Colophon

Inspired by others who have created theirs, it’s time for me to create my own colophon:

A colophon is a page or section (typically in a footer) of a site that describes how the site is made, with what tools, supporting what technologies, and often published on personal sites at a top level /colophon page. (IndieWeb)

Do not expect great insights. Any time you find yourself asking “why?” just imagine me responding with a shrug ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

History and motivation

I’ve been putting things on the internet pretty much ever since I’ve had access to it. I used to sneak on via AOL and CompuServe trials as a 15/16 year-old using my Dad’s credit card, before legitimately getting access (and web space) via Freeserve. That would have been around 1998 when I was 17 years old and, of course, I promptly created a Monty Python appreciation website thanks to encouragement from my Physics teacher who may or may not given my a cracked version of Macromedia Dreamweaver.

I can’t remember having a blog as an undergraduate, but I did have a couple of gigs as a (terrible) web designer. During my first placement during teacher training in 2004, I created a website for students to be able to access interesting stuff. I started interacting with other teachers on forums, and that led to a teaching blog.

Finding I had other things to say, I set up a personal blog. The two eventually merged.

(Editor’s note: Doug, can I remind you this is a colophon, not a personal history?)

Anyway… my point is that I’ve been putting things on the internet since 1998, and I now have multiple blogs. I currently publish writing at:

I’ve had other blogs at Discours.es and Literaci.es which I gave up during the pandemic — as well as probably other ones I vaguely remember (Blogger?!)

Asking why I blog, and choose to inflict my thoughts on other people is probably a good topic for a therapy session. Perhaps it is a form of therapy? That would make a lot of sense.

But then, why not just write things down in a journal? Well, first, because that would mean I never get any external validation. And second, it’s really hard to re-find ideas in a journal. Having a URL for each idea is really useful. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve typed a topic and my own name into a search engine to find what I’ve written about it previously.

Technologies

This blog used to use WordPress but is now based on Ghost. Switching the WAO blog from Medium to Ghost opened my eyes a little, and coupled with the recent WordPress drama, douchebaggery of Matt Mullenwegg, and frustrations with the editing interface, I began looking elsewhere. Over the Christmas holidays 2025 I could allocate enough time to successfully move a 20 year-old blog with thousands of posts.

Over at Thought Shrapnel I use micro.blog these days, although that, too, used to use WordPress. Micro.blog is good in that it natively works with ActivityPub, the protocol underpinning Mastodon, Pixelfed, etc. It also automatically produces a digest of posts which I configure to go out every Sunday. Previously, when I’ve felt a bit burned out and paused Thought Shrapnel it’s because I’ve had no energy to write a newsletter. Having it auto-produced from posts I publish during the week is much more sustainable.

I used Svbtle for Literaci.es, choosing it over Medium when the two looked like equally viable alternatives. I’ve also experimented with all sorts of other platforms. At the end of the day, what I want is an easy way to write things and them appear on the web.

Method

Act without doing;
work without effort.
Think of the small as large
and the few as many.
Confront the difficult
while it is still easy;
accomplish the great task
by a series of small acts.

(Tao Te Ching)

Every week without fail, except during times of #BelshawBlackOps, I publish a weeknote. I also publish around 10 posts over at Thought Shrapnel, and the occasional one via the WAO blog.

As often happens, I’ve switched from thumb-typing on my phone to touch-typing the last few paragraphs on my laptop. I find that getting things out of my head is the best way to write about things, and then, if I want to write more, I can always publish another post and link them together. The only times I write and edit multiple times is when I’m writing something much longer-form, such as the Friends of the Earth report that I co-authored at the start of 2025.

That’s not to say, of course, that I don’t hit ‘Publish’, read back what I’ve written, and then realise I’ve expressed myself poorly. In fact, what I often do after sharing my work on Mastodon, Bluesky, and LinkedIn, is to click through from each site and see how the blog renders. I then frantically make changes.

Final notes

I haven’t managed to weave into the above anything about the changing information environment over the years of this blog’s existence. I don’t want to go too deeply into this, but if you’ve read this far, you’re probably up for a bit more solo waffle. So let me oblige.

When I started this blog, which if you remember, was after my teaching blog, but before the existence of Twitter, there was a definite blogosphere. This is a term that has almost disappeared, largely due to the rise of social media — with Twitter, for example, initially referred to as “micro-blogging.” Even in the early years of Twitter, I used to get quite a lot of comments on this blog. People used to read longer-form stuff, and they primarily used to reply to it either as a comment, or on their own blogs. Yes, there would be Twitter threads, but (perhaps because of the type of people who were early adopters) people wrote things up as comments or blog posts.

Would I like that period of the internet to return? Yes, but I’d also like to be younger, have a proper Labour government and Obama in power, and rein-in the power of Big Tech. The world isn’t on the greatest trajectory, and sometimes I wonder if there are better things I can do with my life than sit for hours every week and type things onto a screen. But still, I persist in doing so, in line with my values, in the vain hope that at some point, maybe even after I leave this mortal coil, they will resonate with someone else.