A turn away from social media means more time to pour into personal writing that goes out by email and web feeds. I started making websites in the 1990s, and maintained a blog using Textpattern from 2008 to 2012 before abandoning it in favor of photography.
If I had to pinpoint what got me to start blogging again, it wasn’t simply the allure of static site generators that it did. It was Emacs, specifically Org mode, which I started using in 2015, and in which I’ve since typed some 700,000 words. Org mode is made for writing, anything from note-keeping, to document editing, project planning, and even literate programming. The tagline says it all: Your life in plain text.
While Org mode handles to-do lists, agendas, spreadsheets, time tracking, and more, at its root it’s a kind of word processor called an outliner, which has a deep role in software history, particularly the web, blogging, and RSS.
Org mode doesn’t make me want to write, but it keeps me writing, if that makes any sense. All day I’m keeping a diary, taking notes, saving bookmarks, making to-do lists, all the while touching text. It feels natural to take the next step to edit, format, and publish it.
I created this category of posts to collect observations, personal news, and links that I might otherwise throw over the transom to a social media company, and instead keep them here at home, and send them out for you to read.
This first post serves as a notice that it’s working, and the next one is coming.
Category: Newsletter
Christopher Adams is an art producer and computer programmer based in Taipei.