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Sandwich Questionnaire

I love sandwiches. Earlier today I was thinking about how you can eat a sandwich at any time of the day. I have eaten sandwiches for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. When I saw Zachary’s “Sandwich Questionnaire“, I thought I have to respond to this! I have been thinking about ...

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Why I love my favourite words

Every so often, I use the word delightful in conversation. That is delightful! I try not to use “delightful” too often, but I do like to bring it into a discussion every now and again. It is one of my favourite words. The word delightful, like the word awe, makes me feel a ...

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Design and missing categories

Ever since I moved to using Ghost as the tool for publishing my blog posts [1], I have forgotten to add categories to some of my blog posts. My old system had a few if statements that would automatically select a category. If none of the rules triggered and I did not choose ...

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Noticing

Last weekend, I went to the National Gallery of Scotland. This time, I started my trip on the bottom floor where all the Scottish art is on display. A few minutes after entering the gallery, I was captivated by paintings of Nature and of Edinburgh. I noticed that one wall wa...

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Clouds

I have been waking up with anticipation every morning recently. I say “good morning, world”, and then anxiously peek through the edge of the curtains. I hope for the blue sky. This last week has been rainy and grey. I tried to understand why but the meteorology went over my...

Matthias Ott Valid
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CC @netzintelligenz

Matthias Ott Valid
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A better (multiband) OTT plugin? Free forever, no iLok, no telemetry? With a GUI built with HTML and #CSS?

“Sounds a bit weird – but it’s also pretty dope, because it works on all systems out of the box.”
—@polarity

Call me ottrigued! 😁👏

https://youtu.be/sHRTu1yD5uU?si=mCUms7Wo8WkHiy56

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Debug mode

One of the areas of the Artemis codebase that I update the most is the logic that relates to the list of posts published by authors to which a user is subscribed. Because Artemis works with so many different formats of information – web feeds like RSS or h-feed, Mastodon pos...

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Staging banners

When I run the Artemis codebase, one of the first things it does is look for an environment variable that indicates what “environment” the application is running in. There are two modes: development and production. If no mode is specified, development mode is set by default....

Dan’s Polaroids
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07.02.2026

My black V-shaped guitar on my black desk. Guitar string
      packaging and tools around it.
Restringing the guitar for tonight's gig in Aachen.

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Redirecting YYYY-MM-DD-slug.md to /YYYY/MM/DD/slug with Nginx

Earlier this week a reader pointed out that posts listed on my date archive pages were linking to the wrong URLs. For example, the link for /2026/01/25/kind-software would instead be /2026-01-25-kind-software.md. This was caused by my static site generator using the markdown...

Dan’s Polaroids
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06.02.2026

Handlebars of a holland bike. In the background a path with
      vegetation on both sides and a motorhome on the left.
Cycling in the rain. And the Polaroid got messed up in my pocket.

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Reducing Artemis’ deployment downtime with blue-green deployments

Artemis, the calm web reader I maintain, runs as a systemd process. When I want to update the software, I deploy the new code to the server and then restart the systemd process. This has a significant downside: while the Artemis process is restarting, the software is unavail...

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Does your website run on green energy?

A few weeks ago I did a day-long training Carbon Literacy Project training course through my university. When I was taking the course and considering ways I can reduce my carbon footprint, I started thinking about technology. I don’t know much about calculating emissions fro...

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Background technology

A while ago, I purchased an Aranet 4 indoor CO2 monitor. The device has sat on my desk ever since. I started thinking about the Aranet monitor this week because I noticed that, for the first time, the battery was low and needed to be changed. The Aranet is a useful device. ...

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Calendars and web readers

For the last few weeks I have been thinking about the intersection of calendars and web readers. Author's note: You can skip the next paragraph if you're not interested in the technical aside. What started this thinking was a technical interest. With h-feed, you can publis...

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The expanse of web weaving

Last year, one of my goals was to learn more about design. I wanted to apply what I learned to making web pages. The Non-Designer’s Design Book was an influential resource toward the end of the year. While not specifically about web design, the principles within the book – c...

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Build the web you want to see

The Autumn/Winter 2025 edition of the good internet magazine is out! I contributed a piece, Build the web you want to see, in which I reflect on the last five years of James' Coffee Blog and some of what I have learned in that time.

I have been thinking about the question "how do we make the web better?" for the last few months, and perhaps the best answer I have right now is for us all to keep building the web we want to see. It is perhaps because of this that, when I asked Joe yesterday "How can we achieve a web renaissance?", he replied "I think we're already in it."

Thank you to Xandra for all of the work that she puts into making the good internet magazine happen. I am delighted that this project exists and, especially after reading StartingAMagazine.psd, am more aware than ever that projects like this don't just happen: we make them happen.

Dan’s Polaroids
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05.02.2026

A woman on a latter behind a fence with a camera in hand,
      looking into the camera.
I was photographed today.

Dan’s Polaroids
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04.02.2026

The three men of Forkalyst sitting on a sofa. With beer cans in
      hand.
Wednesdays