The personal blog

It’s been an interesting start to the day, one which has felt like 2008 all over again. I sat down at my desk with a morning coffee, opened my RSS feeds and went through opening stories into Safari when I came across something that seemed interesting. Two of those articles led me to two new blogs, personal blogs, from people I’ve never come across before. Now my feed reader has two extra subscriptions to keep track of.

Back in the early 2000’s while I was a student and at the start of my design career, this was a regular occurrence. Blogs would reveal more blogs, which would reveal more blogs, and at the end of it all I would feel inspired and ready to create a post for my own blog. Much like today. In that sense it feels like nothing has really changed. The internet, if we let it, can still serve up new surprises and new interesting people in a way that nothing else can. The small, personal, internet that is.

The last 15 years or so has been damaging to the personal internet. We have surrendered ourselves to the behemoths of social media, falling for the promise of easier connections, when in reality those connections are shallower and don’t last. People get drowned out in the noise and lost in the algorithm. That’s why mornings like this feel more special. Like a mini-revival is taking place. Most of the personal blogs I followed nearly 2 decades ago are gone now, sadly, but new ones are springing up and old timers are returning. People are scrabbling about in the back of the cupboard, finding the old hat buried at the back, dusting it off, giving it a clean, and starting again.

It actually makes me happy, which feels odd to write, but it’s true. I like finding new blogs to read, people to follow, photos to look at. It reminds me that despite all that’s going on in the world, it still keeps spinning. People keep creating, sharing their experiences, and more (please more) often than not there isn’t any politics in sight. It’s like a new renaissance is bubbling up, and I’m here for it.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the two new blogs I found that triggered this post:

Both linked to by Om on his new blog.

Any recommendations for general tech news websites to replace The Verge?

The cactus I bought with my Grandad when I was 4 years old has died, taken by stem rot. Chopped off a couple of bits that still seem healthy in the hope of being able to plant them but it doesn’t look good. Sad times. 36 years we’ve been together.

Today’s coffee is extremely funky! Smells amazing, but might be a bit to much processing for my tastes… ☕️

Dave Rupert in a post about taste:

when the website adds a fifth, seventh, twelfth ad… I know a person who lacks taste is at the wheel. I can feel it in my bones when an app or website has prioritized revenue over user experience. A person without taste or high emotional intelligence broke the unspoken contract we had built on mutual respect.

In my role as a UX/UI designer I increasingly see my job as being a champion of taste. For the majority of users on the web the user experience is good, most businesses have gotten the hang of providing easy paths for users to do things. I now spend a reasonable amount of time championing good taste as a defence of the experience.

I used the AI tool in Miro for the first time today and it actually behaved as I expected it to. It’s the first time I’ve ever had reason to use an AI to perform actions for me in a service instead of as a Google replacement.

What Manton said. I’m sick of it.

Politics is bleeding into everything. Tech headlines, podcasts that aren’t usually political. For 2025, I like to box my politics into narrow parts of the day, not everywhere all the time. Soon we’ll need mute filters in all apps, from RSS readers to Overcast.

I have ended up down a rabbit hole of Herman Miller chairs over my morning coffee. Now I’m working out how long it would take for me to save for a Cosm…