• One reason was that after I took a hiatus from social media, I didn't know what to do with all my free time. So, I kept myself busy by blogging.
• The other reason was that I wanted to create a way for my friends to stay updated on what's been going on with my life, without using social media. Basically, I wanted to see if I could replace social media with blogs and personal websites.

On my previous weeknotes I said that there's no feedback loop for my photo-blog. That was part of the reason I created an Instagram account for it. Well, I was wrong. At the very least, there are stats for it. So, I guess that's something.

Turns out, I was serious about no longer wanting to publish overly personal posts on this journal. I created a new blog on Write.as and set it to Private. Then I moved over all my journal entries into it, plus a couple more posts with personal content.

... you’ll answer for it because when you claim Christ you choose exile, and therefore will be held to a different standard, entirely, than the world’s.

~ Throwing Away Our Holy Things by Elizabeth Scalia

Choosing to follow Christ means going against what is expected of people in this world. Sometimes I forget that it is a totally different way of life. And if you follow that way of life, chances are, you will be ridiculed for doing so. It is as Elizabeth says, to choose exile.

Every time I think of taking a break from posting on my music blog, I go through the posts, listen to the song previews and think to myself, this is really good. I don't want to stop posting.

This week I remembered one of the main reasons that made me want to start a music blog — it was the beautiful lyrics in songs like Close the Distance by Go Radio.

I remember starting an Instagram account a year or two ago, to share lyrics from a song. It didn't pan out because it was too hard to do on Instagram. That's why I ended up writing music logs on this journal instead. That eventually led to the creation of my music blog.

There's so many good songs out there, from the past and the present, with some wonderful lyrics that are just begging to be heard. Surely, I'm not the only one who feels this way about music, right?

The new Field Notes Winter Limited Edition “Snowy Evening” memo books are beautiful!

And no this is not an affiliate link. I'm just a notebook fan sharing something I think is truly beautiful.

So, an interesting thing this week was running into the beautiful Field Notes memo books I mentioned above, and wanting to share it with other people. This is where I would have posted it to a microblog, if I had one. I don't have one now. I let my micro.blog subscription expire a month or two ago. I didn't want to write a short post about it on this journal either. So then the next logical choice would be to share it on social media. But I didn't want to get on Facebook just to share a link to something that is not a post from one of my sites. Which is why I think having a dedicated microblog can be one way to avoid having to use social media.

Anyway, what I ended up doing was to write it down on my journal. Then as you can see in this post, I'm sharing it as part of a weeknotes post. I think this scratches the itch of wanting to share something, while still being able to do it without resorting to social media. I call that a win for notebooks and blogs.

I'm getting new suspension parts installed on the Speed3. Since my tires are almost worn out, I'm also getting new tires to go along with the new suspension parts.

This time I'm going with Yokohama Advan Sport A/S+ in 225/40/18 for the Speed3. I've never tried Yokohama tires before, so this will be interesting.

The current tires on my Speed3 are Cooper Zeon RS3-G1s. And they were not bad at all. I actually like them a lot. Great bang for the buck ultra high-performance all season tires. The only reason I didn't go with the same tires is because the shop where I'm getting my suspension and tires installed, doesn't sell Cooper Tires.

Music knows neither area, time nor language.

~ From the description of Gregorian Voices

Which is why music is considered a universal language.

Also, those Gregorian Voices work surprisingly well as ambient sounds when writing code.

Just realized that my Hyvor Talk free plan allows comments to be added to multiple websites. So, I added one to this journal and to my other sites as well.

I previously was okay with not having comments on a journal. And I still think that as the owner of the website, you are free to choose whether you want to add a comments system or not.

As for me and this journal, my mindset has changed after a year of posting on here. I realized that without giving readers an easy way to comment on my posts, I'm not giving myself the opportunity to be corrected, to be challenged, to find a new perspective, to learn. Without comments, it is almost like I'm posting into an echo chamber.

So, a comments system has been added. Whether or not I get comments, that's up to the readers.

This week I've been getting the urge to play Fallout 4 once again. So, I was on YouTube trying to find some tips on how to enjoy Fallout 4 on a second play-through. I ran into this video talking about how to make Fallout 4 endless re-playable. It was informative and hilarious at the same time. If you've already finished the main story line, you'll probably enjoy this one.

Tags: #Weeknotes #Blogging #Comments #Mazdaspeed3 #Spirituality

Lately, I've been trying to look at ways to replace social media with this online journal of mine. Like instead of posting on Instagram, I would post photos here. I've come to realize that my friends would probably like a way to comment, like they do on Instagram. The problem is, I don't want it to be too easy to comment. I'm open to comments, as long as maintaining them doesn't become a full time job. I'm more interested in having conversations as opposed to comments, something that Matt alluded to in his Commentary and Communication piece.

So while I wait for Remark.as to be ready, this is my compromise. I am electing to go with the “Letters to the editor” approach through email, partly inspired by CJ Eller's own comments page. On posts where I'm open to comments, I'll start adding a section at the bottom, directing readers to get in touch with me if they want to comment. If somebody does send a useful comment, with their consent, I'll manually update my post and add their comments at the bottom.

I think asking readers to send an email to make a comment, adds enough friction to the process so as to weed out trolls or spammers. You must really, really want to make a comment, that you will go through the process of sending an email. At least that's the idea. I also believe that sending an email is closer to how humans communicate with each other, as opposed to just leaving passing comments on a page. It also allows for a private conversation, if that's what you intend. And also stops trolls from making comments with the intention of triggering other commenters.

Whether or not this works out, I don't know. But, if for some reason this becomes a chore in the future, I will have no qualms about shutting it down. Just saying.

Tags: #Comments #Blogging

A few months ago, while I was researching how to start a personal blog/website, I kept running into this idea that a blog, without a system that allows comments, is not a blog. One popular blogger even likened it to a telephone with no earpiece.

I can understand how it would be nice for a blog to have comments, especially if you are blogging with the intent of building a community or blogging with the intent of making money. If your blog is to have any chance of being popular, you have to cultivate a relationship with your audience. And one way to do that is to enable comments on your blog.

However I also can't help but feel that this is somewhat of an elitist statement. It might not be intentional, but I feel like it discredits other people who look to blogging as a creative outlet or a hobby. Just because someone wants to post about something and didn't have comments enabled, doesn't mean that their post is any less worthy of being found online.

The problem I believe lies in how we define the word “blog”. Nowadays, blog posts are written in a way that fosters a two-way conversation with readers. It didn't use to be this way. Older blogs were more like online diaries or simple log entries, where the author just wanted to write about something and made it available online. However the power of the modern web have made blogs even more social. So now comments are an expected requirement when it comes to creating or maintaining blogs.

So where does that leave people with blogs who don't have comments enabled? I think it is pretty simple. What those people have are online journals. Or online diaries, though I think calling it an online “journal” is a better fit.

Thinking about it as “online journals” makes perfect sense to me. Back in the day when people wrote in their journals, there was no expectation of other people commenting on their entries. You write for yourself and that was a good enough reason to keep a journal. That shouldn't be any different for anyone who wants their journal to be available online.

Update: 2/10/2021 — After reading this, you might have been surprised to find a comments system at the bottom of this post. My viewpoint on adding comments to this journal has changed over time. I explain my reason for adding comments here.

Tags: #Blogging #Comments