An exercise in folly III
When I started this blog ~5 months ago, I built it from the ground up with the following priorities in mind: Don't talk shit, remove all bloat, and no ads. Unfortunately I've went against them all.
Don't talk shit
This is the easy one. Even if my writing isn't perfect I stick to telling the truth and try to entertain. In terms of talking shit, I don't believe I've done so, and I hope that my voice clearly shines behind every post.
Writing shit? God, yes. Multiple posts on here are in dire need of a rewrite, a fair bit of my rambling needs gutting, and I need to work on tying the different aspects of a topic together concisely.
Remove all bloat
There are so many blogs out there which bog down the user with countless pop-ups, background scripts, and ways to actively hinder the reading experience. I'm thankful to say that this blog has none of that.
Have you checked the blog index today? Bam. What was once a sterile list of posts has been replaced with a series of title images. But this change comes at a cost: Kilobytes.
Now I'm in no way a web developer. I have no idea if the images are small enough to load quick, but there's only one way to find out.
I have some reservations about this change. With images replacing text the page will expand rapidly with each addition to the blog and it won't be long until it's a struggle to scroll through – a problem for future me. On top of that, with each post requiring its own image I feel like I'd have to justify its existence; with just text on the blog index I could get away with having a few short joke entries.
I'll also have to spend time making images for each post but that's not a problem, it's a fun little challenge portraying what each post is about and I hope each one gives you a sense of my character.
I'd like to give InvisibleUp a massive shout-out for being the inspiration behind this change!
No ads
Now, in my search to discover more of the indie web I stumbled upon the 24HourHomepage– a half-art half-advertising project where you can link to anything for a single second. For the last few days I've had it saved in my so you've got time to kill folder and I thought I'd support it by buying a second of time – But I won't tell you which.
Jokes aside I feel a bit iffy about supporting & linking it due to my hatred of advertising. But as I wrote that last sentence, one of the second-long ads was for my favourite 5 Second Film, and it's worth saying that's the sort of stuff which most folks link there.
With all that being said, I hope you can all forgive me for my dire transgressions.