Facelift

Very slow day at work (winter storm on a Friday before Christmas weekend has closed every library in the state and left our inboxes empty and our to-do lists moribund), so I decided, "Hey, why not dust off your blog?"

Competition, principally from Ravelry and then from Facebook, had pretty much killed this blog as on online outlet, but times have changed. Ravelry underwent a redesign that permanently damaged its place at the heart of the online knitting community. (The last two knitting books I've looked at don't even have their patterns listed there, which would have been unthinkable five years ago.) Facebook had me in its grip until October of last year, when I found it was possible to take control of my timeline with Unfollow Everything. I still scan Facebook occasionally to check in on my friends' lives, but I update less frequently, and that's true of many of them as well.

When Twitter began melting down when Elon Musk took the reins two months ago, I had hopes that we'd see blogs come back. Sadly, that's unlikely. Perhaps if there was a tool as handy and easy to use as the old Google Reader there would be a chance. But few people care about the power and flexibility of RSS anymore. (For the record, I still do, and pay a subscription fee for Newsblur to keep my feed collection available.)

Will I keep this up? Unlikely. I'm a fairly busy guy. (And frankly, I kind of hate writing.) Nevertheless, I've occupied a few hours today selecting a new template for the blog, making it behave better on mobile devices, cleaning up the side widget, and replacing my old, blocky cartoon avatar with a current Bitmoji.

For those of you, like me, who still have a collection of RSS feeds and you've seen my blog suddenly show up again after a five year silence: "Hi there. Here's hoping your holidays are satisfying, and the new year brings you some joy."