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Have a personal web site

writing.markchristian.org

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Re: Have a personal web site

#211

Post by danaris »

samcday wrote: post #197
caymanjim wrote: post #151

I don't want a personal web site. I've had a handful of them in the past, and I've thrown together a couple shitty blogs over the years, but there are three big reasons why I don't anymore: I'm not that interesting; I don't have anything to show off; and inevitably it'll either become a chore or go out of date. Like everyone, I harbor fantasies about how interesting I am, and if I run into you at the pub, I'll talk y…

> I'm not that interesting I disagree. Your thoughts on this topic have gone to the top of HN. To me, that implies you're interesting enough to be able to write thoughtful pieces that a bunch of other online armchair commentators agree with and upvote :) Don't sell yourself short, friend!

Being able to write an interesting comment in response to a particular topic that frustrates you is not at all the same thing as having spontaneous interesting thoughts about enough topics to make a personal website/blog about it.

Re: Have a personal web site

#212

Post by chrisseaton »

morganvachon wrote: post #195
caymanjim wrote: post #151

I don't want a personal web site. I've had a handful of them in the past, and I've thrown together a couple shitty blogs over the years, but there are three big reasons why I don't anymore: I'm not that interesting; I don't have anything to show off; and inevitably it'll either become a chore or go out of date. Like everyone, I harbor fantasies about how interesting I am, and if I run into you at the pub, I'll talk y…

> I don't want a personal web site. I've had a handful of them in the past, and I've thrown together a couple shitty blogs over the years, but there are three big reasons why I don't anymore: I'm not that interesting; I don't have anything to show off; and inevitably it'll either become a chore or go out of date. My wife and I are fairly boring people. I'm a sysadmin and fill-in sales rep at work, she works for the l…

These are not run of the mill hobbies.

Re: Have a personal web site

#213

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

bloopernova wrote: post #182
darekkay wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not that interesting; I don't have anything to show off; and inevitably it'll either become a chore or go out of date. The main goal of my blog was not to be interesting or show off (even though I do include my side projects etc.), but to write about specific issues I managed to solve. As a software developer, I'm googling for problems all the time. 95% of the time I land on StackOverflow or GitHub issues. But…

> My goal was to contribute back the same way. YES! So much of our computing-related triumphs come from documentation that other people wrote. Even super basic stuff that no senior developer or sysadmin would dream of asking, that stuff still needs to be written down by someone. I have a dozen or so Markdown documents of varying sizes that I need to finish, proof and polish before putting them online. I sorely lackin…

My quotes file recently reached 1MB of plain text, 160,257 words.

I started this file 17 years ago!

This is enough to fill three average sized novels!

One day... I might have a go at weaving a narrative through it.

Re: Have a personal web site

#214

Post by onion2k »

Veen wrote: post #205
caymanjim wrote: post #151

I don't want a personal web site. I've had a handful of them in the past, and I've thrown together a couple shitty blogs over the years, but there are three big reasons why I don't anymore: I'm not that interesting; I don't have anything to show off; and inevitably it'll either become a chore or go out of date. Like everyone, I harbor fantasies about how interesting I am, and if I run into you at the pub, I'll talk y…

This is a well-written comment from an interesting point of view. That's all you need to write a blog article. If there are things you'd rather be doing than writing a blog, do them instead, but a blog doesn't have to be an exercise in personal branding. It can just be a place where you publish your thoughts and the things you've learned.

This is a well-written comment from an interesting point of view. That's all you need to write a blog article.

Writing HN comments is much easier than writing blog posts because the inspiration is the story that's been linked to; for a blog post you don't have that starting point, you just have a blank page. That's a heck of a barrier for most people when they're starting out.

Re: Have a personal web site

#215

Post by shortformblog »

Mark wrote a great article for my newsletter a couple of months ago and I found his passion really showed through. I think a big part of it is that he's put so much work into his own site.

We need more of this! Especially in 2019.

Re: Have a personal web site

#216

Post by arp242 »

caymanjim wrote: post #151

I don't want a personal web site. I've had a handful of them in the past, and I've thrown together a couple shitty blogs over the years, but there are three big reasons why I don't anymore: I'm not that interesting; I don't have anything to show off; and inevitably it'll either become a chore or go out of date. Like everyone, I harbor fantasies about how interesting I am, and if I run into you at the pub, I'll talk y…

I don't think writing is just about communicating things to other people. It's also communicating things to yourself.

I think the greatest value in writing things down is to order and articulate your own thoughts. Certainly in my own case, I never finish a large chunk of articles I start to write simply because during the research I find out I was wrong, or that things are more complex than I thought and I'm no longer sure I'm right.

See my personal website for a post I wrote about that :-) https://arp242.net/weblog/why-write.html

An additional reason is that publishing your thoughts also means people can point out flaws or points you hadn't considered. Maintaining a website is just one way of doing that of course (commenting here is another), but I find it's a pretty effective way.

Re: Have a personal web site

#217

Post by hvidgaard »

intertextuality wrote: post #153
_hardwaregeek wrote: post #61

I don't judge a person's technical skill through this metric (or at least I make an attempt not to), but it's rather noticeable when someone has nothing going on online. A blank GitHub, no website, no projects, etc. For an employed person, eh, whatever, maybe they just have a life. But for a student? I'll admit I get a little suspicious. I'm not saying students should have a huge roster of projects and crazy extracur…

This is an unbelievable attitude. "Oh so you call yourself a mechanic, huh? Well you aren't blogging about cars and mechanic-related things in your free time, so I'm suspicious". "Oh, an architect, huh? You don't have an online presence, which is worrying". I'm baffled as to why people expect programmers to spend most of their time behind a computer, and to make social git commits or blog about it on top of that. I p…

It's unrealistic to expect people to be willing to spend 14-15 hours a day in front of a screen.

While I don't spend the majority of my time programming any more, I still sit in front of a computer most of my work day.

My son has shown a great interest for programming and I really wish I had the time to do it with him more. But the last thing I want to do when I get home is sitting in front of a computer. My love and passion for programming are the same, and fortunately I get to spend most of my active programming and architectural time on things that can consume me completely. But I have a deep integral need to do things like cooking, gardening, training, reading etc.

Re: Have a personal web site

#218

Post by Kirth »

tigerlily wrote: post #112
jaabe wrote: post #13

Some of the most interesting things online are people writing about things they are passionate about, for the sake of writing about them. At least in my opinion, so it’s fair to say that I agree with the author. I think it’s an equally delightful experience to journal about things though. I do it from time to time, when some subject just needs to get written down, almost as though the journaling is me thinking out lo…

> If we can find it anyway, with google down-prioritising personal blogs. Hmm, I wonder if there's a search engine tailored to this sort of thing? As in search all the blogs for human knowledge and experience.

This has been stuck in my mind for a while. The past months, whenever I searched for something I would get covered in pages upon pages of SEO-friendly copywriter bullshit without real content; it's driving me mad.

How possible would it be, to build something like this?

Re: Have a personal web site

#219

Post by maddening »

intertextuality wrote: post #153
_hardwaregeek wrote: post #61

I don't judge a person's technical skill through this metric (or at least I make an attempt not to), but it's rather noticeable when someone has nothing going on online. A blank GitHub, no website, no projects, etc. For an employed person, eh, whatever, maybe they just have a life. But for a student? I'll admit I get a little suspicious. I'm not saying students should have a huge roster of projects and crazy extracur…

This is an unbelievable attitude. "Oh so you call yourself a mechanic, huh? Well you aren't blogging about cars and mechanic-related things in your free time, so I'm suspicious". "Oh, an architect, huh? You don't have an online presence, which is worrying". I'm baffled as to why people expect programmers to spend most of their time behind a computer, and to make social git commits or blog about it on top of that. I p…

Before I go to a mechanic I am checking their review online.

Before I hire an artist that would make some graphics for me I would ask for a portfolio. Nobody in graphic industry is surprised when someone asks to show some of their works.

Same with IT, you would try to do some background checking. See if there was some recommendations from person's past employers or some sort of porfolio.

Should it be everything I would use to evaluate person? Hell no! But if I can see someone's actual achievements it gives me much more insight and confidence about how I am evaluating the candidate.

Would I miss some good candidates? Probably. But the strategy is not about not missing all good candidates, it is about ruling the bad ones. E.g. in Germany if you were hired, everyone though that you were ok, but then they found out that you are shitty, they cannot just fire you. They have to give you head ups that you are underperforming, then they have to make a formal evaluation to make sure that it isn't about them oppressing you and finally they are obligated to propose a recovery plan for you - only after you fuck it up the company is allowed to fire you. So you might end up with a guy not doing enything for 6 months. In such perspective it can be better to miss 2 good candidates than to hire one bad one.

Re: Have a personal web site

#220

Post by qntty »

Toutou wrote: post #147
DonHopkins wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is Microsoft and are many people, after all of his homophobic, transphobic, and racist remarks. https://mashable.com/article/minecraft-removes-notch-referen... https://twitter.com/Nya_Flrs/status/881522593353809920/photo... https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/minecraft-notch-transpho... https://www.theroot.com/minecraft-creator-goes-full-white-pr... https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/minecraft-creator-exclu...

Except there's nothing homophobic, transphobic or racist through those links.

[Referring to trans people]

> You are absolutely evil if you want to encourage delusion. What happened to not stigmatizing mental illness?

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