Writing ⁽⁸⁾

I use Publii for website content management. This week, inspired by the flurry of activity around the new human.json protocol, I decided to add it to my website. Here’s the process I followed. I'm currently editing the human.json file by hand, which you'll need to do as well. Stepping through... Make list somewhere convenient. Start with a couple of websites that you know and trust. Don't forget to include the leading 'https://'. At the time of writing, this is required…

I picked this up at the thrift shop this summer. I was eyeing it for a while, but what pushed me over the edge was my daughter's observation. "You should get it." It's such a delight. The intentionality involved in using it, the mechanical-ness, the maintainability, fact that it still works as well as it did in 1971. I just love it. There's more information on this model here. Fortunately, there's a small but robust community of typewriter enthusiasts like…

Here are a couple of recent stories from the Clarkesworld podcast that I have really enjoyed. "Aegiopolis Testudo" by Gordon Li People live in a city built upon an alien's back. The way that Gordon combines biology, planetary science, social culture, and technology are just exceptional. "Never Eaten Vegetables" by H.H. Pak Human pioneers struggle for a normal life in a remote planetary colony. A sentient spaceship reflects on her existence, choices, and impact on the people in her care.

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 April 5, 2026): Today is Easter, and I'm writing at my inlaws' dinner table before everyone gets up for the day. Spring in Ohio is a sprinkling of really nice days upon the ground of gray, chilly, rainy days. There are flowers and bud leaves starting to peek out hesitantly, like the humans. Slowly the nice days expand until about early May when it really starts to feel consistently like…

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…