I’m going forward by going back…

I let this site go dormant again, but that was not for lack of unpublished notes, pictures, ideas, etc. – I have physical and digital notebooks full of stuff.

Basically: I get busy, and I also get shy.

What to do about all that could’ve / would’ve stuff?

This a perennial quandary for me, and typically an impediment to moving forward with adding new things to the site.

But this time I’m going to try to not let it hold me back. My intentions are to just start posting things if I feel like it, even if they are “outdated.”

So I may be posting some backdated items.

But more than that, I’m gradually going to build and surface more topic-based static pages on this site, and de-emphasize the reverse-chronological-status-update feed tyranny of the “notes.”

I’m starting to think and design in terms of digital gardening, though I still have a lot to read and learn and look at before I implement.

One of my first plots/beds should probably be documenting this learning and exploring I am doing in regards to digital gardening and site design. Need to build the raised bed and add compost before I plant the seeds, though…

Standalone post link: Going Forward / Going Back

This post’s notes about breadcrumbs helped me figure out some things with my taxonomy list pages today.

In other words, I updated my taxonomy list page template, so as to prepare for a move toward building and surfacing more topic-based pages, supplemented by changelogs such as this.

I also added another instance of the Taxonomy Tree (a.k.a. Tree of Life, a.k.a. Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, a.k.a. Cast Out from the Digital Garden, a.k.a. Site Taxonomy) to the home page of the website, utilizing my now increasingly ubiquitous [+/-] toggle buttons. Again, a move I’m making as I explore ideas around digital gardening. I’m not actually doing digital gardening yet so I don’t have anything to link to - yet.

This is the first semi-official changelog for joshuaw.xyz, and is also the start of me trying to be better about documenting and crediting people when I learn something or pilfer code and ideas from their blog posts.

Standalone post link: 20220613 Changelog - Taxonomy List Pages

Just read the June 2022 issue of Poetry.

Longer, with details: just seriously injured my knee by tripping and falling over my daughter’s bike in the garage - I was rushing through while doing maintenance on our water heater. So, instead of continuing with the water heater, I am laid up with an ice pack in my son’s bedroom, reading the June 2022 issue of Poetry until I feel rested enough to try to go upstairs to my own bedroom.

My favorite entry in the magazine was actually the closing prose essay from Shelby Handler about translating ancient Hebrew texts - “Astrological Speculum,” and Other Objects Found on My Way to the Ancestors

I might write and share more thoughts on the essay at some point - besides being beautifully written and thought provoking, it made me cognizant of some of the Jewish/Hebrew cultural appropriation I once engaged in as a Mormon.

Standalone post link: Reading June 2022 Issue of Poetry

These are:

• two of my favorite albums
• two of my favorite albums to listen to on vinyl, that I own on vinyl¹
• two of my favorite albums that sound like spring to me, though I can’t say why²
• two of my favorite albums that I am listening to on vinyl right now, and noting on my website on this day, for these reasons

Standalone post link: Spring Listening 2022: Turn Into and Everybody Works by Jay Som

I went to Little Dell a month ago, and this is what it was like.

I should go back and see what it is like now.

Standalone post link: Little Dell February

Upgraded the primary domain for this site to its final form here at the end of the internet:

Welcome to joshuaw.xyz

(Also updated the introductory text of my home page a bit to reflect this change.)

Standalone post link: welcome to joshua w dot xyz

1. Updated the home page of this site today, adding prominent links to RSS feeds, a gallery of recent post images, and returning a link to the “Featured / Longer Things” post collection. Now I need to update the front matter of all the other missing posts that belong in that “featured” collection.

And with the images back I feel like I should start taking and posting more photographs of things other than just screenshots and shit I bought.

2. Also updated the Tree of Life, a.k.a. Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, a.k.a. Site Taxonomy page, improving styling and adding toggle buttons to make each element collapsible. This will be extremely useful to me, if to no one else, as my next job here is to clean up and standardize all the taxonomical front matter in old posts. This will be the authority.

(This is the first attempt at me posting status updates in the notes feed when I make changes to a static page. I got this idea from maya.land as a possible solution to the problem I described in “My Revisionist History” the week before last. I have another essay or whatever mostly drafted about my evolution and plans on future site organization, inspired in part by exploring Maya’s and other people’s web pages, but I don’t know when/if that will see the light of day. I do need to do more learning on digital gardens and whatnot.)

Standalone post link: Home and Taxonomy Updates (March 20, 2022)

I had in mind a new reading update rule for 2022 - I wasn’t going to post a reading update about any book (neither here nor on Goodreads) until I was at least 10-15% of the way into the book.

But I forgot my rule, and now the books I barely started and haven’t continued to read are hanging over my head, and I hate all you big invisible jerks for holding me silently accountable for every random thing I post here.

Just kidding. I do have a lot of false starts, and I do hate the weird pressure and embarrassment that comes from posting about a book and then not following through, even though people probably aren’t actually paying any attention.

Maybe I should set the line at 20 percent…

Ditto to posting about “favorite” music prematurely. I want to deliberately wait until I have truly listened to something 3-4 times, or purchased a physical copy, because I’m impressionable. I’m doing a bit better on the music front this year, though.

Standalone post link: The 15% rule for Reading Updates

Here are some of the things I’m working on and thinking about now…

• Concocting and rolling out changes to this website. +

  Laying the groundwork to put more content in ‘collections’ and static pages not bound by the reverse-chronological tyranny of the ‘feed’, all the while trying to make sure the date-based feeds are accessible and functional, because they do have their place.

• Proceeding on my work goal of getting back to creating and curating more resources, as well as being better about sharing and promoting the resources that already exist. +

  Started with this ‘Top titles of 2021’ project.

• Listening to Nilüfer Yanya’s album PAINLESS pretty obsessively, as well as the new Big Thief double-album Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You. +

  

  Obsessive repeat listens are actually good for my mindset, I think, and I hadn’t realized how long it had been since I was last hooked on an artist or album like this.

• I read Moon Witch Spider King and had big plans for more reading, but I’ve kind of fallen off. +

  See the next bullet for a reason why.

• Playing Pokémon Legends: Arceus +

  This was something I started supposedly just to humor my kids, but to be honest I think I’m playing it more than they are now and I’ve let it get in the way a bit of my reading (see above) and my writing and working on this website. But sometimes in the evening those other things seem too hard, and that pokédex isn’t going to fill itself…

• Our backyard is a a muddy hellscape that will dry to a dustbowl in summer, and I should be doing something about it, but I just can’t. +

  I don’t know where to start. Help me please.

This page was last updated on March 19, 2022. See my prior ‘now’ updates here.

Credit for the ‘now’ page concept goes to Derek Sivers. +

Standalone post link: Now (March 19, 2022)

I recently built and shared this ‘Top Titles of 2021’ thing at work.

I crunched data, built these interactive charts, and cranked out a series of posters and presentation graphics showing the most-circulated books in my district’s school libraries in the last calendar year.

This is the first remotely ‘creative’ product I can remember making at work in forever, unless you count bespoke MARC records for self-published Amazon titles, or XML files custom-mapped from inventory spreadsheets of thousands of Chromebook serial numbers for import into our resource management system. Oh, and of course, my never-ending quest to write The Great American Email. Actually, one of the Great American Emails was written to describe this very ‘Top Titles’ project, so now I’ve come full circle. Self actualization?

Standalone post link: A Thing I Made At Work - Granite Top Titles of 2021