| culture | 2,022 words
TAGS: creativity, Cultural Criticism, philosophy, music
The lyrics 'You know the greatest films of all time were never made' is obviously not about films. It is, somehow, about how we're living on this planet for a fragile, finite amount of time and we have something inert within us to give, to gift.
| technical-tutorials | 1,785 words
TAGS: eleventy, personal essay, technical, tutorial
A simple gratitude journal online, with media tracking and Beeminder integration. Yes, yet another 11ty project technical write-up, but I promise you'll learn something.
| technical-tutorials | 1,143 words
TAGS: cicd, eleventy, IndieWeb, neocities, technical, tutorial
A guide to automatically deploying your Eleventy static site to NeoCities using GitLab CI/CD, including authentication, error handling, and optimizations.
| technical-tutorials | 1,348 words
TAGS: internet, technical
The Internet should be a place where ideas can live and spread without people extracting rent at every turn. Where an emerging nonprofit can publish their mission statement without paying Squarespace $300/year. Where a poet can share their work...
| lyric-essays | 1,382 words
TAGS: creativity, personal essay, philosophy, spirituality
Nietzsche and Rumi had something in common: dancing. I wrote this mundane life update and found myself getting into the weeds of what's important to the physical body. What can I offer myself? How can I enact movement each day?
| indieweb, technical-tutorials | 1,473 words
TAGS: eleventy, IndieWeb, personal site, technical
A dive into how this site is built, why it exists, and the philosophy behind owning your corner of the web.
| culture | 2,267 words
TAGS: copyright, Cultural Criticism, Digital Preservation, public domain
Could you only consume public domain work for a year straight? With the new year coming up and various IP being released to the public domain, I thought I'd muse on copyright and the future of art and culture.
| community | 2,587 words
TAGS: community, Cultural Criticism, IndieWeb, philosophy
Can the Internet be a place we can visit again? Can it replace what malls were supposed to be for us? A blog post about what we can do with what we have.
| personal-favourites, writing-craft | 1,546 words
TAGS: creativity, personal essay, art, philosophy
Thoughts on embracing the ugliness of your early creations as a form of civic duty and spiritual practice. A call to action without judgement.
| ai | 1,525 words
TAGS: AI, creativity, politics
An exploration of cognitive dissonance around AI usage, parallels to meat consumption, and the decision to transition to Sublime Text for an AI-free coding experience.
| indieweb, technical-tutorials | 696 words
TAGS: netlify, technical, tutorial
Reviving the classic guestbook for a static site using Netlify Forms and serverless functions, with lessons on distributed systems and race conditions.
| 2,392 words
TAGS: creativity, publishing, technical
Breaking free from platform dependence to build an independent literary publication with Eleventy, exploring privacy-first analytics and sustainable publishing models.
| 1,500 words
TAGS: creativity, learning, meta, spirituality
Exploring the value of public writing as reference material, why blogging serves as better knowledge management than private notes, and embracing cycles of beginning again.
| 1,122 words
TAGS: IndieWeb, meta
Announcing the launch of brennan.day, an IndieWeb-focused personal site built with Eleventy, hosted on GitLab, and committed to ethical technology choices.
| 721 words
TAGS: technical
An all-night debugging session wrestling with web design issues, from omg.lol glitches to CSS mysteries, and the decision to migrate to Eleventy.
| 652 words
TAGS: meta, projects
Transitioning from private to public writing, sharing progress on the Calgary Groups project and plans for the brennan.day website setup.
| 733 words
TAGS: creativity, spirituality, blogging
A pre-dawn reflection on overcoming fear and perfectionism to create an authentic, no-stakes blog for genuine self-expression.
| 2,133 words
TAGS: blogging, internet, technical, IndieWeb
Take back your corner of the Internet. Stop building on rented land. Stop trusting platforms that see you as product. Stop waiting for some company to make the "perfect" tool.
| ai | 1,582 words
TAGS: Digital Culture, Media Criticism, Social Commentary, technical, AI
Part 3 of a series on the AI Crisis
| 342 words
TAGS: meta, personal essay
My first post on this weblog, writing from Calgary on Treaty 7 Territory about returning to independent writing on the open web with simple, enduring technology.