markjgsmith

I listenned to quite a few great podcasts today. Brain, mind and body apear to be getting back into the swing of things following the past few days difficulties.

Listening to music everywhere seems to be helping somewhat with averting escallations. I used to do that but the world didn‘t like it much, and also the headphones have a tendency to break much quicker. Anyhow maybe I won't need to do it once the world has calmed down a bit.

The next few days are about trying to get back into more regular blogging. Just need to clear some of the digital clutter. #

The revival of Linkblog.io

I've been thinking the past few days about how much effort it would take to get a commercial site up and running again. I previously successfully built a linkblogging SaaS called Linkblog.io, it had a ton of great features, worked really well, was low cost to run and very scalable. But I ran out of runway and had to shut it down. Since then I've continued building, mostly just my own stuff. I moved my personal linkblog to a static site and bit by bit added various new features. My static site is now a blog, linkblog, notes blog, newsletter and podcast.

As part of this I built my own static site generator. It's a nodejs CLI tool. It runs very quickly. It's really customisable. I recently wrote a more detailed description of it's features, and had a bit of a think about possible plans for the future. I don't currently have the resources to start again from scratch, but I've been wondering if I have enough pieces to cobble together something that I could open up as a product.

In an ideal world with lots of money and resources I would most likely do a re-write, because what I've been working towards all these years is this thing I call the blogging virtuous circle. I have basically managed to achieve a first version of that in my own personal static site. It's really cool, and actually kind of works, though it's a bit rough around the edges. Posting links on the daily, writing short notes and longer blog posts, is a really great way to consistently create great content.

The thing that fills me with confidence is that it's built around git. That means it is a very robust setup. Even if you get knocked offline, you can still blog, and sync up later when you are back online. This happened to me recently several times, and I was able to blog through it even though I was offline for several weeks. I plan to build better higher level UIs for posting, but I want it to always be possible to fallback to just using git and markdown files. I know for sure that's possible now.

So the question is, can I get something up and running, and over time move towards my long term vision? I have a working first version of my long term vision, I have a SaaS of one core component of that vision, and a static site generator that would enable users to build their own sites should they choose to migrate from the SaaS. The great thing about the SaaS is that it has the billing system all done and fully working. I could theoretically have some paying customers for the linkblogging SaaS, that would enable me to fund development towards the full vision. Who knows maybe once something is up and running, perhaps I could raise some money via a kick starter campaign. The plan is to open source the static site generator. Users would always be able to easily move to their own site.

That's what I've been thinking about the past few days since I finished the everything page amidst a somewhat difficult deployment. I know all this might seem uterly futile and hopeless in a world dominated by Big Tech giants, and everyone is building fancy AI stuff and maybe publishing is boring, but I still believe we can build a better future, and I think writing your own content, and having control of it is the way we get there.

Figured I'd write a short blog post about it, put the ideas out into the universe and see what, if anything, comes back. #

Rogan on living in the best days

Rogan has comedian Jimmy Dore on the show, and they are reminiscing about times gone by.

Rogan gets into the magnitude of the incredible cultural change that occured in the 60s, and some of the darker aspects that went along with it, the supression by the government:

The psychadelic act of 1970 was passed to go after the Black Panthers, and to go after the anti-war movement, cause those people were all taking drugs.

They were eating mushrooms and trying to come to some sort of an understanding of our place in the universe, and they said okay we are going to take all these psychadelic compounds, they are literally creating a cultural revolution.

You go from the 1950s, you get...I always say that music is the best representation of that, and comedy as well, but really music. If you look at like Buddy Holy, great music, great stuff...and Jimmy Hendrix is 10 years later. What the fuck is that?! That's like a revolution. Like out of nowhere.

Something is insanely different, like it's not even from this earth. That’s all psychadelics.

And it‘s true and certainly worth noting. The change in music around that period was profound. It's really worth listening to music from that period, really getting into it. When I went down that rabbit hole a number of years ago, I found it incredible to learn about all the influences of the musicians of my generation. The history is literally embeded in the music. You get a real sense of where we've come from culturally.

But the thing that really stood out for me is his next bit, a few minutes later, where he outlines why he thinks we live in the best times now.

These are the best days. These days right now, these are the best days. By far. By far for everybody, because we get all the other stuff, from those other eras, we still can listen that too. We still can watch that too.

But we have a bizarre time where the world is waking up, where people are so much more aware of the corruption, and just the way the world works, it’s more highlighted than it’s ever been before, and I think it’s more fun.

It’s like some of the things that are stupid, are SO stupid. Like when you see Biden "We beat Medicare", and they go "Thank you mister president", and they smash cut, like how the fuck is that real? How the fuck is that real? The guy locks up like Windows 95, stammers for 15 seconds, and then he says "We beat Medicare".

I think he's right, and it’s important to remember it because it’s too easy to get caught up in the trap of believing that stuff was way better before. Stuff is really great now, and there will be awesome things that will emerge out of this era that will totally blow our minds too, probably even more than before. It’s just that because we are in it right now, it’s difficult to see it. Of course it’s easy to see the great stuff looking backwards, but the really great thing is to find it as it’s happening, and take part in it.

The whole episode is really great, Jimmy goes into this excellent description of some of Carl Jung’s philosophical thoughts. How people project their secret inner selves onto others without realising it, creating love but also hate, this strange state where conscious and unconscious parts of our mind encounter each other in a real physical way. I found that quite profound.

Also a bunch of pretty intense conspiracy stuff.

Great episode. #

Mt Gox is finally giving back their customers money that they stole. But they are only paying back 15% of funds. That's an outrage, and it's even more outrageous to claim they were doing their customers a favour putting them through years of hell. It's disgusting victim blaming, something I’m unfortunately all too familiar with.

How unbelievable that this should happen the exact same week I finished the everything page, after months of delays, and mentioned I would be retiring the current mountain homepage.

It's just another example of total reality inversion that I experience daily, in this case it’s especially bad because the ordeal the Mt Gox customers have gone through feels earily similar to what I'm still going through here in Vietnam.

What are you doing to me world?

Update: While I was writing this note and associated linkblog link, a couple in their twenties had been sitting behind me relatively queitly. Just as I was putting the finishing touches to my wording, the bloke said audibly 'sorry' in my direction. They both then got up and left a few moments later. #