This is a crazy story. It started completely out of the blue. A few days ago, I read a post by Gobino on Mastodon. He wrote:

If anyone is looking for a great, cheap and very easy to use blogging platform, have a look at https://pagecord.com. I am and will remain a happy customer.

It reminded me of Pagecord, because a year ago I set up an account on this blogging platform created by Olly. I tested it for a bit and then abandoned it. I wanted to see how it differed from others I knew. I knew that Olly had recently created it and was constantly adding new features. I wanted to come back after some time and see how he was getting on.

I must admit, I forgot about it for many months. It was Gobino who reminded me. I joined in a fun discussion with him and Alexandra. Alexandra set up an account there, and I checked if mine was still active or if I had already deleted it. It turned out to be active. So, I started checking what had changed on Pagecord over the last few months, and there was quite a lot.

I was most pleased with the access to CSS and the ability to edit it. I like tinkering with code. I'm an absolute amateur, but I get a kick out of making minor tweaks. Sometimes I enjoy that more than writing.

If I were to compare Bearblog with Pagecord, Pagecord is more pleasing to the eye. Bearblog is almost completely devoid of a visual layer in the dashboard. This has its advantages and I certainly wouldn't consider it a flaw. But I like to experiment sometimes. I spent about 18 months on Bearblog, with a short break for micro.blog. Now it's time to put Pagecord to the test.

For those who are interested, I'll add straight away that it's worth getting the paid version, which gives you the full range of possibilities; it's really only then that you can spread your wings and see what an interesting project it is and how many features it offers. Among other things, publishing via email and through an Obsidian plugin, so directly from within that app. It's very interesting.

All links to previous posts should still work, as their structure is the same as it was with Bearblog.

Well, back to playing around with it.

Weeknotes! I’ve always wanted to give this a go. Though I had to work through it and pluck up the courage. The biggest challenge won’t be the writing itself, but staying consistent. I’ll treat it as a challenge and a way to improve my regularity. I haven’t been writing much on the blog lately. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s precisely because of a lack of consistency. Now - as planned - I should publish a post at least once a week. Keep your fingers crossed.

--

I’m starting to enjoy basketball more and more. It’s difficult for me to watch NBA matches live because of the big time difference, but I’ve really got into watching and following the players in my country. It really is a great sport. Now we have play-offs - so exciting time.

--

Lately, I’ve been getting increasingly bored with listening to podcasts. My list of favourites is steadily shrinking. Endless ramblings about nothing, or about things that have already been discussed elsewhere, offer me no value whatsoever. On the other hand, I’ve grown to enjoy listening to and discovering radio documentaries.

--

My reading has really fallen by the wayside. I really must do something about it. I’ve got a few days off to relax. It’s time to pick out an interesting book. There are a few unread ones waiting for me on the bookshelf.

--

Still I avoid update my computer to MacOS 26. A really don’t like liquid glass in this form. I'm constantly taking advantage of the fact that security updates are still being released for the previous version of the system, and I think I'll stick with them for as long as possible. Maybe by then, liquid glass will be more refined and I'll actually take a liking to it.

--

I was troubled by the reports of the questionable business practices Bitwarden has been employing recently. It made me feel as though customers carry no weight with the company—as if we can be misled, kept in the dark, or have features withdrawn without any clear justification. I find this conduct incomprehensible and unacceptable, and I am now considering switching to a different password manager.

I’m currently in the process of switching services. I’m trying to shift the weight from major platforms to more niche ones, while looking for similar or better quality. An equally important motivation for me is maintaining as much privacy as possible; I don’t want the service provider trading my data and profiting from it.

So, I’m gradually replacing Google Search with alternatives: DuckDuckGo, Qwant, Ecosia, Startpage, but a few months ago I also decided on Kagi, which - as the only one in this group - is a paid service.

I hesitated a bit about whether it was worth paying for a service that is widely available for free. But I took the plunge, and it was a really good choice.

Kagi is what Google Search used to be for me many years ago. It delivers the results I actually care about—the ones I expected a search engine to find. On top of that, it doesn’t collect data about me (or so it claims) and doesn’t flood the search results with dozens of ads. It doesn’t force me to view AI-generated answers. It’s just a simple, classic search engine, which is exactly what I wanted.

Even though I’m very happy using it, I’m still giving the free alternatives a chance. I’ve taken a particular liking to Ecosia and Qwant. I’m most satisfied with the results they provide, although it should be noted that they are interspersed with adverts. But if access to the service is free of charge, I can’t have any complaints about that whatsoever.

I don’t know if I’ll stick with Kagi permanently or if I’ll opt for a rotation. I think "rotation" is a more appropriate word than switching services and choosing one specific one as the default.

David Sparks wrote:

If you’re not careful, every time you open your RSS reader, there will be 1,000 unread articles waiting for you, which completely defeats the purpose of using RSS. The trick to using RSS is to be brutal with your subscriptions. I think the key is looking for websites with high signal and low noise. Sites that publish one or two articles a day (or even one to two articles a week) but make them good articles are much more valuable and RSS feed than sites that published 30 articles a day.

This is a problem that I imagine a significant number of RSS users face. I’ve been through it many times myself. The last time was yesterday, when I removed two feeds from my reader that published a huge amount of content every day. It was too much for me. They dominated my article list to an overwhelming extent. That’s why I decided I had to do something about it. I definitely agree with David that reducing the noise is key to maintaining control over the content that comes our way. I’m still searching for that control and have no idea if it’s a state that can ever be achieved.

Some day Jim Mitchell wrote he deleted all sources from his RSS reader and started from scratch. It’s a tempting idea, but I don’t think I’m ready for it. Mainly because of the blogs. I know that without an RSS reader, it would be difficult for me to find some sites again. I don’t remember all the names of the blogs I follow and read, nor their authors. Sometimes I think I follow too many of them, read them too rarely, which means I still haven’t formed a proper connection with them. Perhaps that will happen in the future, when I focus more on filtering out the noise in favour of those with a high signal-to-noise ratio.

And perhaps that’s exactly the point. Every now and then, I come across a blog in my feed that I’d forgotten about. Why? Because updates are posted so rarely. It’s like walking through a garden where, every now and then, new, unfamiliar flowers appear.

Just look at this: As usual (almost every day), I popped over to Robert’s blog (robertbirming.com) and came across a post titled ‘Blogs are alive’. It included a quote from an interview with Patrick (patrickrhone.net) as part of a series hosted by Manuel (manuelmoreale.com). Before I read the interview, however, I visited Patrick’s blog to get to know him a bit. There I came across the ‘About’ page, where I found this sentence:

My little place on a quiet street of the Internet.

And it was precisely this that inspired me to write this post.

Let’s start with a question: If your blog were a house, where would you want it to be? There are plenty of possibilities. Let’s assume we have access to all the places we know – in other words, the whole world. Mountains, seas, forests, islands, deserts, bustling cities and peaceful villages.

Patrick chose the “quiet street of the Internet”. An interesting choice. Given how crowded the Internet is, I’d say he’s done quite well for himself. Probably a peaceful neighbourhood, close to everything, yet a place that allows you to escape the hustle and bustle.

I think this is supported by a certain path taken by many personal bloggers – an escape from the hustle and bustle. A search for peace and quiet, whilst still being able to communicate easily with others.

That’s exactly how I view the opportunity to blog. A bit like a home where the sounds of everyday life don’t intrude, but which is open to others. It allows you to cut yourself off from the noisy world, if only for a moment.

But would I want to live next door to Patrick? I suspect he’s a nice bloke, and I probably wouldn’t mind having him as a neighbour. But – going back to the original premise – if I could choose any place on Earth, I’d want to set up my digital home (personal blog) in a slightly different setting.

I’d choose a charming village situated somewhere in the highlands, but not quite in the mountains. A place where the hills are covered in lush greenery, and down below a stream flows and birdsong can be heard.

Greenery, flowers and wild nature are the elements of the landscape that appeal to me most. I like to smell nature and sometimes feel part of the flora and fauna.

I sometimes describe my blog as a ‘digital garden’. It is in just such a natural garden that I could live. In a place where my blogger friends, whom I enjoy chatting with, would come to visit. In a place where time passes more slowly, or where the passing of time has some value. It happens to me that, in the rush of daily duties, it’s sometimes difficult to control the flow of time. It goes by so quickly.

And where would you like to build your digital home?

I’ve just found out that Michael has died... I didn’t know him personally, but I know he was a blogger. I’d only recently started reading his blog. I saw a post on Mastodon that was published today on his profile. Intrigued, I expanded the post before I started reading it.

It came as a bolt from the blue... I found it hard to believe what I was reading. But it was true. Michael has passed away. He died on Wednesday…

I immediately went to his blog. Right at the top, I noticed a post that had been published today. With the telling title: ‘From the great beyond…’. It began to sink in that Michael was dead. My heart was filled with emptiness.

He’s gone. He’d been battling illness. He’d recently started radiation therapy. He’d written about it on his blog and on Mastodon. Sadly, the illness proved too strong.

How it's devastating. I don’t know what to write. I don’t know if I should write anything at all. After all, I’d only known him briefly. Only online. Only through the blogosphere and the Fediverse. I don’t think he even knew I existed. It was me who followed him on Mastodon and read his blog. I liked his ‘Weekly Roundup’ and his reflections on various topics best. Sometimes they were thought-provoking, like one of his recent posts titled ‘Emojis in Blog Post Titles Instead of Using Tags’.

But does it matter? Michael… It’s such a sad and devastating feeling to know that you’re passed away. I’m so sorry. Dear family and friends – please accept my condolences. Our blogosphere is poorer for the loss of this wonderful and kind-hearted man. But the world on the other side is richer for his smile and passion.

Goodbye, Michael... I'm so sorry that you will never write to us again.

Finally, I would like to quote the words of his daughter Katie, who posted info of his death on Michael’s blog:

If you want to do something in honor of Michael, please make a donation to St Jude, I believe he has it linked on his homepage.

That’s true. The link to that page is right at the bottom of his blog. And it leads here.

Please don’t leave reaction bottom on this post. I don’t want to gain traction off someone’s death. I just wanted to say goodbye to him, and how else could I do that when we were both bloggers? I wanted to do it here. On the blog. On the blog, which was also shaped by the inspiration drawn from the posts he published. If you’d like to and are able to, please make a donation to St Jude as his daughter wrote.

My dream was to have a minimalist blog. I had many ideas in my head, I had seen many similar projects. Truly ascetic visual solutions. Each one was different. Each one had fewer elements, yet was so different from what could be described as ‘clean HTML’. It was ‘clean HTML’ that always seemed to me to be the purest form of internet minimalism. A form that has absolutely nothing in it. It's completely bare.

On the other hand, I didn't want my blog to look like that. I didn't want it to be bare. However, I wanted it to have some kind of design, but to an absolute minimum.

But what does that actually mean? I couldn't define it.

And this question has been coming back to me for many years. It came back when I wasn't blogging. It comes back when I blog.

But now, as I run a blog and constantly tinker with CSS, I'm starting to see what changes satisfy me. It's mainly removing elements.

So, you could say I had a project that contained various things, and my work – in pursuit of my version of minimalism – consists of periodically getting rid of something and checking how the blog looks without it.

That's how the menu disappeared. That's why I removed the photo of the manuscript that was on the home page. That's how I came to the conclusion that a certain form of minimalism would be to reduce the size of the headings so that they would be closer in size to the text.

Just text. Plain text. Practically nothing else. The only extravagance that deviates from this rule are the gradient lines separating individual post titles. For now, I don't want to part with them. I think they add charm to the whole and break the pattern a little.

But do I know my definition of minimalism? No. Will I ever know it? I don't know. And I care less and less about it. Now I am satisfied that I have found the direction that leads to it. It's subtracting elements from the whole.

I wonder if this path will ever lead me to ‘clean HTML’.

I don’t use a separate “Read it Later” app. The RSS reader I use daily (Reeder) has this feature built-in. Interestingly, I can save not only the articles that appear in my feed but also anything from the web by sharing the link and saving it to the app.

I’ve always wanted to stay up to date. Who hasn't? But the problem was always a lack of time. I always had less time for reading than I would have liked. As a result, my “Read it Later” tab was bursting with more and more texts.

I checked it recently to see what I could read and went through the whole list. I deleted about half of the saved links, realising they were topics that no longer interested me. I probably saved them because they sparked some sort of impulse at the time. Perhaps a fleeting emotion.

How much time would I have wasted if I’d read those pieces straight away? I think I’ll have to check my “Read it Later” tab more often to stay on top of what’s actually important to me.

—————————

This is another small experiment in reclaiming my time. I’ve already taken several steps in this regard this year. I’ve removed many sources from my RSS reader and podcast app. I’m starting to consume less content, but what I do consume is more valuable to me. I’m creating more and more notes, which I save in one place using a system I’m developing as I go (I’ll write more about this soon).

In doing this, I want to find out how I use the internet and how to streamline that time (within reason) so I can use it better and waste less of it.

I like the feeling when someone comes up to me and says – knowing that I'm doing something mechanically – “did you know there's another way?”

That's what happened with Terry Godier. Even though we don't know each other. By complete chance, I came across a post on Mastodon by a user who praised his new RSS reader - "Current". An RSS reader? A new one? I couldn't remain indifferent. I immediately opened the app's profile page on the App Store and started looking for information about the author. Following the trail, I found his blog at terrygodier.com.

There I found four essays. One of them was titled “Phantom obligation”. And in it, I found this sentence:

Why do RSS readers look like email clients?

This essay is a kind of examination of conscience for the entire RSS reader development community, but also my own examination of conscience as a user of such programs. I realized that I had never thought about it before.

The presentation of the origins of the concept that RSS readers usually look like email clients is very interesting. I knew that the author of the essay wanted to break this canon. However, his interpretation of the change captivated me.

First, he argued that the unread message counter makes us feel guilty because instead of reading, we focus on achieving the goal of “inbox zero.” Then he presented a concept I had never encountered before, that of a river as a stream of information in an RSS reader.

The river. Content drifts upward like leaves on water. You dip in when you want. You step out when you're done. "Some things will pass you by. That's not a bug; that's the premise."

I must admit that the reference to nature captivated me, and I thought, “This is wonderful! How did he come up with this?” With each subsequent paragraph of Terry's story, my admiration for his bold paradigm shift grew.

It reminded me of the principles of the “slow life” movement as a counterpoint to the hustle and bustle of everyday life in highly developed countries, steeped in capitalism and corporate culture. I have always associated “slow life” with greater mindfulness, setting boundaries for oneself, and living life on one's own terms. I saw a similar vision in Terry's concept.

Information has a natural lifespan, and the interface should honor that. The river is what's here right now. You scroll through it, save what you want to keep, and let the rest go.

In an ideal world, I would read everything in my RSS reader from start to finish. But we know that an ideal world does not exist. Anyway, I wrote about my latest approach to using this tool a few days ago. I refer you to that text. I will not repeat myself.

Let's go back to the concept of a river. No matter which RSS reader I used, I always browsed only a part of the stream of news that flooded me every day. Then I looked for the magic “mark all as read” button. So why do I need a counter for unread articles?

„Current” has no unread count. Not because I forgot to add one, or because I thought it would look cleaner without it. There is no count because counting was the problem.

I have been using Reeder for some time now, which has largely done away with counters. The only one left is the one displayed and updated in real time while scrolling, which counts down from the top of the list how many newer articles there are. For me, this is a better solution than the classic inbox inspiration. That's why I like Terry's concept and the quotes below, which illustrate it perfectly:

Every interface is an argument about how you should feel.

There are no unread counts. Not “not yet”. Never. This is philosophical, not practical. An unread count would make Current a better RSS manager and a worse RSS reader. I chose reader.

The way Terry described the entire journey from the idea to the creation of the app, the questions he asked himself, how he analyzed the knowledge he gathered, how he challenged accepted norms and sought new solutions, is not only a testament to his work, but also, I believe, an inspiration for others—for us—to try to swim against the tide. Perhaps even a river. Or perhaps the sea. Perhaps this will be the beginning of broader changes in the virtual world, which we have become accustomed to without thinking about why it is the way it is.

During my last holiday, I caught up on a lot of reading, especially the articles waiting for me in my RSS reader. I use Reeder, which looks beautiful and is very easy to use. It has a lot of features, but not so many that they distract you. They are more helpful in managing content. It also allows you to subscribe to podcasts and YouTube channels, and categorises accounts from Mastodon, Pixelfed, Bluesky, Micro.blog, Glass, Flickr, Soundcloud, Comic Strip and Reddit.

It was a great feeling to feel ‘up to date’, but at the same time, following the channels I subscribed to did not cause me any pressure. I just did it casually.

I thought I would be able to maintain this habit for longer. Especially after returning from holiday, when I would go back to my daily responsibilities and work, which takes up a lot of my time at various points throughout the day.

I wasn't able to. Not for the first time. But for the first time, I decided to do something about it. To clean up. Effectively enough so that I could control the influx of content coming to me every day.

But I also failed, because it's difficult for me to part with some channels. I had 175 of them. After ‘cleaning up’, I was left with 121. I deleted 54. I think 121 channels is still too many. But my inner sentiment doesn't allow me to clean it up any further.

Although something Jim Mitchell recently wrote on Mastodon comes to mind:

I chose to nuke all of my RSS feeds in NetNewsWire this morning, save one (try to guess which one – it's not one of mine), with the plan of starting fresh. I was marking most feeds as read without even bothering to skim over them. It seemed pointless to keep such noise around.

It's an interesting concept to start everything from scratch. Sometimes it's very liberating. However, I wouldn't want to get rid of all my feeds. I'm going to repeat the clean-up in a while. I'll probably delete more feeds then. But it may also happen that in the meantime I'll add other sites to my reader. It seems like a never-ending battle.

But, maybe one day, I'll delete everything and start like Jim? Who knows.

For a long time, I had been thinking about writing a post with a list of applications that have become my go-to choices in everyday life. I tried to do it several times, but it never got beyond the planning stage.

Today, Gobino motivated (or rather inspired) me by posting a link to his list on Mastodon. I found some free time in the evening and prepared my list. Here it is.

My default apps:

📨 Mail Client: Proton
🌐 Browser: Vivaldi, Safari (mobile)
🔎 Search: Kagi
📖 RSS: Reeder
📑 Read It Later: Reeder
📝 Notes: Obsidian, Zotero
✅ To-Do: Apple Reminders
🔖 Bookmarks: Bookmarks on browsers
📷 Photo shooting: iPhone Camera
📆 Calendar: Apple Calendar
📁 Cloud File Storage: iCloud, Proton Drive
🙍🏻‍♂️ Contacts: Apple Contacts
📜 Word Processing: LibreOffice
🎤 Podcasts: Apple Podcasts
🔐 Password Management: Bitwarden
🎨 Graphics Editing: Affinity, Figma

By pure chance, I came across a post by Michaël Szadkowski on Mastodon today, who shared a link to an article by Brennan Kenneth Brown about omg.lol. It's a website, or rather a collection of online tools, created and developed by Adam. He is also the creator of a Mastodon instance called social.lol.

In this article, Brennan raves about the advantages of omg.lol. At almost the same time, I came across a post by Benjamin, who wrote something like a love letter addressed to Adam - the creator of omg.lol.

As if that weren't enough, three days ago I wrote a post on Mastodon about renewing my omg.lol subscription for another (second) year, and the reason for this was the wonderful, open, and friendly community of social.lol — a Mastodon instance that Adam also runs as part of the omg.lol project.

And the words that Helen Chong wrote on her blog a few months ago keep resonating in my head. She summed up her first year on the omg.lol community in a unique way. I wrote a few words about it, too.

Now, as I renew my subscription to omg.lol, I also wanted to write my own summary, but today's discoveries, recommendations, and thanks to the creator say more than I could ever write myself.

So I leave you with these words and links. Maybe you too will join our ordinary yet extraordinary community of people who have found the Internet they were looking for. The Internet that seemed lost, but was all along somewhere in the corner of that big house that is the World Wide Web.

The internet is based on text. We all write. Some write code, others write books, someone else is composing an email, and the person next to them is chatting with someone on social media. Text. Raw, simple letters. We look at them millions of times a day and don't even think about it. We use them every day. Even if we don't write online, something writes for us. It's a machine. Every movement of our cursor. Every click. Every video playback, photo opening, or program launch is an avalanche of zeros and ones.

Like this: 1000101011101010101100101010101010

Even this text is part of it, descending somewhere from the barely visible and hidden in the shadow of the slope of the great mountain called the Internet.

We invented the World Wide Web. We built it from scratch. In the process, entire industries were created, many innovations changed the world, turned it upside down and destroyed it on an unprecedented scale.

And those letters and numbers are still there. They are still the basis of everything. Isn't it beautiful that in the process of progress we haven't killed what was original? Isn't it beautiful that we can still write? Isn't it beautiful that everything depends on it?

Let's write. Start blogs. Write on them. Let's rebuild the blogosphere and make it more valuable than ever before.

Don't make it a New Year's resolution, because most of you won't be able to fulfill or maintain it anyway. Just start blogs and write. What's the harm in that?

Welcome to the 5th edition of Linkblink - serie where I collect and share my digital discoverings from last time.

1. Manu recalls what his blogging journey was like 10 years ago and how he copes with the digital world. link: https://manuelmoreale.com/thoughts/year-10
2. I recently gave up Spotify. I didn't write about it on my blog because I still have an account there, but I haven't used it for a long time. I chose the Idagio platform. Maybe I'll write about it someday. But before I do, I recommend Stephanie's story and her thoughts on the subject. link: https://stephvee.ca/blog/entertainment/delete-spotify-sure-but-dont-just-replace-it-with-another-subscription/
3. Dominik isn't a very active blogger, but I really like his thoughts. His latest ones concern the social side of IndieWeb. link: https://dominikhofer.me/social-indie-web

💡 I have an idea to start each subsequent Linkblink with a greeting in a different language. We will check together how ‘hello’ sounds in different parts of the world. For convenience, I'll also add a flag indicating the language in which I'll publish this greeting. First, ‘hello’ in my native language - Polish.

Every 1st of January for many years now, it has been my tradition to watch the Vienna Philharmonic New Year's Concert. I love classical music and it is a great treat for me to be able to listen to these outstanding artists during such a unique event.

In October, I wrote about the Chopin Competition, which takes place every five years in Poland and is also a great event for me as a lover of his music. However, I like to listen to many artists who compose and perform the works of great composers.

In the past, the New Year's Concert broadcast from Vienna was for me solely a discovery of new pieces and an introduction to the history of music. Today, I am already familiar with many of the pieces or know them quite well. But I am still discovering new ones. And so it was this time as well. I remember three in particular:

• Johann Strauß II. Diplomaten-Polka. Polka francaise, op. 448
• Hans Christian Lumbye Københavns Jernbane-Damp-Galop
• Johann Strauß II. Rosen aus dem Süden (Roses from the South), Waltz, op. 388

I remembered that I hadn't listened to ‘Rosen aus dem Süden’ in a long time, but the two other songs I mentioned above were new to me. They will definitely find their way onto my playlist on Idagio, where I collect interesting songs and classics of the genre. I love listening to classical music, especially when working on my computer and reading books.