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The Blog Questions Challenge: My answers (for 2026)

FUNNY NOTE: After writing this post, I recalled I'd seen this blogging question challenge last year and couldn't remember if I'd answered the questions back then. It turns out I did, so I have now answered the questions twice, which makes me a bit of a dope, but also provides an interesting comparison between what I wrote on January 26, 2025 and today, June 3, 2026.

It's worth reading the older version, some of the answers are more fleshed out than in this post. But read both and enjoy the blogginess of it all!

While perusing Bubbles, I came across a blog post that linked back to a Blog Questions Challenge that I believe originated on Bear. That link led to a non-Bear version, which I am posting and replying to below.

The questions:

  • Why did you start blogging in the first place?
  • What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it?
  • Have you blogged on other platforms before?
  • How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?
  • When do you feel most inspired to write?
  • Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?
  • What’s your favourite post on your blog?
  • Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?

Answers:

Why did you start blogging in the first place?

I like to write and I’ve always enjoyed journaling and noodling around writing my thoughts down. When blogs started to become a thing, I was just technically capable enough to slap together a blog of my own in February 2005.

What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it?

I am using WordPress and creolened.com has been using WP for over 21 years now. When the WP CEO started getting, er, a bit eccentric a few years ago, I started looking at alternative platforms, but none had all the things I wanted. And 20 years of inertia is hard to fight. In 2005 WordPress struck me as having the right balance of features and ease of use that worked for me. Admittedly, I didn’t really try anything else, because WP clicked pretty quickly.

Have you blogged on other platforms before?

I have dabbled and experimented with the following:

  • Ghost
  • Posthaven
  • Bear
  • Pika
  • Write.as
  • Probably more I’m forgetting

The only ones that survive today are Write.as as a free account and Pika, which I subbed to for a year, then never really used (not a reflection on the platform).

How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?

I used the built-in editor in WordPress. And yes, I use blocks, I’ve tried fighting them before, but for the most part have adapted to them. But I have also used other programs to write and save blog posts before posting them here, with Obsidian, iA Writer and Ulysses (Mac) being the most common. If there’s a program that lets me export to WP, I’ll usually try it at least once, but most of the time I’m typing in the built-in editor.

When do you feel most inspired to write?

It varies, but it tends to be on the extremes, either early morning or late evening, probably because of the quiet (sometimes in the morning because I’m feeling zesty).

Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?

Drafts are where posts go to die. I rarely come back to a draft, so I write “live” and post immediately. This is also reflected in that most of my posts are not planned, just whatever flits through my mind at the moment.

What’s your favourite post on your blog?

There’s a few that I like going back to. For nostalgia, there’s My computer and video game history, an abridged edition and Magazines of yore -or- Back when I bought things to read on paper. I am also partial to my long review of the movie Prometheus. Re-reading the review is a lot more entertaining to me than watching the movie again. I also have some fiction here and there on the blog that is not bad, though most are prompts and experiments, so a little rough or incomplete. This one is nicely creepy: 1,000 creative writing prompts: 7 of 1,000 and of course I wrote a time travel story about a barista trying to kill Hitler. I have over 200 book reviews if you’re into those.

My viewpoint tends to be a bit jaded, but ultimately hopeful and a bit sarcastic. I realize it may not work for everyone.

Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?

My blog is pretty much done as far as features and whatnot. I’ve actually been trying to prune back the number of plugins I use, though it’s hard to resist some 1Like these pop-up footnotes, for example. I do occasionally tweak the layout and design of the blog and assorted elements and will continue to do so. I need a new logo as of writing this (June 2026) but haven’t had anything really speak to me yet.

Running in a dream

As sung by Tom Petty (RIP).

Last night I dreamed that I was jogging along this lovely mountain trail. The sky was clear, but it wasn’t hot out. I had views that were nice, but not vertigo-inducing, of a bluff above, of alpine forest and a wide, flat valley below, where a lush savannah lay. Above the trail were a series of boulders that seemed to be shaped, possibly human-made. I remember clambering up to see what it was all about and recall water, so maybe some kind of reservoir? The dream was being a tease on this part.

In the savannah, I saw a hippo. Why a hippo, only my brain can say, and it ain’t talking. The hippo was the size of a house. There was also a house-sized chicken, though its proximity to the giant hippo was unclear. There might have been more chickens.

The bluff above made me think of the one in The Lion King, arching up to the sky, except instead of anthropomorphic lions capering about, there was a herd of giraffe gathering. I could see several of them hunkering down in a way that suggested they were getting ready to leap off the bluff, not like lemmings to their doom, but because they could fly. Of course.

This was a dream about my recovery from surgery.

This site, January 2005

Before I installed WordPress on this site, I coded up something in HTML for people to enjoy in the interim.

Here it is:

I believe that’s supposed to be a trademark symbol at the end that didn’t translate properly. But the page loaded superfast.

I remain an internet dork.

6,040 posts (as of April 29, 2026)

I started this blog with my first post on February 4, 2005 and as of this post right here, I now have 6,040 entries. I knew I was getting close to 6,000 but then kind of forgot about it until I saw another blog post talking about blogging (how meta), which made me check the stats here.

This averages to around 287 posts per year, or a little less than once per day, though if you check the posts widget on the sidebar, you’ll see my volume increased quite a bit starting around September 2015, when I began posting 1–2 times per day because I declared anything that popped into my head fair game to record here.

My posting pace started flagging a bit in the last few years for various reasons as life and other things distracted me, but I’m working on getting back into that “post anything” mentality, because some of my best/weirdest writing has come out of that.

I really want to end this with typing cat again, but I will resist.

Or maybe I’ll use a different typing cat instead!

My Classic Editor experiment ends after one day

It turns out I am so used to the default block editor in WordPress that the Classic Editor now feels alien and strange.

Going forward, I’ll adopt a compromise position by using the Classic block to emulate that old school feel when I need it.

For example, this paragraph is using the Classic block. I can go completely bonkers™ on formatting here if I want. And sometimes I do want.

And now, typing cat:

Trying the Classic Editor plugin in 2026

For a long time, I resisted using Gutenberg with WordPress. It’s the default block-based editor used for crafting your artisanal posts about kittens and retrocomputing.

Reducing every paragraph to a block that could be shuffled about was not very useful to me, since my site is an old-timey blog that is just lots of text and some photos and drawings. I don’t need sexy layout options and the need to move content around in convenient blocks has only ever happened a few times over many years.

I also disliked that Gutenberg turned paragraphs into monolithic structures, where only basic formatting could be applied. Sure, I could make things bold or italicized. But what if I wanted to make my text red because I had something alarming to say? Gutenberg doesn’t allow that.

So I’m trying the Classic Editor plugin. I’ll see how it feels to be doing WordPress again, pre-2018 style.

I need a new logo (2026 edition)

What the title says. The text logo is…fine, but it’s not even actual text, it’s an image of text. And it’s a little plain. I feel like I need to go all 2005 retro for this.

Although it does disturb me a bit that 2005 is now retro.

Here is one I whipped up in Canva a few years ago that I did not use, because even I have my limits: