2025-08-15 19:00:00
This is the 103rd edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Loren Stephens and his blog, ldstephens.net
To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
If you're enjoying the People and Blogs series and you want to see it grow, consider supporting on Ko-Fi.
I'm Loren Stephens, and I recently turned 80. I'm originally from California, but now I live in central New Jersey with my partner, Lisa, our dog, Trix, and a flock of chickens (yes, they all have names) on our 10-acre property. We also have an abundance of wildlife roaming through.
I retired in 2009, so it's been a while since I've had to get up and go to work every day. Before retiring, I spent 25 years in the automotive industry, 12 years in finance, and 8 years in advertising and media.
These days, I spend my time with Lisa and our animals, looking after our land (which is certified by New Jersey as a wildlife habitat). My routine is pretty consistent, I get my daily exercise, tinker with tech like Jack Baty, read a lot, and handle whatever needs doing around the property. Probably sounds boring, but it works for me.
I've had several blogs over the years. The first one I remember was on Blogger, sometime after Google bought it in 2003. Honestly, I have no idea what I was writing about back then.
ldstephens.net started on WordPress.com in 2016, around the time I was switching from PC and Android to Apple. I was excited to learn how to use my new iPhone and Mac--and to figure out what apps I should be using. That's when I discovered Mac Power Users. I listened to every episode from the start, and I'm still listening today.
I was learning so much that I wanted to share what I found. I started blogging in the hope that someone else might stumble across my posts and discover something helpful or interesting about using Apple gear. That's still a lot of what I write about today. But I also write for myself to think through ideas and document what I'm learning.
Last year, I started experimenting with the static site generator 11ty and found a WordPress importer. I migrated my blog, and now it's built with 11ty and hosted on Netlify.
It's pretty straightforward. I write all my posts in Markdown with front matter, using Drafts on my Mac. Once the post feels ready, I save it to my Desktop and name the file with the post slug.
From there, I drag the file into a Dropzone action that moves it into the right folder in my local 11ty project. If needed, I'll open the project in VS Code to make any final edits. Then I use GitHub Desktop to commit and push the changes. Netlify takes care of publishing the site.
I like to keep the whole process simple and flexible.
Not really. Being retired, I write when I feel like it, with no schedule, and because I enjoy it. I usually write on my Mac, sitting somewhere quiet in the house. I try to keep things simple and low pressure.
My blog is a static site built with 11ty, using HTML and CSS, and deployed on Netlify. It automatically deploys whenever I push changes to the public GitHub repo.
For writing posts, tweaking the design, or adding features, I work in VS Code. I draft posts in Markdown using Drafts, then add them to the site in VS Code. I do it all on my M4 MacBook Pro.
Yes. If I were starting a blog today, knowing what I know now, I'd use a static site generator from the start. I've learned enough HTML and CSS to build and maintain a simple static site, and I like the control it gives me.
For someone who doesn't have the time or interest to mess with static site generators, I'd suggest starting with something simple like Pika or maybe Bear if you want a little more flexibility. I'd recommend staying away from WordPress, it's too much overhead for a personal blog.
My blog is free to run. 11ty, GitHub, and Netlify are all free to use, and I don’t track analytics. The only cost is $20 a year for the domain. As for making money from it, I’m not interested. It’s free and always will be for anyone to read.
I’m fine with donation buttons like Ko-Fi or Buy Me a Coffee on other people’s blogs. But if an indie blogger starts putting some or all of their content behind a paywall, I’m done. The real question is whether the income from these efforts actually makes a difference financially. I bet in 99.9% of cases, it doesn’t. By switching to a paywalled model, they probably annoy a lot of their loyal readers. So why bother?
Here are a few indie bloggers I enjoy reading, and I don't think they've been interviewed on People and Blogs yet:
I don’t have much going on in the way of side projects right now; the blog is my main creative outlet. I still enjoy listening to Mac Power Users, which got me started down this path, and I keep up with a few other Apple-focused podcasts and indie blogs through RSS.
When it comes to websites I enjoy, I like simple personal blogs where people write about what interests them. I appreciate clean, distraction-free sites with thoughtful writing.
I just enjoy learning new things and writing about them.
PS: I don’t do social media, so the only place you’ll find me is on my blog.
This was the 103rd edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Loren. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and all supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
Jamie Thingelstad (RSS) — Piet Terheyden — Eleonora — Carl Barenbrug (RSS) — Steve Ledlow (RSS) — Paolo Ruggeri (RSS) — Nicolas Magand (RSS) — Rob Hope — Chris Hannah (RSS) — Pedro Corá (RSS) — Sixian Lim (RSS) — Matt Stein (RSS) — Winnie Lim (RSS) — Flamed (RSS) — C Jackdaw (RSS) — Kevin Humdrum (RSS) — Fabricio Teixeira (RSS) — Rosalind Croad — Mike Walsh (RSS) — Markus Heurung (RSS) — Michael Warren (RSS) — Chuck Grimmett (RSS) — Bryan Maniotakis (RSS) — Barry Hess (RSS) — Ivan Moreale — Ben Werdmuller (RSS) — Cory Gibbons — Luke Harris (RSS) — Lars-Christian Simonsen (RSS) — Cody Schultz — Brad Barrish (RSS) — Nikita Galaiko — Erik Blankvoort — Jaga Santagostino — Andrew Zuckerman — Mattia Compagnucci (RSS) — Thord D. Hedengren (RSS) — Fabien Sauser (RSS) — Maxwell Omdal — Numeric Citizen (RSS) — Jarrod Blundy (RSS) — Andrea Contino (RSS) — Sebastian De Deyne (RSS) — Nicola Losito (RSS) — Lou Plummer (RSS) — Leon Mika (RSS) — Neil Gorman (RSS) — Reaper (RSS) — Matt Rutherford (RSS) — Aleem Ali (RSS) — Nikkin (RSS) — Hans (RSS) — Matt Katz (RSS) — Ilja Panić — Emmanuel Odongo — Peter Rukavina (RSS) — James (RSS) — Adam Keys (RSS) — Alexey Staroselets (RSS) — John L — Minsuk Kang (RSS) — Naz Hamid (RSS) — Ken Zinser (RSS) — Jan — Grey Vugrin (RSS) — Luigi Mozzillo (RSS) — Alex Hyett (RSS) — Andy Piper — Hrvoje Šimić (RSS) — Travis Schmeisser — Doug Jones — Vincent Ritter (RSS) — Shen — Fabian Holzer (RSS) — Courtney (RSS) — Dan Ritz (RSS) — İsmail Şevik (RSS) — Jeremy Bassetti (RSS) — Luke Dorny (RSS) — Thomas Erickson — Herman Martinus (RSS) — Benny (RSS) — Annie Mueller (RSS) — SekhmetDesign — Gui (RSS) — Jamie (RSS) — Juha Liikala (RSS) — Ray (RSS) — Chad Moore (RSS) — Benjamin Wittorf (RSS) — Radek Kozieł (RSS) — Marcus Richardson — Emily Moran Barwick (RSS) — Gosha (RSS) — Manton Reece (RSS) — Silvano Stralla (RSS) — Benjamin Chait (RSS) — Cai Wingfield — Pete (RSS) — Pete Millspaugh (RSS) — Martin Matanovic (RSS) — Coinciding Narratives (RSS) — Arun Venkatesan (RSS) — fourohfour.net (RSS) — Jonathan Kemper — Bookofjoe (RSS) — Marius Masalar (RSS) — Jim Mitchell (RSS) — Simon Howard (RSS) — Frederick Vanbrabant (RSS) — Thibault Malfoy (RSS) — Beradadisini (RSS) — x-way (RSS) — Caleb Hailey (RSS) — Vincent Geoffray — TAONAW (RSS) — Sebastián Monía (RSS) — grubz (RSS) — Sal (RSS)
If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can:
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my generous supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
2025-08-10 13:45:00
It’s Sunday the 10th, the first full week of August is about to end, which means it’s time to check in on my totally arbitrary hiking challenge. As a reminder, the goal is to log at least 4810 meters of total ascent while hiking up the mountains, with two extra stretch goals set at 6961 and 8848 meters.
After 10 days (including a few rainy ones), I am sitting at 1804 meters (and also 42.8km walked), so I’m on pace for around 5500 meters, which is easily over the goal. Having said that, I am typing this at 7:40 in the morning, and I’m currently debating if I should go for another hike today.
The issue with this plan is that the hike I want to do has more than 1000 meters of ascent, and the forecast is saying temperatures can go up to 39°. The combination of these two things is not very appealing at the moment. But I am an idiot, and I’ve done things just as stupid in my life, so I might go for it anyway. I guess we’ll see.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my generous supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
2025-08-08 19:00:00
This is the 102nd edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Alexandra and her blog, xandra.cc
To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
If you're enjoying the People and Blogs series and you want to see it grow, consider supporting on Ko-Fi.
this the hardest question! i’m alexandra! i’m in my mid-30s. i’m originally from the south but now live in the pacific northwest. i did the better part of a decade living in san francisco, and i can attest that leaving your heart there is inevitable when you move away.
i am trying to break myself from the habit of launching into work when describing myself, so i’ll start with these. i’m a bardic (level 1) druid in OBOD and deeply revere nature. i am a poet, a writer, and i dabble in visual arts. i am a legal marriage officiant. i have a boyfriend of three years who lives with me and our dog, pepper, in our home. i used to be a hardcore gamer, but i find myself playing cozy games these days. i am not very good at cooking, but i’m an excellent baker. i forget names constantly, but i never forget a face. i write lowercase-only in all of my personal work to distinguish it from my serious professional writing, which has always had rules and guidelines and policies that aren’t quite as flexible to be fun. i prefer to play with expectations of language, grammar, and wordplay in my writing, and doing that in traditional case feels … off.
i’ve been working on websites for over two-thirds of my life. i started in 1997/1998, just thinking the internet was complete magic. i ended up becoming a journalist with a coding problem, and that led me to working in tech- and tech-adjacent positions alongside my reporter role. (i eventually pivoted into digital content, and my consistent field for the last 10 years has been web content management.) i’d always just hopped on new tools as they emerged, becoming an early adopter of platforms like twitter, and with that came lessons in how people engaged with content and read/consume online.
i rejoined “this side of the web” during the pandemic, when i was feeling nostalgic and wondering where the internet “went” (turns out: nowhere). my latest personal site, xandra.cc, launched in 2021.
oh, and i’ve been called “incredibly verbose.”
i launched the library of alexandra after some egging on by flamed. i have always had a sour taste in my mouth related to being called a capital-b blogger left over from journalism school, but i thought it was important to have a place for me to be able to ramble as long as i’d like about the minute and perhaps boring details of my life in addition to commentary on things going on. i often see folks lament blogging because they don’t feel as if they do enough to “warrant” a blog entry, but i think having so-called “smaller” moments in these blogging spaces (that are often oversaturated with nazel-gazing about coding projects, software development, or careers–said lovingly, of course!) is important to see and read to understand others while navigating our lives outside of the internet. i enjoy reading others’ blogs because i do not think the way they do, and i want to understand their perspective and outlook. i truly believe we learn from each other through our personal websites and blogs, and hope more folks write more about their lives and less about their work. just trying to be the change i want to see!
usually, it looks like me rattling off about something to my partner too much. (not that he minds!) but i get tossed up between whether or not something belongs on mastodon versus my blog. i think i treat my blog a bit like assuming you’re searching out this type of content rather than on the fediverse, which can just put your posts in front of folks.
i write the entry all at once. it’s typically late at night before bed. i read it over once and, if it’s particularly spicy, i might send it off to a friend for reading over before publishing. after i publish, i’ll read it over once again to check for glaring errors. (i only seem to catch them after publication.)
i wish i was one of those people who could type away in a coffee shop, but i just get too distracted. my ideal creative environment is cool (not cold), alone, and either at night or from a vista i don’t mind daydreaming at, with one of my keyboards that sound particularly soothing when typing a long spell. different keyboards for different activities!
i do think physical space can influence my creativity. if my desk is messy, i tend to do more creative work but feeling overwhelmed and stressed. on the other end, if my desk is clean, i find myself doing more productive or organizational tasks.
i’m also in the process of moving all of my productivity tools over to a self-hosted nextcloud instance, and setting all of that up does feel like it’s keeping me on track with my creative projects.
hell yeah, broseph! i really like supporting independent web projects if i can, so i opt to use services and projects specifically made by small teams or individuals: bearblog for my blog, chyrp lite for my microblog, and neocities for my personal website.
i would absolutely not try to pigeonhole my content into specific buckets. i thought it’d help me with coming up with essay ideas, but i find myself limited by not really wanting to create additional categories. i’d also change the CSS theming sooner; i used default link styling and the font family used in the theme i picked, but it was really irking me for a while since i enjoy long link text.
i pay $50/year for bearblog’s paid subscription, $5/month for neocities, and $10/month for my shared hosting on dreamhost for my side projects.
honestly, i think the future of content work and content creation is centered around supporting individual and small team creators individually rather than paying for streaming services or legacy media companies. you see this already with 404 media’s flourishing; patreon, onlyfans, ko-fi, ghost… the amount of tools that are being streamlined and improved upon is exploding for bloggers, content creators, and independent developers to make their living essentially crowdsourced. i think anything we can do to gain independence and self-sufficiency outside of a system that is designed to rule/control/manipulate us (e.g. big tech platforms) is a net positive.
the bearblog discovery feed is one of the coolest feeds i’ve seen in a while–just the variation of content is so nice to see. and being able to see so much written by real humans feels really, really nice. i recommend going through and finding your next favorite blogger there. there’s something for everyone.
suggesting someone new is so hard because you’ve already interviewed so many of my friends! i’ll throw these 32-bit cafe members out whose blogs i really enjoy:
amazing people and amazing writings! :)
yeah! you’re so cool for doing this! p&b is definitely a gem in the indieweb. :)
if you want to follow more of my stuff, here’s what i’ve been working on lately:
This was the 102nd edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Alexandra. Make sure to follow her blog (RSS) and get in touch with her if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and all supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
Jamie Thingelstad (RSS) — Piet Terheyden — Eleonora — Carl Barenbrug (RSS) — Steve Ledlow (RSS) — Paolo Ruggeri (RSS) — Nicolas Magand (RSS) — Rob Hope — Chris Hannah (RSS) — Pedro Corá (RSS) — Sixian Lim (RSS) — Matt Stein (RSS) — Winnie Lim (RSS) — Flamed (RSS) — C Jackdaw (RSS) — Kevin Humdrum (RSS) — Fabricio Teixeira (RSS) — Rosalind Croad — Mike Walsh (RSS) — Markus Heurung (RSS) — Michael Warren (RSS) — Chuck Grimmett (RSS) — Bryan Maniotakis (RSS) — Barry Hess (RSS) — Ivan Moreale — Ben Werdmuller (RSS) — Cory Gibbons — Luke Harris (RSS) — Lars-Christian Simonsen (RSS) — Cody Schultz — Brad Barrish (RSS) — Nikita Galaiko — Erik Blankvoort — Jaga Santagostino — Andrew Zuckerman — Mattia Compagnucci (RSS) — Thord D. Hedengren (RSS) — Fabien Sauser (RSS) — Maxwell Omdal — Numeric Citizen (RSS) — Jarrod Blundy (RSS) — Andrea Contino (RSS) — Sebastian De Deyne (RSS) — Nicola Losito (RSS) — Lou Plummer (RSS) — Leon Mika (RSS) — Neil Gorman (RSS) — Reaper (RSS) — Matt Rutherford (RSS) — Aleem Ali (RSS) — Nikkin (RSS) — Hans (RSS) — Matt Katz (RSS) — Ilja Panić — Emmanuel Odongo — Peter Rukavina (RSS) — James (RSS) — Adam Keys (RSS) — Alexey Staroselets (RSS) — John L — Minsuk Kang (RSS) — Naz Hamid (RSS) — Ken Zinser (RSS) — Jan — Grey Vugrin (RSS) — Luigi Mozzillo (RSS) — Alex Hyett (RSS) — Andy Piper — Hrvoje Šimić (RSS) — Travis Schmeisser — Doug Jones — Vincent Ritter (RSS) — Shen — Fabian Holzer (RSS) — Courtney (RSS) — Dan Ritz (RSS) — Jeremy Bassetti (RSS) — Luke Dorny (RSS) — Thomas Erickson — Herman Martinus (RSS) — Benny (RSS) — Annie Mueller (RSS) — SekhmetDesign — Gui (RSS) — Jamie (RSS) — Juha Liikala (RSS) — Ray (RSS) — Chad Moore (RSS) — Benjamin Wittorf (RSS) — Radek Kozieł (RSS) — Marcus Richardson — Emily Moran Barwick (RSS) — Gosha (RSS) — Manton Reece (RSS) — Silvano Stralla (RSS) — Mario Figueroa — Benjamin Chait (RSS) — Cai Wingfield — Pete (RSS) — Pete Millspaugh (RSS) — Martin Matanovic (RSS) — Coinciding Narratives (RSS) — Arun Venkatesan (RSS) — fourohfour.net (RSS) — Jonathan Kemper — Bookofjoe (RSS) — Marius Masalar (RSS) — Jim Mitchell (RSS) — Simon Howard (RSS) — Frederick Vanbrabant (RSS) — Thibault Malfoy (RSS) — Beradadisini (RSS) — x-way (RSS) — Caleb Hailey (RSS) — Vincent Geoffray — TAONAW (RSS) — Sebastián Monía (RSS) — grubz (RSS) — Sal (RSS)
If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can:
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my generous supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
2025-08-08 04:25:00
Contrary to what many people seem to be doing, especially in the digital world, I don’t often change the tools and services I use. When I find something that works, I’m happy to stick around for the long run. Well, at least unless something major happens that forces me to reconsider my choices.
And I can’t really tell you why I find that approach appealing to me. Maybe because it spares me from constantly having to reconsider my choices. It’s probably the same reason why, for years, I was wearing the same set of clothes: when all you have are white t-shirts, you don’t have to waste time thinking about how to dress; you just get dressed.
I started my career developing sites on WordPress back in 2011. Around 2016 or 2017, I found myself spending so much time fighting against the CMS (and the new Gutenberg editor was coming) that I decided it was time to look for an alternative: I found Kirby and never had to look for alternatives since. I coded this blog on Kirby back in 2017, and it’s still on it, 8 years later.
I’m writing this blog post using IA Writer, an app I’ve been using since April 2012. That’s more than 13 years ago. And the same story applies to pretty much all the apps I use the most: I’ve been using Sublime Text since 2013, Transmit since 2016, and Codekit since 2014.
And the thing I love the most about sticking with tools for the long run is that you get to know the people behind them, and you learn to appreciate those individuals and what they do. That is especially true in my case because most of the tools I use are built by either small teams or single developers.
When I have an issue with Buttondown, a service I’ve been using since 2019, I don’t open a ticket inside a soulless Zendesk portal and get an automated email: I email Justin. When I stumble on a bug inside Codekit, I email Bryan. And I absolutely love it, I love when I know who are the people on the other side, doing things that allow me to be creative and have fun doing my job.
I also love when I get to be involved. One of the things I love the most about Kirby, for example, is how amazing the community is and has been throughout all these years. It’s also why I was so stoked the other day when I got a message letting me know I got accepted as a Ko-fi Ambassador because I love when I have the chance to give my contribution and help improve the tools I use.
Sticking around is fun, it’s enjoyable, and seeing products evolve and improve over time is both exciting and rewarding, which is why it always makes me happy when I get to contribute something back to the products I use. It’s why I’m happy to pay for good software, it’s why I’m happy to support creators I enjoy. I want good and quality things to exist in this world, and doing my small part to help that cause fills me with joy.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my generous supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
2025-08-01 19:00:00
This is the 101st edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Emma Goto and her blog, emgoto.com
To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
If you're enjoying the People and Blogs series and you want to see it grow, consider supporting on Ko-Fi.
Hi, I'm Emma! I'm half-Japanese and half-Australian, and was born and raised in Sydney before moving to Tokyo in 2022.
Growing up, I was a huge PC gamer. Spending so much time on my computer is what led me down the path to studying computer science at university, and then getting a job as a software engineer. I work remotely for an Australian software company and do a 4-day work week, which gives me more time to enjoy hobbies like my blog.
Although I grew up as a super introverted person who liked to stay indoors, I tried out hiking for the first time when I moved to Japan and was immediately hooked. My current goal is to complete the hyakumeizan, a list of Japan's 100 most famous mountains. After 3 years, I'm just over halfway at 55/100. I expect the remaining half to take a lot longer though, since a lot of the remaining mountains are far away and/or require hiking longer distances to complete.
Outside of hiking I also like to read and on the rare occassion, play airsoft. I'm trying to learn Mandarin so that I can speak to my partner's grandparents, but I'll admit that that's pretty slow-going at the moment.
Early on in my career, I didn't have much confidence in myself as a programmer. When I first started learning how to code at university, it felt like everyone around me already knew what they were doing, and I was playing catch-up. It took a couple of years for things to start to click, and as I settled into full-time work I knew I wanted to become a "better" programmer but at the same time I didn't really know where to start. I'd often heard the advice that you should start a blog to share what you learn, since being able to explain a topic to someone else requires you to know it really well. And so that's how I started blogging!
In 2020, I commited to writing a post every week which I managed to end up sticking with for the entire year. When I moved to Japan in 2022, programming outside of work took a backseat as I tried to find new hobbies and make friends, and so my blog fell by the wayside a bit as well. It was around this time that I got super into hiking.
At first I didn't feel like hiking was worth blogging about, but by 2024 I started to write up a post after each new mountain that I climbed, like when I climbed Mt Fuji. Although there's a lot of information on hiking in Japanese, there's not as much out there for English-speakers, so the more I wrote about hiking, the more I felt like I had something that was worth sharing.
Although I started emgoto.com off as a programming blog, it's been a really fun realization for me there's really no constraints on what I should write about. I own the blog, so I make the rules! I expect that one day I might start hiking less, or run out of mountains to blog about, in which case I'm sure I'll be able to find something new to start blogging about too.
I write all of my posts in a text editor called Obsidian. I try not to be too much of a perfectionist about things. I think that even if my writing isn't perfect, it being out there on the internet for someone to read is better than it lingering in my drafts forever. I don't have a specific writing process - generally I just start with a rough outline and add in random unfinished sentences or thoughts and then come back to it later to make it a little bit more coherent.
I'm also a big fan of the digital garden approach to blogging, and so I don't necessarily see publishing a post as the end of it. Probably 90% of the views I get on a post will come months after it's released as it starts to show up in Google searches. So I tend to keep an eye on my analytics and if I see the views are starting to trickle in on an older post, I take that as an opportunity to go back and see if there's anything I can improve about it.
To get out of a rut, I like going to a fancy cafe to help get me in the zone. I used to live near a Sarutahiko Coffee, which is a bit of a fancy coffee chain that I would recommend if you're ever visiting Japan. There's something motivating about having other people around you working on their laptops.
Other times an idea might come to me while I'm zoning out on a train ride, so I'll just word-vomit out my thoughts into a text file on my phone. The time I spend hiking is also another great source of inspiration. I find being disconnected from your phone for a full day gives your mind a lot of time to wander and just think which is generally rare for me when the internet is a quick phone swipe away.
I'm currently using Astro, after making the switch from Gatsby late last year. The build times are definitely an improvement, and the overall dev experience feels much nicer as well. I use React for the frontend, since that's what I use at my day job.
All my blog posts are organized as MDX posts (i.e. fancy Markdown that lets you insert components into your posts). I was previously using Markdown with my Gatsby blog as well, and so that made it really easy to port all of my content over.
You're all probably familiar with frontmatter, which lets you add metadata to your posts. At a minimum, each of my Markdown files will have a title, date and tags, but I do like to use this feature quite extensively with my hiking posts. For example, I have a map with all the mountains on my hyakumeizan page so inside of the frontmatter for my hiking posts I also note down the latitude and longitude, elevation and other relevant data for the mountain.
One fancy hack I have is scheduling when my posts are published. After I write a new post, I'll raise it as a pull request on my site's Github repo. I then have a Github action that automatically merges the pull request on a certain day of the week. And merging the code triggers a new deploy of my site, so it's a really handy way of staying consistent with my publishing schedule. I find it's a lot less stressful than rushing towards a deadline to try and get out a new post every week.
For hosting, I use Netlify. I also use Cloudflare CDN, which caches about half of the requests, and so thankfully I still have a fair bit of leeway on Netlify's free tier.
Since I cover very different topics on my blog (books, programming, and hiking), I have different designs and layouts for the 3 sections. Part of the fun of running a blog for me is the design aspect of it, so I spend a lot of time procrastinating on the actual writing by tinkering with the blog's code.
I wouldn't say I regret it too much, but I did have a full 2-year break on my blog when I first moved to Japan. At the time it was very programming-themed (it's still the same design you can see today on the programming section of my site) and so although I wanted to blog about Japan, it just felt weird to do that on my programming blog.
I was able to do a redesign to make the different sections of my site clearer, but in hindsight I wish I had continued to blog a bit during that time. I learned how to drive in Japan, actually, so even a post about the driving school experience would have been pretty interesting I think.
I'm definitely glad though that I named the blog after myself, since it did give me that flexibility to keep on writing about whatever I wanted to. As long as I'm the one doing the writing, anything goes! Maybe I would have gone with emmagoto.com instead of shortening it to emgoto.com - at the time I bought the domain I thought having less characters sounded cooler.
I pay 17 USD a year for my domain name using NameCheap. This is the only real expense for my blog since the hosting is free.
I don't generate any revenue. For a while, I did have Carbon ads on my programming posts as they are quite non-intrusive, but it was only bringing me in a couple of dollars a month and I felt I'd rather have no ads in that case, so I removed it.
Financially the blog has no benefit, but I do feel like it gives me a sense of purpose, and it's nice knowing that someone out there (even if it's just one person) has gotten value from the stuff that I've written. And even if no one reads some of my more niche hiking posts, I like being able to go back and read them for myself too.
If you're interested in reading more about hiking in Japan, I recommend ridgelineimages.com which is run by a fellow Aussie. And if you're looking to get super niche, One Hundred Mountains can provide a bit of an interesting deep-dive into the history of Japanese hiking as well.
I also love discovering new blog designs - some of my recent favourites have been Nic Chan, iamrobin, Anthony Fu and elle's homepage.
Come hike in Japan! If you're not sure where to start, I have a round-up post with some of my favourite hikes in Japan as well as some recommendations for day hikes from Tokyo. And of course feel free to reach out to me on Bluesky or Instagram if you have any questions.
I'd also like to plug Hardcover which is a book tracking app that is turning out to be a pretty good replacement for Goodreads. They have an API you can use to query on your books (which is I'm sure music to any dev's ears) and they're planning on going open-source too!
This was the 101st edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Emma. Make sure to follow her blog (RSS) and get in touch with them if you have any questions.
You can support this series on Ko-Fi and all supporters will be listed here as well as on the official site of the newsletter.
Jamie Thingelstad (RSS) — Piet Terheyden — Eleonora — Carl Barenbrug (RSS) — Steve Ledlow (RSS) — Paolo Ruggeri (RSS) — Nicolas Magand (RSS) — Rob Hope — Chris Hannah (RSS) — Pedro Corá (RSS) — Sixian Lim (RSS) — Matt Stein (RSS) — Winnie Lim (RSS) — Flamed (RSS) — C Jackdaw (RSS) — Kevin Humdrum (RSS) — Fabricio Teixeira (RSS) — Rosalind Croad — Mike Walsh (RSS) — Markus Heurung (RSS) — Michael Warren (RSS) — Chuck Grimmett (RSS) — Bryan Maniotakis (RSS) — Barry Hess (RSS) — Ivan Moreale — Ben Werdmuller (RSS) — Cory Gibbons — Luke Harris (RSS) — Lars-Christian Simonsen (RSS) — Cody Schultz — Brad Barrish (RSS) — Nikita Galaiko — Erik Blankvoort — Jaga Santagostino — Andrew Zuckerman — Mattia Compagnucci (RSS) — Thord D. Hedengren (RSS) — Fabien Sauser (RSS) — Maxwell Omdal — Numeric Citizen (RSS) — Jarrod Blundy (RSS) — Andrea Contino (RSS) — Sebastian De Deyne (RSS) — Nicola Losito (RSS) — Lou Plummer (RSS) — Leon Mika (RSS) — Neil Gorman (RSS) — Reaper (RSS) — Matt Rutherford (RSS) — Aleem Ali (RSS) — Nikkin (RSS) — Hans (RSS) — Matt Katz (RSS) — Ilja Panić — Emmanuel Odongo — Peter Rukavina (RSS) — James (RSS) — Adam Keys (RSS) — Alexey Staroselets (RSS) — John L — Minsuk Kang (RSS) — Naz Hamid (RSS) — Ken Zinser (RSS) — Jan — Grey Vugrin (RSS) — Luigi Mozzillo (RSS) — Alex Hyett (RSS) — Andy Piper — Hrvoje Šimić (RSS) — Travis Schmeisser — Doug Jones — Vincent Ritter (RSS) — Shen — Fabian Holzer (RSS) — Courtney (RSS) — Dan Ritz (RSS) — Jeremy Bassetti (RSS) — Luke Dorny (RSS) — Thomas Erickson — Herman Martinus (RSS) — Benny (RSS) — Annie Mueller (RSS) — SekhmetDesign — Gui (RSS) — Jamie (RSS) — Juha Liikala (RSS) — Ray (RSS) — Chad Moore (RSS) — Benjamin Wittorf (RSS) — Stefan Bohacek (RSS) — Radek Kozieł (RSS) — Marcus Richardson — Emily Moran Barwick (RSS) — Gosha (RSS) — Manton Reece (RSS) — Silvano Stralla (RSS) — Mario Figueroa — Benjamin Chait (RSS) — Cai Wingfield — Pete (RSS) — Pete Millspaugh (RSS) — Martin Matanovic (RSS) — Coinciding Narratives (RSS) — Arun Venkatesan (RSS) — fourohfour.net (RSS) — Jonathan Kemper — Bookofjoe (RSS) — Marius Masalar (RSS) — Jim Mitchell (RSS) — Grant Hutchins — Simon Howard (RSS) — Frederick Vanbrabant (RSS) — Thibault Malfoy (RSS) — Beradadisini (RSS) — x-way (RSS) — Caleb Hailey (RSS) — Vincent Geoffray — TAONAW (RSS) — Sebastián Monía (RSS)
If you like this series and want to help it grow, you can:
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my generous supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs
2025-07-31 02:45:00
After the experiments of June and July, I say it’s time to switch gears, do something a little bit different and take my ass away from the screen and up the mountains. As part of my year-long plan to get back into proper shape, I decided to take hiking seriously again and what better way to kickstart this than a fun challenge to myself during the month of August.
Back in 2022, I set myself the goal of walking at least 1000km—which I did—so this time, rather than focusing on distance, I’ll go for total gained elevation. But rather than having an all-or-nothing goal, I decided to set three targets in increasing order of difficulty.
The base target is gonna be 4810 meters, or a bit more than 52 American football fields for the non-metric friends across the ocean. That’s the height of Mont Blanc, the tallest mountain in Europe. Spread across 31 days, it’s a bit more than 155 meters of elevation gained each day, which is super duper doable, if I get good weather.
After that, the next target is set at 6961 meters (roughly 75 statues of liberty), aka the Aconcagua, the tallest mountain in the Americas.
The final target, unsurprisingly, is gonna be set at 8848 meters (4731 Obamas), which is the height of Mount Everest, the tallest mountain on Earth (when measured at sea level).
Those are the three targets; we’ll see where I land after 31 days. Feel free to place your bets. No need to say that this whole challenge can be completely derailed by weather, but I’m confident I’ll make it at least to the top of Mont Blanc. I’m going to track all my hikes, and I’ll share progress along the way. My plan is to do daily short-ish hikes and then go for one big hike every weekend. We’ll see how long it's gonna take for the plan to go off the rails.
If you’re a hiker and want to join me in this challenge, that would be awesome! Ping me via email, and we can figure out how to do this or post on your site if you have one and send me the link.
And if you’re one of those super athletes who hikes 8000 meters just to go to work, feel free to set your target on Olympus Mons.
Since I’m gonna spend likely more time than usual outdoors, I decided to also try something else in August: my first pop-up newsletter! And since I like to do things my way, I decided to do this in collaboration with Cody, which means this is gonna be, quite possibly, the first four-hands-two-continents pop-up newsletter.
It’s called Natural Conversation and it’s gonna be loosely centred on the topic of nature. The goal is to send 1 photograph and about 500 words each day. You’ll hear from Cody on odd days and from me on even ones. Which means you’ll get awesome pictures and great writing on odd days and my usual ramblings on even ones.
As per the rules of pop-up newsletters, the entire list will get deleted at the end of the month, and there will be no archive. You have this chance and this chance alone to get this content so subscribe now, before it’s too late.
A few words on Cody. If you clicked on the link I included a few paragraphs above, you might have noticed that he doesn’t have a proper site, which is odd considering he’s a photographer and a writer. That is entirely my fault, not his. I’m working on a new site for him, and it’s taking me forever for reasons I’m not going to get into. But I promise that by the end of this challenge, he will have a new site up, and you’ll be able to follow his digital journey if you decide to do so. He does have a newsletter though, so maybe subscribe to that in the meantime?
See what I did Cody? I managed to public-shame myself into finishing your site, and you’re also now screwed because people will expect content from you if they sign up to your newsletter (go sign up to Cody’s newsletter).
Ok, enough with the ramblings, let me wrap this up. This is what you’ll get from me in August: lots of hiking, lots of nature. We’ll go up the mountains, hopefully gain a lot of elevation and lose some weight in the process (I need to get back to my ideal weight of 85kg, currently sitting at 88). And every other day, you’ll hear from me in your inbox if you decide to sign up for the pop-up newsletter.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Email me :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month :: See my generous supporters :: Subscribe to People and Blogs