Confident reflections of my reserved self.
Colourful, frozen,
fragmentary, ephemeral frames,
I carry everywhere.
Heavy as self.
Poems as wayfinding
When I look at a painting, or read a poem, or a story, I feel like I am entering a new world, one created by the artist, the writer, to evoke a particular feeling, to highlight something meaningful, to document a moment, and for many other reasons too.
I love the feeling of...
Almost 20 years on, my compadre Luigi has refreshed a page that answers the multilayered question What is Agrobiodiversity?
What We Made On HTML Day 2026
A typography tasting menu, poems written in HTML, silk-printed t-shirts, and a collage that turned into birds.
HTML Day fell on Saturday, and I hosted two online sessions for it: one ...
Morning, sunrise
The horizon is painted with a cool, warm glow. The sun has not yet risen; the hills are its blanket. The sky is a clear blue.
I woke up earlier than normal this morning. I find myself writing while gazing out the window, watching the sun rise, its light filling the room, il...
Evening
Herein, three chapters from today: two reflecting on the evening, and one looking back to the morning.
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
The sun shines through the window onto the coffee table — my typewriter and the Lucky Cat next to my typewriter are both illuminated; the cat waves at a fast, stead...
In the course of thinking about macro-photography I discovered a useful possible alternative, at least for now.
Not Quite Macro
As my interest in the micro-wildlife on our terrace has grown I have found myself wanting to know more exactly what I am looking at. I don’t have any way to catch things, but I do have a macro lens on my camera. Problem is, the focal length is quite short, which means that i...
Today is my blog’s 24th blogiversary!I started my first (previous) blog on this 220th day of 2002 using static HTML + CSS and one file per (Gregorian) month, with fragment links for specific days, posts within a day, and topics within a post:https://tantek.com/log/2002/08.htm...
The open web has an amazing amount of free content that is actually free, both freely accessible without payment and free of conditions to access. No tracking cookies needed, no logins needed, no ads needed.A few examples:* blogs. my blog, and every other #indieweb blog (with...
▶️ watched episodes 1-6 of Silo over the past week, most while I was a bit under the weather. Excellent dystopia concept and show. Pausing before watching episode 7, titled “The Flamekeepers”.#Silo #SiloTV #AppleOriginal #AppleTV#Blaugust #Blaugust2026
HTML Day 2026
A tale of HTML Day 2026 in three chapters: of poetry, of play, and of reflection.
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
the calm that comes from writing a web page in a quiet room, the loudest sounds being the wind blowing and the sound of keys typing, and of being on a call with friends and people from ...
André Michelle Speaking at TYPO3 Developer Days
This was the second talk I recommended as part of the beyond tellerrand partnership with TYPO3. They invited me to curate a few slots at this year at their Developer Days.
André Michelle agreed to join and I was happy that his talk was so wonderfully received. A great mixture of tech and audio. The version he gave at beyond tellerrand can be found here. Reply via Email
Monthly report: July 2026
A good month, much of it away from home where, happy to relate, most of the plants survived the endless heat; heat that has been the worst of the time at home.
Highlights of the month:
The Umbrian week continued into July
Real lamb for one dinner, not too-young abbacchio
...
hi from #htmlday
Matthias Ott Speaking at TYPO3 Developer Days
As part of the beyond tellerrand partnership with TYPO3, TYPO3 invited me to curate a few slots at this year’s developer days.
For one of the slots we picked Matthias Ott. Great talk once more, reminding us what creating with the web actually means and why this is important. Reply via Email
Virginia Woolf Applies
Listening to James G talking to Rachel on the Wonders of Web Weaving podcast, one thing in particular caught my attention, and that was when she was telling James about her studio. It’s a 20–30 minute walk from home and she goes there in the evening after work to do creative...
Site Update
The CMS engine that drives this site — Grav — has now been updated to version 2.0.18. Kudos to the Grav team for a very smooth process, very well explained. Of course I have a couple of niggles. It warns that there could be a problem with Twig content in a page, and handily flags up pages that might be problematic. But the warning does not take account for stuff that is enclosed in backticks, thus: {{ stuff }}. Also, inexplicably, the old comments plugin brings everything crashing down, so I need to fix that. And for some reason the link to my photo portfolio is displaying as a link rather than an image; that may take some time.
Everything else works fine, as far as I can tell. Of course, if it isn’t for you, I’d appreciate being told.
Wasted Time
In a flash, I was 16 or 17, at my friend’s house round the back of King’s Cross, and trying to work out what in the world to do next. A link from Gwern had sent me to The Board Game of the Alpha Nerds, in which David Hill took his chances at a Diplomacy tournament.
Those day...
Auld Faithful
A few weeks ago, the phrase "old faithful" came to me. I thought "that would be a good name for a ship!" This evening, I decided to do something with the name. I had an idea for a direction, but the story went in a completely different direction than I thought. I ended up wr...