🔖 Bookmarked: Experiences with social medias https://zhongvie.bearblog.dev/2026-01-13/
Zhongvie reflects on writing and publishing on a personal site, focusing on keeping things simple and resisting the pressure to optimise or perform for platforms.
🔥 Read more: https://flamedfury.com/bookmarks/experiences-with-social-medias/
🔖 Bookmarked: Self-hosting versus lots of small indieweb providers https://www.thisdaysportion.com/posts/self-host-or-indie/
This Day’s Portion questions whether “Indie” automatically means self-hosting, arguing that intent, control, and how you relate to the web matter more than the specific technical setup.
🔥 Read more: https://flamedfury.com/bookmarks/self-hosting-versus-lots-of-small-indieweb-providers/
just stumbled upon an incredible piece of MUD/MOO history from the mid-90s web that disappeared in the 2000s and is now all but forgotten. it is a testament to the interactive and creative possibilities real people imagined in the 90s, before greed and pessimism spread through the world wide web.
MOOSE Crossing: A MUD for Kids was a mud/moo designed by Amy Bruckman at MIT as her doctoral dissertation project in 1996
"MOOSE Crossing is a MUD designed to get kids 9-13 excited about reading,
writing, and computer programming. It includes a new programming language
(MOOSE) and client interface (MacMOOSE) designed to make it easier for kids to
learn to program.
Kids have made things like pigs you can hug, light bulbs that tell light
bulb jokes, and pots of gold at the end of the rainbow that ask you a
riddle! They're doing creative writing and computer programming in their
spare time for fun, and meeting other kids from around the world."
(from a rec.games.tiny.mud announcement https://groups.google.com/u/1/g/rec.games.mud.tiny/c/MhnTf0G3C_0/m/BKWIngCp440J)
while a moo wasn't anything new at all in 96, what i find incredible is that her team also built a custom graphical mud programming WYSIWYG client, for Mac and Windows. the clients - MacMOOSE.sea.hqx and WinMoose.exe appear to be lost to time, but i found this screenshot buried in the wbm. you can see how an object is broken down into verbs and properties.
i have about a million questions about how the client-server system worked because this is adorable and user friendly. but for now, i'm excited to just think out loud about what the world wide web could be made into today, if developers got more interested in user-driven interactivity
this is the original site for MOOSE Crossing:
https://web.archive.org/web/19981202051515/http://www.cc.gatech.edu/fac/Amy.Bruckman/moose-crossing/
Amy's dissertation in html:
https://ic.media.mit.edu/Publications/Thesis/asbPHD/HTML/
#mud #moo #retroComputing #macintosh #vintageApple #worldWideWeb #indieWeb #smallWeb #history #digipres
2026 Week 5
https://blog.lmorchard.com/2026/01/30/w05/
TL;DR: Miss Biscuits is 90% fluff, 3D printed ghosts instead of guns, snarfed down three Adrian Tchaikovsky books at hyperfocus speed, shipped feedspool-go v0.2.0 with over-engineered lazy loading, learned about GitHub Actions cross-repo triggers, got obsessed with a TR/ST song on repeat, and caught up on Classic Doctor Who featuring cyborg Loch Ness monsters.
#weeknotes #miscellanea #3dprinting #feedspool #reading #books #rss #indieweb #golang
The second part of my serialized noir, Jackie Carlisle in The Textbook Case, is online.
https://hisvirusness.com/textbook-case-part-2
#noir #fiction #mystery #serial #creativewriting #smallweb #indieweb
Export means you can leave. True ownership means you can change anything. That's what I'm trying to build with the new Jottit. https://simonbc.com/notes/2026-01-30-the-core-idea-of-the/ #indieweb
One thing that's really cool about Jottit is that all pages are stored as files in git repositories. A side effet of this is that you can actually clone your repository onto your own machine and edit pages, templates and css in your facvorite editor and then push your changes to have your site automatically rebuild. #indieweb
https://simonbc.com/notes/2026-01-30-one-thing-that-s-really-about/
New Tip: How to fix tmux over ssh in ghostty
tmux might break when you try to use it over SSH in Ghostty. Here’s how to fix it.
Updated my post about different ways to build a website!
Going over different tools you can use if you just want to have a website, from website builders to content-management-systems to custom coding.
Read it here: https://webdev.bryanhogan.com/start/ways-to-build/
#buildinpublic #devlog #webdev #indiedev #indieweb #smallweb #cleanwebdev
Two articles about alternative #blogging platforms.
- Part 1, Minimalist Blogging Platforms for the Confused: https://www.magherallylens.com/minimalist-blogging-platforms/
- Part 2, Simple Blogging Platforms Nobody Talks About: https://www.magherallylens.com/simple-blogging-platforms/
🧵
If you liked The Gospel of the Public Library, my feed URL is https://sightlessscribbles.com/feed.xml #RSS #IndieWeb
Pulled from the #powRSS stream:
https://taylormadetech.dev/programming/2017/10/31/the-name.html
blog post: death's inheritance and the future of tomo
today, tomo appears to be the only fork of the RSLight nntp server that is still alive. so what now?
i'll be honest: once Thom/Retro Guy died, i was very tempted to trash the project and move on. I have a half dozen other neglected development projects and books and a podcast to devote my research time to.
and then I thought about Thom and the thousands of hours of his life that he put into his final project before he passed away. his dedication was infectious. and in 2026, we need decentralized forum software more than ever.
that being said, I sure as hell don't want to be responsible for taking over someone else's open source project. that's almost as bad as adopting their kid. hard pass.
.....
rest of the post here:
https://tomodori.net
rss here:
https://tomodori.net/rss.xml
screenshot: the tomo interface for the user's private mailbox
#indieweb confession time: how often do you find yourself working on the tech stack of your site instead of writing or publishing?
Don’t feel bad, we all do it. The designer equivalent is when your portfolio site is nicer than the actual work. Been there too 😬
I’m rebuilding Jottit, a tool for simple web publishing I originally built with Aaron Swartz in 2007. Here’s how it got started: https://simonbc.com/notes/2026-01-29-how-jottit-got-started/ #indieweb
Daily Grateful: Christine's Homestyle Bakery
Today I’m grateful for Christine’s Homestyle Bakery.