Blogging

The Fediverse is a decentralised social media network. This includes Mastodon, which is where a majority of the users are, but it is not the only option. I have been using Mastodon for seven years. I made my home on Fosstodon, an instance focused on free and open source software.

Last month, it came to light that Fosstodon had a far-right moderator and some other instances defederated with Fosstodon over this. I don’t want to get into the specifics of this situation; whilst it is an important topic, it isn’t something I have any desire or qualification to discuss. I’ll leave this to other people. However, having to move instances did raise some thoughts about the federation model and owning your identity and data.

I read a lot of articles about programming and technology as a way of keeping up with the industry and expanding my knowledge. Here are some articles I read in 2024 that I recommend reading.

2024 was a busy year for me so I didn’t read as much as in previous years. But still, here’s my top articles.

I read a lot of articles about programming and technology as a way of keeping up with the industry and expanding my knowledge. Here are some articles I read in 2023 that I recommend reading.

In 2022, I made a goal of writing at least twelve long-form articles on my blog each year. But why bother? In this article, I will explain the reasons why I write.

I recently switched to using Eleventy to generate my blog. As part of this process, I needed to implement word counts for each of my posts. I made my own plugin for this as I was unable to find an existing one that met my requirements - they either used regex to parse HTML or included non-text like scripts and code snippets in the count.

I recently switched to using Eleventy to generate my blog. Because Eleventy is very easy to extend, I was able to add more features to my blog - including backlinks.

After nine years of using Jekyll, I’ve switched to using Eleventy (11ty) and redesigned my blog whilst I was at it. I was finding that Jekyll was too limiting and wanted something more capable. In this article, I will talk about why I switched, how I did it, and my thoughts about Eleventy as a new user.

The collapse of Twitter last year got me thinking about closed platforms and reducing the hold that privately owned platforms have over the Internet.

I’ve been blogging for nine years now on my personal website. I like owning my own domain as it allows me to retain control and stay independent of particular services. Private platforms have a tendency to be bought out and/or ruined by commercial interests, especially now with tech growth slowing down and investors getting uneasy.

Articles are a great way to expand your knowledge as a programmer, by learning from the experiences of others. A good article is also interesting to read. Here is a collection of articles I recommend reading.