Sometimes life is a series of starts and stops; more meandering path than straight line; walking blindly through foggy woods instead of seeing the future clearly from a mountaintop. Lately I've felt like that, but I keep walking forward anyway, and I seem to be getting somewhere at least.
Last week, I put out a new version of WriteFreely (v0.16), our open source blogging platform. This was a huge update that was in the works for a long time. Lots of people seem to be excited about it and so far I haven't seen any huge bugs — which is great! This update had been hanging over my head, so it's great to have that out of the way and to move forward again.
Last month had a lot of ups and downs. But one positive was going to the HOPE conference out in Queens, and seeing some friends from the fediverse, meeting some new people, and learning a lot of new things that have stuck with me since. I also watched Mr. Robot all the way through — it's really such a good show.
This month, I'm putting my head down and focusing more. I'm trying to get into a routine and spend most of my day away from the internet until I absolutely need it (like to work). I'm turning off the news and scrolling less. These are so often my go-to activities when I'm bored, and I can feel my brain oozing out of my ears from it.
Reading physical books and writing in notebooks both help. I walk around the neighborhood. I sit in parks and at cafes, and watch all the life around me and see what thoughts come out. It's nice to sit with boredom again. It only lasts a second, and then I see so many more details around that I usually miss when my mind is a mess.
And the weather in New York has been beautiful — False Autumn, they call it. But it's got me looking forward to the coming cold, hunkering down for a while, and maybe soon emerging from the woods again.
Thoughts? Discuss...
Really productive day today. Biggest one was that I finally fixed some performance / availability issues that have been plaguing Write.as this week. This was huge, and of course will make me much less stressed, assuming it all holds up through our nightly traffic spikes. But I’ll be keeping an eye on it.
I made some changes to how our Articles go out to the fediverse, which I’ll announce tomorrow. This post is partly a little test to see how it looks! But should be an improvement, especially on Mastodon.
Finally, I started experimenting with something new around monetizing Write.as blogs. For now, it’s super duper secret. But it was really easy to integrate and looks pretty slick! So look forward to trying it out live on the site soon and seeing what else we can do with it.
#daily #updates #WriteAs #fediverse
Thoughts? Discuss...
Life has finally calmed down for me again, and I'm back to working on Write.as and WriteFreely.
I'm spending this week catching up on my backlog and getting organized for the months ahead. Over the last few months, I've resolved to fully focus on everything I've built with Musing Studio — similar to how I poured everything into this work back in 2019. It's an exciting but challenging time for the web, and I want to make sure we continue to evolve with it.
As I'm getting settled again, I'll also be hanging out in the Remark.as Cafe chat room all week, starting from at least noon, Eastern Time. Stop by and chat with me and others in the community, if you're around!
Otherwise, keep an eye out for more progress and updates here!
Thoughts? Discuss...
I’m at a big turning point right now with a life change that came unexpectedly in November, and threw me off all the momentum I had with Write.as / WriteFreely in the fall.
Doing my best to get through it, and I appreciate everyone’s patience and understanding in the meantime.
#life
Thoughts? Discuss...
It’s been a productive month! Released WriteFreely v0.15.1, our sub.club integration, and free Write.as accounts. Free accounts have been especially nice — over just a couple days, daily signups are 4 times higher than what they were before, and we’ve seen more upgrades too.
I’m working on WriteFreely v0.16 now, with a ton of new features that people should enjoy. I’m hoping to have that out by November 9 — six years after our very first release. I also have a ton of updates planned for November on Write.as that I can’t wait to share with everyone.
Besides that, I’ve been posting more on the fediverse, Threads, Bluesky, and even LinkedIn (😬) to get the word out more. We’ve had a long period of slow progress, and now I want to start ramping up again.
#WriteFreely #Writeas #business #updates #progress
Thoughts? Discuss...
A lot of dev planning today, thinking about the next two WriteFreely releases. As I mentioned on @dev@musing.studio, the goal is to basically bring WF into parity with Write.as, including support for photos, which is a long-request feature.
I’m excited for these next updates, as they’ll really move the product forward and give more people access to everything we’ve built here. You can see what’s next for WF (and beyond) on our project tracker.
#WriteFreely #WriteFreelyDev #dev
Thoughts? Discuss...
Just finished up a brand new integration with sub.club, and here it is in action! Paid subscribers can read on for more.
I’ve been much more organized and focused over the last several weeks. Trying to stay on top of emails and forum posts; got the latest WriteFreely release out this weekend; supported the launch of the Social Web Foundation; working on a new Write.as integration; and finishing up another Write.as change, also announcing this week.
It’s nice to feel on top of things again, and I’m excited for what’s coming down the line for the rest of the year. Maybe oddly, fall and winter feel like the best time to buckle down and work.
#WriteFreely #Writeas #life
Thoughts? Discuss...
Updating some servers today that haven’t been touched in a while. This includes getting our Phabricator issue tracker back online after a bad upgrade knocked it out. I’m also trying to migrate our Musing Studio instance of Mastodon onto our current domain. So far so good, but we’ll see how the rest goes.
Earlier, I did more cleanup from last month’s fraud attacks. We took a big financial hit from that last month, so I’m tightening things up personally to weather it all.
It’s been rainy in New York all week, but outside of some dampened plans, I’ve enjoyed it. Yesterday it was a beautiful 68°F outside, so I took a walk around the neighborhood and sat outside for a beer near the park, watching the people go by. It felt like fall, and got me excited for the coming season.
I’ve fallen behind on a lot of work and life things, but overall this week has been pretty productive. I’ll feel much more at peace once I take care of (most) everything.
Thoughts? Discuss...
Had some coffee this morning and implemented a proof-of-concept search for Write.as. Still would need persistence, indexing multiple blogs, and the whole UI — but I showed it was possible, at least.
If I end up finishing this feature, I imagine it working on both individual blogs and across Read Write.as. The goal would be to make it easier to find old posts (especially while composing new ones or going through archives), and to help people find writers they’re interested in on Read Write.as.
We’ll see if it comes to fruition in the future. For now, back to daily emails and so on.
#search #writeas #writeasdev #today
Thoughts? Discuss...
