Why Blog?

There’s a nerdy, yak-shaving satisfaction in migrating my blog again, but there were other motivations in mind.

I could certainly do with the practice in writing. Mostly though, it’s an incentive to start exploring again: when I first got into computers, I grew up on Linux systems and really appreciated the simplicity and documentation available. I felt that I could run ps, and see 20-ish processes and know what each one of them did.

These days, I’m still most at-home on a minimalist Debian derivative, but even there I don’t recognise most of the output I see in a ps dump. I maintain a bunch of Linux servers at work, yet I’m increasingly aware of the topics and sub-systems that I never learned in the same way as when I hoovered up that early knowledge.

One of my nerd-heroes is Julia Evans. Her willingness to learn out in the open and enthusiastically document it all, from deep topics to “TIL” tidbits, is incredibly refreshing. I’ve bought a bunch of her zines, and even though some are topics I know in principle I’ve gained something of value from each and every one.

In the same vein I’ve been collecting a range of topics I want to understand, or understand better, or just topics where it may be beneficial to have one more problem-solution document out there. Some are quickies for when I have time, while others (possibly most) could turn into research deep-dives. There’s no pre-defined schedule, or even a plan to publish either incrementally or post-hoc, just — at least for now — an enthusiasm to get started again!