I’m feeling weird about fonts lately

I have tweaked some of the fonts on the site again (but not all of them, so there is a bit of a crazy quilt effect going on here).

Specifically:

Body font: JetBrains Mono

Heading 2 font (used for post titles): Ubuntu Mono

As an added bonus for me, because WP doesn’t “see” JetBrains Mono in the editor, it is using Bold Segoe UI at 17px instead.

I’m all about the monospaced fonts. For now. For today. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.

EDIT: I have already changed the Header font to Barlow Semi Condensed, mere minutes later.

EDIT 2: I've now changed the sidebar to JetBrains Mono and also made the background colour of the site blue, and the sidebar a greenish-yellow. Or a yellowish-green.

Happy 20th birthday to this blog!

I knew I should have set a reminder. 😛

It was 20 years ago yesterday that I made my first post on this blog, creolened.com. Here it is in link form and as a quote in its entirety:

I was the last one to get bell bottom jeans in grade 5 and now I’m the last person on the Internet to have a blog. Hooray for me! As you may have guessed, I am using WordPress for my blogging needs. An apparent feature of WordPress is relentless self-promotion as witnessed by the three separate links for the software on this very page. I’ll be culling a few soon and adding some other links that might prove interesting or not.

Yes, blogs were seemingly cool back in 2005. And they are again! WordPress was new and was exactly what I wanted.

Today I am pondering moving away from it, because it’s both way more than I need, and it’s being run by a man with, uh, let’s say a few issues.

But in whatever form, the blog will continue. A lot has changed in the 20 years since I started writing here (5,498 posts ago, counting this one). I have less hair. I started running. I’ve had an IV stuck in my arms for 11 days. I’ve been to Nashville.

We’ve had three U.S. presidents, one of them especially terrible and literally trying to usher in both the end of democracy and the rise of fascism. So that’s fun.

In Canada, we’ve gone from Conservative minorities to Liberal minorities and our best bet is maybe another Liberal minority.

The world is hotter and stormier than in 2005. Aliens still haven’t saved us. Everything is, of course, more expensive. The internet is a pit of hell controlled by tech oligarchs who want everything they can get their hands on, but mostly power, money and control. It’s kind of bleak.

But some things haven’t changed, such as my capacity to ramble. Here’s to years more of that.

And, of course, cats:

Will I write 22 posts tomorrow?

This would ensure1I can never remember if I should use “ensure” or “insure” I maintain my average of two blog posts per day (62 for the month of January), an arbitrary metric I settled on a few years ago to keep the ol’ writing juices flowing. Don’t ask what’s in writing juice.

The answer is very likely no. But it would be kind of amazing to see what I’d write over the course of those 22 posts.

I must conclude this post with typing cat.

Blog Question Challenge, 2025 Edition

This apparently started on Bear blog, a minimalist blogging service, where people answer questions about…blogging!

I’m not going to tag anyone or anything, but I love lists and answering questions makes a list, so here are my answers to the Blog Question Challenge.

Why did you make the blog in the first place?

This blog, creolened.com, was started on February 2, 20025– nearly 20 years ago! The first post is here: Bloggity blog blog

That short post doesn’t explain why I started the blog, but does suggest blogging was a hot thing in 2005, and I wanted in on it. Also, I like writing and rambling, so a blog seemed like a good place to do this. Journals and diaries are fine (I keep a daily journal now and have kept journals in the past as well), but there’s something about having my thoughts hanging out in public that makes me write a bit differently. I have a voice and it comes through regardless of whether I am writing just for myself (diary) or not (blog), but there’s a little extra zestiness when I write on the blog. I know others can see what I’ve written. It adds pressure to at least check for typos. And maybe organize my thoughts and make them occasionally interesting.

Also, I find writing about something, then referencing back to it years later is just neat. And handy.

Mostly, I started the blog because I like to write and have things to say. Those things are not always serious or well-articulated, but that’s why this blog never had a particular angle. It’s just me rambling.

Why did you choose bear blog?

Sorry, bear, I tried you and liked you, but you are too minimalist for me, because I am a weirdo and spend too much time playing around with formatting and images and junk like that. It’s a fine service, though! Hopefully the person running it isn’t a monster. There is a weirdly large number of monsters on the internet these days.

Have you blogged on other platforms before?

WordPress was my first blogging platform. Prior to it, I posted on various forums, and had a gaming website I updated by editing the HTML files, then seeing how things looked in Firefox 1.5 or something.

I have more recently dabbled/tested many different blogging platforms. Search this blog to find my thoughts on them!

Do you write your posts directly in the editor or in another software?

It varies, but most of the time I write using the built-in WordPress editor. I occasionally use the Classic block editor when the block system, uh, blocks me from doing what I want.

Sometimes I write in other apps and then copy and paste over. For a time I thought of doing this permanently, so I’d always have a local copy of my stuff, but it just seemed like more work than I wanted. Other programs I’ve used to write for this blog:

  • Notepad
  • Notepad++
  • iA Writer
  • Ulysses
  • Obsidian
  • Maybe Microsoft Word at some point?
  • Probably a few others I’m forgetting

When do you feel most inspired to write?

Never! Inspiration comes and goes, and I have yet to observe any particular pattern to it. Sometimes I can get up and write a long, lovingly handcrafted post first thing in the morning, other times I scramble to find a cat pic to post at 11:30 p.m. It just depends.

I will note that when I am feeling down, I rarely feel inspired to write, so I reject the idea that one must suffer for one’s art (or writing). On the other hand, writing about weird or bad things that have happened to me is something I enjoy doing after the fact, when I’m at least one step removed (see my recent ER visit for an example).

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

I publish immediately, baby. Sometimes I will look over the post for typos or awkward phrasing just before hitting Publish or just after it goes live. If I come across the same in an old post, I fix these things.

If a post is especially long or complex, I will sometimes save it as a draft, then come back later to finish it, but most drafts tend to go to the place where drafts die. Then they die.

Your favourite post on your blog?

At the time of writing this, I have 5,462 posts, so trying to pick a favourite one is pretty much impossible. I used to maintain a small list of favourites, but tossed it aside at some point.

Rather than specific favourites, I’ll list a few general themes:

  • Some of the writing prompt posts are entertaining, and not bad when you consider they are written in the moment, without any editing afterwards.
  • Some of my own (silly) writing prompt lists still amuse me. Others don’t, so this is definitely “your mileage may vary” kind of thing.
  • Birding posts with actual photos are nice. I’ve fallen out of the habit of posting the photos, but I’ve still got some decent ones up for viewing.
  • Some of my art is okay! These are found under Creative.
  • I tried to learn how to swim in 2009. It didn’t go well, but was kind of funny.
  • And more. I have a billion tags because I am a chronic tag abuser, but some of the odder ones sometimes have cute/interesting posts to go with them.

Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, changing the tag system, etc.?

I have redesigned my blog multiple times through the years and will no doubt do so again. Right now it is sporting a more minimal look, with little colour. I’ll probably change that again sometime.

The biggest upcoming change will be moving to a different platform. I am still thinking through this (and have documented the process here on this blog, to go all meta). I no longer have confidence in the WordPress platform, and it’s really more than I need. I am very used to it, though, so moving to something new is going to have a learning curve, accepting certain compromises and other stuff. But I feel I should, and the time to do so is pretty much now.

And that’s about it. Here are some other people who also took up this challenge:

Experimenting with Ghost. Spooky!

UPDATE, December 22, 2024: Corrected a few things based on a reply from the person who hosts Magic.Pages!

MagicPages.co is a Ghost hosting site, and they offer both reasonable pricing, plus a 14-day free trial. Today, I signed up for the trial and created a mock version of this very blog. I tweaked the default theme a bit, made a post, then duplicated an existing post from here to see how easy it was or wasn’t, and how it looked vs. WP.

Here are my initial takes.

Pro:

  • Clean, simple interface. WP has a ton of cruft and junk I never use, and the thing I do most often–post–is not made particularly easy or accessible. Ghost streamlines everything down to a minimalist UI that makes it simple to write posts.
  • More options are always close by. It’s only a click away to do more complex formatting or access other features. Again, the UI feels honed, and focused.
  • It has a nice selection of themes, and you can create your own (though it’s not that simple).
  • No plugins needed! It has image-handling options that are much nicer than WP’s, and they’re just there.
  • If you want to have members/subscriptions, it’s easy to set up.
  • ActivityPub integration is being worked on, meaning I could blog and share easily to Mastodon, the one social media site I haven’t completely abandoned (yet).
  • I can use all emojis, to excess. Always to excess.

Con:

  • Most themes are locked behind a higher-priced tier, as are custom themes. Wrong! The head of Magic.Pages, Jannis Fedoruk-Betschki, wrote to me to let me know all of Ghost’s official themes are supported in the Starter plan. The Pro plan is required for custom themes.
  • The number of fonts is limited. I’m not sure how easy it is to add more (edit: It looks like it requires haxing the backend to a degree).
  • While the UI is great, the overall level of customization seems lower overall. I love tweaking, but maybe too much, so this isn’t necessarily a con.
  • How do I turn off the copious subscribe buttons? One is enough.
  • No easy way to import my WP site, which begs the question, what would I do with the old site? I am not going to manually copy over 5,400+ posts. Probably. (Note: Ghost.org does offer importing, but only with their even-more-expensive tiers.) UPDATE: Yearly plans do get support for importing, so I was basically wrong here, too.
  • The two cards it supports are for the worst social media platforms: Facebook and X.

Overall, I think the pros outweigh the cons, but I am fussy and unsure. I have about two weeks to make up my mind about this specific host, though.

I changed my logo and realized why it looked familiar…

The new logo uses the same font but adds an underline and changes the colour from all-orange to green and yellow. Green and yellow work well together, but there was something a little too familiar. Then I realized it.

I had created the Subway logo.

So now I have to change it again.

My Subway-ish logo:

Fake edit: I’m going with this for now. At least it doesn’t make me crave a six-inch chicken sub.

Not a fake edit: Now I’m trying a yellow and gray version. I’ll probably keep changing it, but won’t update this post every time, so the true level of my madness will not be fully revealed.

Where will this site be in 2025?

Probably not on the moon. But never say never.

The WordPress 6.7 update got pushed out tonight, with a few new features. Normally I’d be interested, but since I’m actively trying to find a replacement for WP, not so much now.

Speaking of, I have one more major platform to try: Ghost. There will be others, but this is the main contender that’s still left.

Currently, Posthaven is looking decent, but not quite there (but maybe?) with Pika and Scribbles as lesser possibilities (I love Scribbles’ UI, but it focuses almost exclusively on text).

I’ll try to test Ghost soon™, but I have to admit I’m a little burnt out on all the options and fiddling and whatnot. I really hoped Blogstatic would be The One, but it wasn’t. They are making some changes soon, and I gave them feedback that they seemed to appreciate, so I may look at it again at some point.

UPDATE, November 18, 2024: Blogstatic has rebranded to BlogMaker and eliminated all plans in favour of one that gives you unlimited blogs. Neat! But now, instead of paying $50 per year for a single blog, you pay $25 a month for as many as you want. So if you only want a single blog, this is now six times more expensive, or a 500% increase in price, if you prefer. This puts Blogstatic BlogMaker firmly in the HELL NO category.

In the meantime, I really want to post the cat typing GIF again, but I won’t. Instead, this: