Meta Redux

This site was my first attempt to write. I failed miserably and I produced some pretty crappy content, but I also learned a lot in the process.

Over the course of a decade the blog saw quite a few transformations and shifts in my focus and interests. For a few years it was named DevCraft¹ and it was hosted on wordpress.com. Afterwards I adopted the (think) title and switched to Jekyll, Octopress and then again to Jekyll. Originally I was writing mostly tutorials on topics like Linux, Java, Emacs and Ruby, but eventually I started writing some essays as well (my favorite type of posts). As my OSS portfolio grew it started to gain significant coverage in my blog as well. (think) was a bit messy and without a clear direction, but I guess it was a somewhat accurate reflection of myself as well.

I’ve thought at times about deleting some of my lame articles and heavily copy-editing the rest to make them fit my current beliefs and standards of quality, but this approach felt like cheating to me. I was who I was and I wrote what I wrote. To me that certainly has a lot of value. I’ve been thinking lately that being (very) critical of your old work is a good indicator that you’re moving in the right direction. We can always do better, but we need to reach a certain level of experience to see that.

For various reasons (mostly a combination of frustration with Octopress and my (immense) laziness), I didn’t write anything between 2015 and 2018 and when I finally mustered the will to return to writing I decided to go with a clean slate and a new blog.²

These days most of my writing happens at Meta Redux, but I still plan to post here things that are worth sharing, but don’t fit the overall idea of Meta Redux (where my primary focus is my OSS work and essay-like articles).³

I guess I’ll still be writing here on programming-related topics, but who knows… Knowing me there’s a high chance I won’t actually write anything at all! There’s a good chance this will be final (think) article.

At any rate - it’s still a lot of fun to be re-reading my old articles (especially the rants) and comparing the person I used to be with the person I am today. I’m starting to think that’s the biggest value of running a personal blog - it’s a written account of our evolution as human beings.

1. I used to be a huge StarCraft fan. ↩

2. I also wanted a blog with a cool (for some definition of cool) name this time around. ↩

3. I still write the occasional short Emacs article at https://emacsredux.com. ↩