2021-01-05, Welcome to the New Year

Howdy everyone! Welcome to 2021. I apologise for the delay of a few weeks in writing a good update, but I’ve been busy! As I wrote about a while back, I had a series of hardware failures that left me with, to look at this positively, a clean slate. No backlog of archived files that needed sorting, no half-finished code projects, just an empty computer.

With that clean slate, I spent some time tinkering around, trying to re-determine my relationship with computers. I have, though it’s hard to express, a better idea of that relationship than I did, and I even have some notions of how to build a tool that accommodates that relationship in a way I’d like. But, I also spent a lot of time working on things like setting up a Wordpress that aren’t going to be relevant going forward. Oh well.

One thing that a new beginning let me do was take a fresh look at the relationship between my writing and my “performing” on the Web: sharing that writing with a public audience, in exchange for support, either financial or otherwise. (Thank you to everyone who’s been donating! I don’t know if I posted about it but it helped me put on a few big meals for my community over the past couple months.)

With the ability to start fresh, I decided to look at what I’d be able to make using Emacs and Org-mode, a text-editor and an information management application, respectively. Since I last used Org-mode, there’s been a new addition to its ecosystem: Org-roam.

Org-roam uses a database to keep an eye on Org-mode text files in a directory, and provides features to make it easier to link between those features. Depending on how it’s used, this can make it easier to create a personal information management system out of Emacs and Org-mode, by implementing in-part or -whole systems like Zettelkasten or a Wiki model.

Org-roam fills, almost, a missing piece of my Org-mode use from a while back. (I need it to also track inclusions, not just links, but it looks like that’s in development already so I just have to be patient.)

Now, I’m able to pretty easily maintain a directory of Org-mode files that serves as a personal encyclopedia of terms, but also my daily records, all while holding chunks of the code that make the system work in the first place, letting me publish something that’s a bit blog, a bit Wiki, and a bit source code repository.

You can look at the work-in-progress replacement for my Website over at https://emsenn.github.io(Why Github? I was teaching some people how to set up personal websites with the service, and haven’t moved myself off it yet.)

Even already there’s a lot of changes planned for the Website that’s there, and there’s not much content… yet. Most pages are empty, or contain just a bit of boilerplate, as I work to map my conception of how I want to handle my personal information to Org-mode.

With my Website able to fulfill a more desired place in my role on the Web, and that role itself still changing, that means my newsletter and other profiles on the Web are going to change.

1. Newsletter. Available through https://emsenn.substack.com, I have an email newsletter. Before, these email letters were the equivalent of blog posts. Now, they’ll be the equivalent of postings from my daily record. So, my newsletter will be a manual “best of” from my public postings, useful for folk who want to just get the most polished of my writing.
2. Ko-fi. Available through https://ko-fi.com/emsenn, Ko-fi is where I accept financial donations. I had planned on listing various notable works there as pay-what-you-want but I’m not sure if I’ll do that going forward.
3. Itch. Available through https://emsenn.itch.io/, Itch is another place where I had planned on listing various things as pay-what-you-want. Also unsure if I’m going to do that!

I do plan to set up an RSS feed (or several) for the new Website, but haven’t yet - there’s quite a few moving parts that go into it already, and I’m not in too much of a rush.

In other news, it’s quite winter outside now, so I’m spending more time at my computer. Unfortunately, it’s rather disorganized use, so if you’re getting this email before a response to one you’ve sent to me: sorry! I’ve got them all flagged in my inbox, I just want to make sure I’m able to respond to each appropriately.

It might be a bit before I have a piece of writing polished enough to send to y’all, given the current turbulence of my writing style, but I’ll try and send out another email explaining any important updates every couple weeks or so.

Or, I’ll get things cleaned up real quick and suddenly be able to churn out good writing!