Time to Write Posted on August 15, 2021 by Dave Fowler

Today I decided I would really focus and get my ThingsILearned.com blog back up and thriving. I've left this dormant for a long time and really would like it not to be. I'd love it to be a place where I collect all the articles and books I've learned from along with ideally some comments summarizing something I learned or a reaction or disagreement to some ideas found in it.

And with the start of each of these attempts I of course resort to starting new technology. Something that makes it easy to bookmark and beautifully display links and my comments - like a Pinterest for information. And of course it'd have to have a great blogging center.

These ideas/ideals have been in my head since even before I bought the domain ThingsILearned.com. Years ago I started a startup and the idea is what brought me to Silicon valley in 2007 with a few classmates of mine to build this cross between a wiki and a blog.

A problem with the web is that it keeps writing and re-writing itself over and over again. Someone writes a perfectly good tutorial on a subject - and its outdated and misleading people 2 years later. Someone could comment and update it themselves maybe - but the friction there is incredibly high. Instead someone else re-writes an updated version and we add a lot of effort and duplication onto the web - further confusing the audience.

What about an editable web?

But really I don't have much to say. Or atleast I don't have the habits. Instead of just writing an article of something I've wanted to write on a while (and I have quite a few) I just try to re-engineer the system. I've spent today learning PostgREST and some Vue. So much configuration and setup and new concepts to learn. It's interesting for sure - but completely overkill for a blog.

My idea could be well implemented with a blog likely. Especially something like Webflow.

But I complicate and perfect. And quickly run out of my short window to work on this. Now I'll add my 8th starting repo to my github.

Should I just focus on writing instead of focusing on making it easier to write/maintain/contribute? There should atleast be some balance probably.

What rambles.

I have a book coming out soon and having an clean established website would be nice. How did I even get that book finished? I co-wrote with Matt - who did most of the actual writing. I did more outlining and editing and crammed for a weekend on it before its initial ebook release.

Writing requires such forcing functions from me - especially something that's going out for mass consumption. Internal writing comes quite quick and easily to me - especially if I start with pen and paper and expect my audience to be great editors.

And that's what I wish publishing could have - great editing post-publish. I wish I could build that.

Lets just commit this one. Needs editing but oh well.