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Shutting Down My Site

patdryburgh.com

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Re: Shutting Down My Site

#31

Post by rhizome »

citricsquid wrote: post #23
molecule wrote: post #15

apparent update: "Back, and better than ever January 20th, 2012. Many thanks to Pat Dryburgh for his excellent work over the years. Unfortunately, he has chosen to end this venture. We think that is a great shame, and we've decided to bring it back, but in a different form. When we relaunch on January 20th, Simple Desks will return with a more substantial aim: to provide food for thought on the subjects of productivi…

and it will suck. The idea of forcing change to revive something dead sucks, organic change (or evolution as one might call) it is great but taking a tried and tested idea that had popularity and changing it forcefully never works. Why don't they stick with what it was? :|

Or just leave it in place and simply not update it.

Re: Shutting Down My Site

#32

Post by reinhardt »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #20
hpaavola wrote: post #7

It always makes me a bit sad when any site is taken offline. I haven't even heard of Simple Desks before, but it still makes me sad that it is gone. Destroying bits is so darn easy, that people do it too much. I don't delete emails (my spamfilter might delete, I don't). Once in a while it's nice to see what you were up to 5 years ago. My personal homepage is still running. I haven't updated it in many many years, but…

This reply got me thinking: does the nearly-zero incremental cost of a bit cause people to be more likely to turn into virtual hoarders? Anybody who didn't through physical mail away ever would be looked at funny, but I rarely delete an email, either. Is there a psychological cost associated with virtual hoarding like there is with physical? Or is it truly not hoarding?

Coming from the opposite side, I wonder if there's an "anti-hoarding" disorder; feeling that most things (physical or virtual) in one's possession is a liability, a weight that would be better off discarded unless they are absolutely necessary. Almost everything I own adds to my psychological debt and I feel a weight being lifted off my shoulders whenever I can get rid of stuff, documents, files, emails or anything else attached to me.

Re: Shutting Down My Site

#33

Post by rhizome »

reinhardt wrote: post #32
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reply got me thinking: does the nearly-zero incremental cost of a bit cause people to be more likely to turn into virtual hoarders? Anybody who didn't through physical mail away ever would be looked at funny, but I rarely delete an email, either. Is there a psychological cost associated with virtual hoarding like there is with physical? Or is it truly not hoarding?

Coming from the opposite side, I wonder if there's an "anti-hoarding" disorder; feeling that most things (physical or virtual) in one's possession is a liability, a weight that would be better off discarded unless they are absolutely necessary. Almost everything I own adds to my psychological debt and I feel a weight being lifted off my shoulders whenever I can get rid of stuff, documents, files, emails or anything e…

I believe you're describing Zen Buddhism.

Re: Shutting Down My Site

#34

Post by rhizome »

patdryburgh wrote: post #9
rokhayakebe wrote: post #4

Well since it paid, why not sell it, or give it to someone who will run it. I check Freshome almost daily. You can say looking at other people's home is pointless specially expensive ones because most readers will never live in such a house. However some people may just find it joyful. Just check your logs and see the ten most frequent visitors, ask a couple of them to run it.

This was an option I considered and discussed with a friend who is well known in the minimalism/productivity space. To me, it's actually more of a moral issue: is keeping a site like Simple Desks online good, bad, or neutral to the world. I'm sure it's different for different people, but I just couldn't shake the feeling that in the end it was detrimental to people's time. We have better things to do with our time, a…

Since when are a bunch of pictures of desks a moral issue?

Re: Shutting Down My Site

#35

Post by kijin »

codexon wrote: post #27
hpaavola wrote: post #7

It always makes me a bit sad when any site is taken offline. I haven't even heard of Simple Desks before, but it still makes me sad that it is gone. Destroying bits is so darn easy, that people do it too much. I don't delete emails (my spamfilter might delete, I don't). Once in a while it's nice to see what you were up to 5 years ago. My personal homepage is still running. I haven't updated it in many many years, but…

I had a Wordpress blog with several million hits on it. I ran out of time to update it. I let the hosting expire because I was tired of wondering if there was a new exploit in Wordpress and dealing with dozens of spam comments every day even with Recaptcha.

That makes sense, but in this case the blog was hosted on Tumblr. Free, no need to worry about vulnerabilities, and virtually no spam.

I wonder if there is a simple open-source tool that can convert WordPress blogs into static sites for archival. Like, just crawl the site, save everything as static HTML, and write some .htaccess rules to replicate WordPress's permalink structure. Everything will remain exactly where it was, except there won't be any vulnerabilities and you can't accept comments anymore.

But I suppose the author really is the kind of person who likes clean desks -- the kind of person who cannot stand the sight of no-longer-maintained things being scattered around his part of the Internet. (cf. SoftwareMaven's comment about virtual hoarding above.) If that's the case, I can understand, because I'm a bit like that, too.

Re: Shutting Down My Site

#36

Post by gburt »

citricsquid wrote: post #23
molecule wrote: post #15

apparent update: "Back, and better than ever January 20th, 2012. Many thanks to Pat Dryburgh for his excellent work over the years. Unfortunately, he has chosen to end this venture. We think that is a great shame, and we've decided to bring it back, but in a different form. When we relaunch on January 20th, Simple Desks will return with a more substantial aim: to provide food for thought on the subjects of productivi…

and it will suck. The idea of forcing change to revive something dead sucks, organic change (or evolution as one might call) it is great but taking a tried and tested idea that had popularity and changing it forcefully never works. Why don't they stick with what it was? :|

If we're taking the organic model, what it was died. It clearly wasn't profitable/rewarding enough for the old owner, perhaps if you don't change it that will be true for the new owner.

Re: Shutting Down My Site

#37

Post by johnpowell »

reinhardt wrote: post #32
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reply got me thinking: does the nearly-zero incremental cost of a bit cause people to be more likely to turn into virtual hoarders? Anybody who didn't through physical mail away ever would be looked at funny, but I rarely delete an email, either. Is there a psychological cost associated with virtual hoarding like there is with physical? Or is it truly not hoarding?

Coming from the opposite side, I wonder if there's an "anti-hoarding" disorder; feeling that most things (physical or virtual) in one's possession is a liability, a weight that would be better off discarded unless they are absolutely necessary. Almost everything I own adds to my psychological debt and I feel a weight being lifted off my shoulders whenever I can get rid of stuff, documents, files, emails or anything e…

I am like this. I am constantly looking to get rid of as much as I can and that includes digital things too.

I just moved a few months ago and everything I own fit in the back of a 87' Volvo wagon. And that includes my bed.

Re: Shutting Down My Site

#40

Post by cgag »

rys wrote: post #14

You shut it down because nobody should give a fuck about it, yet you tell us what computer you used to develop your website? I don't get it! Also, don't you feel a bit selfish for removing something that other people obvious find value in from the Internet?

Yeah this just feels like selfish ego-stroking bullshit.
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