The horizon is bathed in orange and a faint pink hue as the hills in the middle distance turn blue with the haze of the summer’s evening. Light white clouds are scattered across the sky. Looking at the clouds, I see art; looking around at the hills and fields I see art, too. ...
Breathe in. Breathe out. Standing in the fresh warm summer’s air, I found my breath slowing, and deepening. I wandered as I transitioned from the feeling of indoors to the Nature of outdoors. Trees and bushes and the light sounds of Nature accompany me as I put one foot forwa...
I love having a personal website. Here, I share reflections, stories, thoughts, ideas, and more. Because I have a website, I always have the idea in the back of my mind that there is a place for my writing. I can write a story and share it with friends, and even the world. Wh...
The ninth episode of Wonders of Web Weaving is out:
In Episode 9, I chat with Rachel, the author of kwon.nyc and curator of "The internet used to be* fun *(It still is, but it used to be, too)". We talk about, among other things, metaphors for the web, creative mediums on the web, physical creative spaces, and more.
I hope you enjoy the episode!
Wonders of Web Weaving also has an RSS feed you can use to follow along from wherever you get your podcasts.
A few weeks ago, I received a bug report for Artemis that indicated a user’s reader was not being updated as expected. This error was caused by a feed that caused the polling code to error out and stop. My code assumed a value was present and, if it wasn’t, the program would ...
You look up from your bed of grass flowers, opening your eyes to see the layers of branches grown by the trees in the grove that surrounds you. The blue sky peeks through the gaps between the leaves. The sunlight that shines through and onto the leaves and branches leaves you...
First star — in the sky next to the tall Gothic monument in the town square, a square with many outdoor restaurants — people laugh and take pictures, eat ice cream, stroll, enjoy the moment. I love watching the world. Of seeing colours and tenors and of hearing sounds that you can only appreciate when out in the world — the sound of a bike breaking in the cobblestone, manoeuvring with ease through the town square.
Written in Hauptmarkt, Nürnberg.
As I write, I hear the keys on my keyboard pressing down – the sounds are fast, rhythmic, comforting. I hear the whirr of a hard drive in the background, and the occasional car walk past. Every so often, bird song comes into the foreground; I hear the calls of birds in the di...
At IndieWebCamp Nürnberg, Tilman worked on a “feedroll”, a collection of feeds aggregated on a single page that demonstrates the capability of following different websites with a web reader. This, and a discussion with friends, got me thinking about what a “loginless” web rea...
Every so often I hear or read about the significance of readers as part of the indie web. Indeed, the indie web is about much more than making personal websites: it is a space where there are many personal websites to explore. You don’t need a personal website to explore the ...
James’ Coffee Blog has been on a bit of a break while I went on holiday to Nürnberg, Germany. I set off last Friday and returned the Friday after, during which time I attended an IndieWebCamp, an in-person Homebrew Website Club at Technische Hochschule Nürnberg, and spent man...
All of the participants of IndieWebCamp Nürnberg, lined up in three rows, one row behind the other. I am in the middle of the back row, wearing my green and grey microformats t-shirt. ALTAll of the participants of IndieWebCamp Nürnberg, lined up in three rows, one row behind...
Artemis, the calm web reader I maintain, supports web feeds marked up with h-feed. h-feed allows you to create a web feed in HTML using microformats. A h-feed may contain zero or more h-entries, each h-entry representing an entry in the feed. For example, my longform feed pag...
Occasionally, sites that publish web feeds change the URL of a post that has just been published. This can be for several reasons. For example, I sometimes change post permalinks immediately after publishing because I notice a typo, or because the CMS I use calculated a defau...
June 21st, 2026 — After my coffee, a thought came to mind: I hope that one day I can see the countryside from a double-decker bus. It’s a small wish. It may never happen but I hold onto the thought any way.
I stood at the bus terminal today thinking that it was only a few wee...
The eighth episode of Wonders of Web Weaving is out:
In Episode 8, I chat with Brennan, the author of brennan.day. We talk about, among other things, writing routines, building community in the indie web, "start here" pages on personal websites, and more.
I hope you enjoy the episode!
Wonders of Web Weaving also has an RSS feed you can use to follow along from wherever you get your podcasts.
When I announced that I was open-sourcing a quiz maker earlier this week, I noted that there were several limitations to what I had built. Most importantly, my quiz maker was a Python script, which substantially limits how many people can use it.
After writing the blog post,...
Content warning: This poem is about the ongoing heat in Europe. I strike an optimistic tone toward the end, but if you would prefer not to read about the heat, I offer you one of the Scottish poems I have written in stead.
Nature’s weary tears fill the air;
invisible, warming.
Relentlessly, days proceed.
Hours pass; Celsius rises.
Midnights: warm like day.
We stay inside.
Blinds closed, water glasses full, cookers off.
Flowers bloom early.
Eyelids weigh; we yearn
for rest that does not come.
Heat ravages the continent.
London is Rome.
Roads reduce to liquid, power lines sag:
infrastructure is under stress.
Headlines depress.
Hope: We come together, reaching
with open eyes.
Her resiliency:
Our future?
I am continuing to experiment with writing some fiction on this blog. Here is a story I wrote today.
Where were words when you needed them the most? Lena had been searching for the answer to that question for her whole life.
For Lena, telling a story to light coming from a ...
The seventh episode of Wonders of Web Weaving is out:
In Episode 7, I chat with Ana, the author of ohhelloana.blog. We talk about, among other things, the growth we see in our websites over time, finding an in-person indie web community, and connecting with people using personal websites.
I hope you enjoy the episode!
Wonders of Web Weaving has an RSS feed you can use to follow along from wherever you get your podcasts.
Looking idly out the window of my favourite coffee shop, sipping on a cool iced latte that I needed after a long walk on a warm summer’s afternoon, a thought came to mind: Why am I so fascinated by the outside world when I just sat down inside?
Even now, back at my desk, I f...
Have you ever wondered which microformat best suits your personality? If so, this quiz is for you!
Answer the following questions to find out which microformats2 classes best embody your personality.
Also: happy belated 21st dt-bday to microformats! (Celebrated on 20 June, ...
A few weeks ago, I learned about the removeprefix method in Python. It lets you remove a specific prefix from the beginning of a string. For example, I can use the following code to remove www. from the beginning of a domain name:
"www.jamesg.blog".removeprefix("www.")
If th...
In my “Open sourcing a quiz maker” blog post, I frame my quiz maker as a step toward what could be something better: a script that you can use, but where I see a vision for something more robust and reliable.
This got me thinking about how blog posts can, in many ways, be a ...
As I write, the lowering sun is gently shining on the monstera plant in the living room, casting a shadow on the wall. I am enjoying the changes in light outside as the longest day draws to a close. The birds sing quietly outside.
Yesterday, the clouds started to move away f...
I like to wish people a happy day, and so many of my conversations start with “Happy Sunday”, or similar. Today I was able to add an additional well-wish: “Happy Solstice!” As I write, it is 9pm and the sun is still radiating over the hills. Trees cast long shadows over the q...
When I designed my “Which HTML element are you?” quiz, I wrote all of the HTML and JavaScript required to make the quiz work by hand. It took a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun! I used that code as the template for my second quiz, the Blogger Archetype Quiz. With that sai...
Have you ever wondered how best to summarise your character as a member of the blogging community? If so, this quiz is for you!
Answer the following questions to find out which blogger archetype best suits you.
Question 1
When you are spending time outdoors, what do you lik...
This post develops my thoughts on the theme of home that I first explored with focus in Home. You may appreciate reading Home before continuing to read this post.
Whenever people ask me where I live, I have, for so long, spoken about the proximity to the city, knowing that E...
The warm glow at the door, intensified by the morning sun beaming and then reflecting on the blank walls of the hallway, is the first colour I notice when I wake. I then look around and see the blue around the blinds – colour from the evening before, but seen from a new persp...
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