It's official: I prefer Inkwell over Elfeed
Last night I realized two things:
- I haven’t touched Elfeed in about a month
- I’ve been reading and interacting more with people’s posts than ever As I was looking at my Inkwell’s RSS feeds and cleaning up, I couldn’t help but notice how nice it looks:
And, yes, I prefer it over my list of feeds in elfeed, which are stored in an .org file - essentially lines of text with comments and tags.
I’m pretty sure this is the opposite case for most folks who use Emacs. First, Emacs users want to use Emacs more, not less, and second, Inkwell is not available without Micro.blog1.
But I think this is the point I’m getting at: Inkwell belongs in Micro.blog; actually, it is Micro.blog.
When I started using Micro.blog three years ago, I considered it mostly an alternative to running my own static site with Hugo, between fixing issues with Hugo, my CSS, Netlify and understanding attempting to understand git and Magit. Yes, Micro.blog is an alternative to all of that, but it isn’t just a blogging platform; It’s a definition of a contemporary blogger.
If you look at Micro.blog’s set of tools, you’ll see what I mean: it contains tools to keep track and post about books, movies and TV shows, private (encrypted) notes, photos and self-made video clips2, save articles and qoutes from around the internet (pocket style), automatic integration with other social media where possible - all of this around your hosted blog, complete with plugins and a theme (and let’s not forget the AI integration, if you want it and turn it on) you can tweak and take with you - your posts, media, css, everything - wherever you go.
And Inkwell adds an important direction to this mix.
My blogging hour in the morning now continues where I left off the night before, with saved highlights and complete articles from other people I keep track of. The integration between Inkwell and Micro.blog, where my reading turns into writing, still requires some work as the UI and some of the bugs get sorted out, but it’s there. And it’s already better and more intuitive for me than Elfeed, which takes place in its own isolated space.
Elfeed is very good at what it does (and hopefully, what it will keep on doing, with its creator leaving Emacs), and it has been good to me. It still is. But Inkwell, Micro.blog, and my recent adventures with finding out more bloggers and learning more about the Indieweb feel like an evolution. It’s the next step of whatever I’m doing here.
Footnotes
1: I recall Manton borrowed the idea from a different RSS reader, but I can’t find the reference right now
2: Finding an alternative to YouTube these days is not easy, and if you’re not trying to “build a brand” and repeat the chant of “click and subscribe,” the only semi-reliable alternative that comes to mind is PeerTube and (maybe Dailymotion?) - but Manton found a way that seem sustainable, at least for now.
Any recommendations for a good dark cyberpunk book? Not Necromancer or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, these are the classics. Something more recent?
Sebastian explains why guestbooks are nice:
But sitting down and working your butt off for several minutes to create a tiny, silly drawing on a screen that’s way too small in an interface that’s way too cramped, that’s the kind of appreciation and recognition that, in my opinion, is needed much more often on the internet these days. Probably more urgent today than ever before.
Need I say more?
Over the past few days, I’ve been taking walks again. This was something I used to do regularly, but now that I sit here on a park bench, I realize it’s probably only been a weekly habit at best.
Both weather and work kept me away from my walks. With the weather getting better and work pressing, which means I need to reset my brain often, I find myself craving walks more often.
Sometimes I catch myself thinking about how we take certain things for granted. This park, this bench, this pleasant breeze right now; the fact that I can walk at all. It’s all truly wonderful, isn’t it?
Manu is considering charging his phone once twice a week. He lives in a “quiet place” that, I suspect, makes that possible. Meanwhile, I usually charge my phone once a day, even though the battery is still OK. Makes me wonder.
Of Overworking and Deligating
I asked for help, and now I have to sink even more time into delegation, training, and documentation. The solution? Go SLOWER when everything’s on fire. Yes, really.
Been watching Common Side Effects 📺. Somehow I’m already mostly done with Season 1. Part sci-fi, part suspense, part drama, dark and appealing.
Some color goes a long way 📷
It’s Pie day for me.
Well, the pie day was on March (3/14). But every month on the 14th, I decided to have a pizza. Otherwise, I don’t eat cheese. I stopped completely, besides unavoidable butter in some pastries and such. 📷 🍕
Technical debt, aka I keep forgetting about custom.css
Wait, how can something on a website be broken to one degree or another? Is it broken or not? Well, you see… CSS.