalinkThe best CRM is a prayer list
When trying to maintain multiple relationships/friendships the best way is through a prayer list.
Review it every week, who is coming up that I should pray for? I should reach out and see how they’re doing so my prayer intentions are up to date.
PermalinkUsing statistics in sermons
While the use of statistics to make a point about the world is well intentioned I wonder whether it is truly effective.
The only place I hear statistics used to make a point is:
- Sermons
- Business meetings
This is just a theory, but if a congregant or non-believer who works in an office context hears a statistic used in a sermon their mind engages into “business mode”. Taking it in as facts and figures used to come away with new information that they can act on.
That may sound good on the surface but shouldn’t preaching be a supernatural experience where the listener engaged with God?
PermalinkThe beauty of Zettelkasten visually
I’m starting to experiment with Zettelkasten (or a lite version of it) in Obsidian. I’ve come across this video that shows how someone’s graph has changed over time.
What I particularly like about it is that at the start there are a lot of orphaned notes that eventually get more interconnected. It helps reinforce the point that adequate links don’t need to be made straight off the bat to be “doing it right”. What matters is the long term revisiting and maintaining of the webs of thought.
PermalinkPublic speakers are no longer assessed on moral character
“The orator persuades by moral character when his speech is delivered in such a manner as to render him worthy of confidence; for we feel confidence in a greater degree and more readily in persons of worth in regard to everything in general…” - Aristotle, Rhetoric
This may have held true in Aristotle’s time but certainly does not hold true now. We see in our politicians the desire to pander to the population, to tickle their ears. The population are no better, they want their causes championed and consequences be damned if they support a candidate who is morally bankrupt to get it.
PermalinkWhere are the mobile friendly CMSes?
I’ve started using Decap CMS with this website. What baffles me is that out of the available CMSes for static sites none of them support using them on mobile.
What I would love is a CMS that I can access on the go to upload thoughts. Hopefully one will come up soon.
PermalinkCommunion is God's gift to us
“Instead, Luther and the other Reformers wanted people to know that the sacrament is a place where we come to meet with Christ Himself, in whom alone grace is to be found. The supper is not our sacrifice offered to God, but God’s gift offered to us.” - The Lord’s Supper, Jonathan Black
PermalinkCompelling careers start complex
“Compelling careers often have complex origins that reject the idea that all you have to do is follow your passion” - Cal Newport, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, pg. 13
I’m often the joke of conversation about careers considering I’ve had 4 jobs in 6 years (by my own choice). It isn’t wrong for me to move with what is compelling, but what is the end goal?
PermalinkWe will win
“Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.” - Karis Nemik, Andor TV Series
The advantage we have as Christian’s is that we will win. Not in the political sphere, but in the spiritual sphere. Every small victory expands the Kingdom. Random acts of rebellion across the world all working for a common cause.
PermalinkBeing a good father and husband
Being a good father and husband isn’t about the monumental but the ordinary.
If we think of it with the Pareto Principle:
- The Monumental - 20% of life that takes 80% of the effort
- The Ordinary - 80% of life that takes 20% of the effort
Sometimes this can feel flipped around where “The Ordinary” takes up 80% of our effort.
What I see in my life is that I obsess too much over “getting it right”, burning my energy on things that don’t need it.
PermalinkKierkergaard on life
“Life isn’t a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced” -Soren Kierkegaard
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