Sunday, 21st December, 2025

I’m trying to sort out blogs (again) but not really making any progress. I talk myself into a new site, keeping old ones, shuffling things around, deleting everything and every permutation thereof.

Someone emailed me about my radio blog saying my posts were useful. That makes me not want to move it, plus it’s a nice discrete topic. Although redirects would solve this, and most of my posts are sota activations - which I think are only really interesting to me, although lots of photos are always nice to scroll through.

So maybe if I try and figure out what I want that will help…(?)

• I like sota activations write ups. Mostly to organise the photos. This could be a gallery generator… I do tend to write up summits on the sota forums, but they can be harder to find later. One very keen activator just wrote a book about his most memorable summits and outings with his family. It’s fine to read but I think it’s mostly for him. Reminded me of the DayOne books I have. So of course the thought of “maybe I should write up my sota activations in DayOne”. Certainly easy for photos and writing, plus I could make myself a book if I wanted. Although an actual photo book might be nicer as the photos are fine but low quality.
• Daily log - aka this site. Just text as it comes into my mind, mostly ephemeral. Most enjoyment comes from writing it on my phone, sat on the sofa or waiting around somewhere. Rarely do I write it on the computer. Whilst I want one site, I actually want this kept separate so that I don’t feel restricted about what I write. So I think I’m going to leave it as it is.
• Interesting projects. This is what you’d call typical blog posts. Eg a web app I made or something I made or found. Or a series of books I’ve read. That kind of stuff.

This currently translates into three sites for those three things. With the exception/overlap of radio projects being on the radio blog.

The sites I like are ones where it’s the person’s name as the domain and they write about everything. That’s really what I’d like. So why can’t I do it? I don’t know.

I’ve been thinking about binning all my domains and starting again. I feel beholden to them and what I have to do and commitments to others. These things are all imaginary but they are why I stop. Obviously I’m conflicted over that idea - giving up domains. My name domain is short and I have had it nearly 15 years now, plus I use it for emails. Not many emails but some stuff. Of course I can keep it and just use it for email but that doesn’t really help. The radio domain is well known and in fact the emails for that are probably more embedded vs. my name domain a sive actually used it.

Once I figure that out, it’s then what platform should I use. Really it ought to be a static site because I get upset when it’s not. Even if I like the convenience of servers etc. However I have liked the extra functionality of Quarto for making JavaScript maps with leaflet.

So in conclusion. Who knows.

Later on…

I spent a lot of time looking at things. I think 11ty would be good to use as you can do a lot of neat things which I’d like to do on my site. It’s just a lot of effort and I’m not sure I can really be bothered. It is one of those things that you pick off slowly and I just need to start. Also decided against a new domain and I should just use the ones I have. Feels like I wasted an evening though, but if I’m being positive then I could say I’ve decided stuff, but I know I’ll change my mind again.