Writing ⁽⁵⁾

My favorite new technology is not new. It's a natural-language game engine for creating text-based interactive stories. Inform 7 The latest version of Inform 7 was released in 2022. Aaron Reed's excellent and completely usable book was published in 2011. The game engine was created in 2006, as a rebuild of a project which was introduced when I was still getting carded for cigarettes (1993). This is a good and appropriate pace for technology. I am just getting started with…

I've been enjoying the short stories on the @clarkesworld@mastodon.online podcast. The story "Never Eaten Vegetables" by H.H. Pak from January 2025 was especially engaging. It hits a whole bunch of standard themes that I really like (biology, space colonization, advanced technology, corporate malfeasance) in a story that's super original, interesting, and well crafted. Plus, Kate Baker is always a great reader. If you're into such things, give it a listen. https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/audio_01_25b/

This is what I'm up to at the moment (updated February 8, 2025). Currently reading: "Guards! Guards!" by Terry Pratchett Returning to running and healthy eating after a ~2 month hiatus. Running has been regular (every other day) at a much shorter mileage. I had some knee pain when I ran on Christmas Eve, so I took some time off and then re-started with 1.5 miles per session, and some strength training on the off days. I'm rebuilding my base,…

I migrated my personal website from Wordpress to Publii. Here are a few observations on Publii, from my experiences to date. I also wrote some more general thoughts about moving to static HTML. At a high level, this is the process I am using to move this website from Wordpress to Publii. When I switched my main working laptop to a Linux system, I had to set up a new clean installation of Publii (on linux) and move my publishing…

One this year's projects has been moving the (eight) websites I shepherd for various projects and community organizations from Wordpress to static HTML. I tried a bunch and settled on Hugo and Publii.  I used Hugo for several simple sites. It's good for some things but it's really only suitable for coders and the image handling is a headache.  It's a fine choice for sites that are mostly text, with one or more technical site managers.  It's a good one…