A pesar de todo lo que he hecho para poder navegar los cambios con mayor facilidad. El último cambio significante por el que estoy atravezando esta siendo díficil. Creo que al final de esto voy a apreciar la experiencia. Sin embargo en este momento, aunque más hace 2 semanas estaba siendo muy pesado.
It’s getting close to two years since I left twitter, and I miss some parts, but not enough to get back to the site now named “X”. The first half of 2023, when I was still using it, and when I started to notice the dumb-scrolling behavior from my side. When my first free time of the year arrive I took a simple decision: I’ll stop using twitter while I’m in this place, I came here to relax not to be stuck on my phone, besides it’s just for a couple of days.
And those days went by fast, suddenly I was back at home, and I didn’t needed to go back to twitter. I suspected there were people and accounts I’ll miss, but in the great scheme of things I was better without twitter.
After weeks and months I noticed the things I was missing out by not being on twitter. My fútbol fandom reduced significantly, I lost track of the inner-public world of tennis, I don’t know anymore what’s on the life of the people or accounts that I used to follow, and again going back to it represented to loose more than to get back. Besides, who knows if the people I missed or the context that I miss are still there. -sigh-
Now at the moment of writing this I have understood and accepted that by being away of twitter my Spanish is not going to be up to date, now it’s frozen at a 2020-2023 state, and yet again I prefer this, even if I see that as a big consequence. But is not a consequence of leaving twitter. It’s a consequence of being an immigrant on a country where my native language is not widely spoken.
And I’ll continue missing and treasuring twitter, but what I miss and treasure does not exist anymore.
-- Update May 2025 --
I wrote this on November 2024, when I was on vacation. 6 months have passed, and things have evolved in a way that I’m glad and relieved that I’m no longer on that site. It was great for some time, when I micro blogged, no need to write long text, nor space for it. Then it evolved with the threads, I changed my use of it, to be a reader, it allowed me to kept following Mexican football from distance, now I can confirm I’m not longer a football fan, and even if my 13 year old wouldn’t believe it, this is where life has drove me. I’ve changed. I no longer miss twitter.
I don’t remember why, but I remember that I expend hours trying to figure out a good fountain pen that I could buy. I like to write by hand, I have countless notebooks, and as it’s an activity that I enjoyed, expending money on it it’s not a problem. Except that in the world of fountain pens it could be a problem.
I’m not someone who could just pick a thing, and go with it. I like to have some idea of which is the direction I’m going, how I can make small steps towards it and how to evaluate it. Which after a small looking around YouTube I settled on finding the best fountain pen for beginners that adjusted to my needs and preferences.
I wen’t through different videos, tutorials, compilations, rankings, women and men perspective, manufacturers styles and price ranges. The fountain pen world is big and diverse. It’s fascinating and full of passionate people. I got an understanding on what to evaluate for my first fountain pen, and I evaluated it.
At the end, what I was looking was not a type of pen specifically, but a type of writing. Fountain pen is not for me, or at least not for me at this point in time. The way I like to write is achievable with cheap ball pens, and what I want to be able to write can be done through learning calligraphy or lettering, nevertheless I’ll carry with me what I learnt from the peak I got about fountain pens.
I've planned to create my own blog to post about what I've learnt. Budget was my major blocker for so long, and I didn't created a local version. Last year, when I finally got extra budget I started to look up for alternatives to host my site.
My Software Engineering background helped and it was in my way at the same time. It helped me to decide to, as Scott Hanselman says, own my words, also helped me to decide to go for a static generated site, rather than SPA or wordpress. SPA, single page application, doesn't fit my purpose, the site will only show text, I don't plan to do any interaction, at least not at the begining. And Wordpress brings common vulnerabilities and a common target. It also helped me to narrow down domain registration and some basic knowledge required to host a site (domain, dns records security, certificates).
At the end the solution was going to be hosted using github + cloudflare, I didn't have a domain in mind to registered and I was also lacking how to genereat my site. This last part, the static site generation was my greater blocker, there are so many options that one can do, most of them are using Javascript and node, which adds to the learning curve and creates an alternative knoledge path to mantain.
As I've being writing code in Go, I decided to use Hugo I stayed stuck trying to figure out the good enough template, colors, trying to update my web-development knowledge after 5+ years of being away from it. Then I gave up. After changing computers I lost my two or three drafts, which was sad when I realized, and allow me to this time start from scratch.
A week ago, I finally got an idea for my domain, and this time I started with the process I have already decided: cloudflare for domain and deployment connected to github. To be fair I was also stuck by not having a clear domain and a lot of ideas to put it in a single site: learning, expression, photography portfolio. This time the domain name scped the site to be about learning, the rest can wait. Registering the site was a great wing, ironically within a few days I own 2 domains, the most polished site that is still in progress and this one, then I paused.
ailed.blog was born after I read a good article from someone I used to follow in Twitter? and seing the article was on a ".blog" domain, that was simple, someting mine a domain that can potentially host other parts that currently are left outside, then as I knew how to register a domain and the domain was available, the next step was to create a homepage for it. This page, simple, just HTML and a bit of style, a handcrafted file that will allow me to setup the deployment pipeline.
This site is ready and public, what I write to be published it's going to be on the internet. And the pure HTML setup proved to be difficult. Not sustainable, so for the other site I got back the idea to have it as a static generated site, where I can write in markdown and create the html version at build time.
I decided to generate the html files from markdown it on my own, changing the need to learn all the parts required on any particular existing tool, for the need to mantain some code. A side project that even if it locke me in Go, it can serve as a place to improve my developer skills.
Currently I'm focusing on creating a simple template and generate a single html file, from markdown files saved in a single directory. This will allow me to not get stuck, have small wins and start publishing, along the way I'll expand the functionalities, as it's needed or the curiosity to explore leads me.
This also means that my photography site will need to wait. Although I'm sure that when I'm ready to generate it my web development knowledge will be closer to where needs to be to bring that site to live, something that can showcase all the collections I own.
And that's the first bite, seems to be larger than I thought, as I'm still not able to show a coherent site there, but I'm getting closer. I also have already learning bits I want to write about:
Why learning bits? Elephant carpacio vs Burger for story spliting Why nil, or null, is not first citizen in Go My plan is to write "Why learning bits?" then finish the simple generation have the structure of this site and dinamically inject the article.
Y planeo escribir acá.
This is WIP still.
Este blog irá evolucionando con el tiempo, solo tengo una cosa segura. This is my safe place to write and express. Jag kan skriva vad som helst, sin importar el idioma que use.
Skriva på svenska blir svårare, but I'll eventually be able to write freely, it happened with English. Solo es cuestion de tiempo.
Este articulo es un caso extremo de escribir en cualquier idioma que conozco, el resto tendrán un idioma principal, usando palabras en otro idioma cuando sea necesario.