Over at grid.tzyl.nl I’ve started playing with CSS grids, with the ultimate aim to build a ‘brick layer’ IndieWeb compatible theme for WordPress.
The idea is to find a form factor that does not clearly say ‘this is a blog’ or ‘this is a wiki’, but presents a slightly confusing mix of stock and flow / garden and stream, something that shows the trees and the forest at the same time. (I’ll stop mixing metaphors now.) So as to invite visitors to explore with a sense of wonder, rather than read the latest or read hierarchically. At the back-end nothing will fundamentally change, there still will be blogposts and pages with their current URLs, and the same-as-now feeds for them to subscribe to. But the occasional visitor will have a very different starting point.
The theme’s working title is Tondriaan, as in me and Mondriaan (who was born in my hometown). The painting below was the first inspiration source, with its ‘bricks’ and one of them having a sort-of capital T in it (as in Ton).
Detail of Tableau no. 2 / Composition no. V, by Piet Mondriaan, 1914. Currently in the MoMa collection. (The painting is in the public domain, and straightforward images thereof as well)
@ton looking good
In terms of work a better week than last week, with its overkill of video calls. But I do feel a bit dogged down, not much sparkle at the moment.
This week I:
Worked on my usual projects for two provinces for most of the time
Prepared for next week’s general assembly of the Dutch Creative Commons chapter (I’m its treasurer)
Learned about using CSS grids
Made up a new Dutch word
Was interviewed for two hours about the Impact through Connection project I did with Frisian libraries. They are working on a low threshold guide for librarians to do these type of things themselves.
Celebrated the St Maarten with Y, the Dutch ‘trick or treat’ version (singing a song for some candy)
Worked on writing and finishing a project proposal
Discussed another project proposal with a client
Got asked to discuss a third potential project. With the other two it means the first half of 2021 is looking busy already
Did some invoicing
Participated in the biggest Dutch actually existing conspiracy, and perpetrated on children, Sinterklaas, who arrived in the country this Saturday, and Y receiving a first small gift in her shoe this morning. It was two Playmobil figurines of a queen and king, both with crowns. (I had accidentally stepped on and broken a crown of a Playmobil queen that was actually my own toy from 40 yrs ago.) To be rewarded with “Oh, this is really perfect!” My old queen figurine has now become the queen mother (she already had a little princess, so three generations of Playmobil queens now reside in the toy house she has.)
Participated in IndieWebCamp East 2020, enjoying two good introductory talks on designing for cognitive bias and variable fonts
As part of IndieWebCamp started shaping my site for presentation slides. At tonz.eu I’ve now uploaded some presentations in English. At tonz.nl I have a Dutch language one. Still playing around with those sites, but for the presentations I uploaded I have now embedded them in the blogposts they belong in. A page for a presentation, e.g. this one at Open Belgium in 2018 about data inventories, points to my blog, the download, the slide viewer, and shows the slides, or if available a video. They all have nice short memorable urls (e.g. tonz.eu/inventories/, that I can put on the slides themselves before giving the presentation. Next week I am giving a guest lecture, and I will put this set-up to use pro-actively for the first time.
Een jaar geleden sloeg ik deze blogpost op in Day One om later nog eens terug te lezen. Goed, er zijn 365 dagen verstreken, maar vanochtend heb ik het verhaal van Chris met plezier terug gelezen. De discussie in de blogpost gaat over de rol van blogs en het format van blogposts in persoonlijke online communicatie. Enorm meta allemaal, my kind of content. Dat ik deze blogpost terugvind in mijn dagelijkse “Vandaag op deze dag” in Day One, moet een vorm van kosmische interventie zijn. Gisteren schreef ik hier en in mijn nieuwsbrief nog over de intersectie van nieuwsbrieven en genetwerkte notities. Ton onderzoekt hoe hij zijn site een andere vormfactor kan geven, die meer tussen blog en wiki ligt. Nu lees ik bij Chris over het format van blogs en hoe ze als centraal moederschip functioneren in je digitale netwerk.
Het zet mij net zo goed weer aan het denken. Nu ik hier bijna 20 jaar aan blogposts heb verzameld is het de vraag wat de onderlinge samenhang is. Veel oudere posts zijn meer onderbroeken-lol tweets, maar soms zitten er momenten en herinneringen tussen die de moeite waard zijn om aan het hier en nu te verbinden. Het gebrek aan consistent metadata toevoegen draagt er nog steeds niet aan bij dat hier een goed te navigeren commonplace book ontstaat. Meer flarden van ideeën en losse conceptjes. Een frankopedia heb ik het wel eens genoemd.
Ik vind dat ik weer meer tijd moet besteden aan sharpening the saw. Niet constant bezig zijn met het schrijven en publiceren, maar werken aan het platform om dat meer robuust te maken. Bijvoorbeeld met duidelijk vindbare thematische verzamelingen, zoals mijn WordPress en Indieweb serie. Of het uitlichten van specifieke posts die ik belangrijk vind op een /Start-pagina.
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