The beast at Tanagra

Migrating to Zine

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

When I first set up my site, I used Hugo to build it. Hugo was good - allowing me to focus on just writing the posts in plaintext, and letting the software convert it to HTML.

A little while ago I learned that Hugo is now slopware: software written using “AI”.

I am strongly opposed to “AI” as a technology. I don’t use it; I don’t want to use it; I don’t want to read the text or see the images it generates. For a wide range of reasons that really deserve at least a full post of their own. But not least of which: the ethical implications of “AI” as a technology are just absolutely enormous. And I try to make ethical decisions in the software I use, same as any other area of my life. So I try not to use software written using “AI”.

So I wanted to move off Hugo. I had considered building my site from scratch, using HTML and CSS. But that just sounded like a huge undertaking, more than I really have capacity for right now.

But then I came across Zine. It’s pretty great. In fact more than that, I really like it a lot. The design decisions are so cool; everything is clear and easy to understand, which makes it really easy to quickly put together a site I quite like. It also makes it really easy to see how to change things on the site; for as much as I liked my site built with Hugo, I did not really understand that well how the pieces fit together. This is much clearer.

So this is my new site. It’s probably a work in progress, but I just wanted to get something out quickly while I have some energy capacity. I don’t hate the theme I came up with, actually. Hopefully it works.

I picked Fixel and Maple Mono for the fonts. Fixel is a cool font made in collaboration with a Ukrainian artist; I like it. Maple Mono is a nice monospace font with a rounded style.

The RSS feed has moved, but the existing RSS feed should continue working. Not sure for how long, so if anybody is actually using the RSS feed, maybe update to the new link. The old links should continue working too, I hope.

There’s also now a Now page; a home for shorter posts, maybe I’ll use it to put brief comments about things I’m enjoying without wanting to write a full blog post. There is a separate Now RSS feed.

Nia Archives

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Nia Archives Emotional Junglist

Recently I came across the idea of the IndieWeb Carnival, where people write blog posts on a particular theme. The theme in May was love letters. Lately I’ve been completely enthralled by Nia Archives, and this felt like a good opportunity to write about her. I didn’t have the spoons to get the draft finished and published back then. But this weekend her new album dropped so felt inspired to complete it.

Nia is a phenomenon. A fantastically talented woman. She makes jungle music, releasing some incredible records. She writes and performs her own lyrics, with a catchy, laconic style of her own. She records many of her own music videos. She runs her own record label, Up Ya Archives. A few years ago the MOBO Awards essentially created a new category in order to give her an award. Since then she’s warmed up for Beyoncé on her tour and performed at Glastonbury. She’s a star.

In 2020, she sent her first single round to all the record labels; they all said no. So she released it herself; spent the last of her student loan on Instagram adverts. I could probably write something about pretty much every record she’s released - I haven’t heard anything that isn’t class. But I’ll pick a few that really hit me.

First up, some pure dancefloor material. Off Wiv Ya Headz is just incredible. Pure energy, fantastic percussion, and the way that bass comes in? The audacity just makes me laugh out loud, so good. Or the Brazilian funk-influenced Baianá; reckon I heard this soundtracking Match of the Day’s goal of the month montage recently. We’ve got ragga stylings on 18 & Over (slightly NSFW), proper heavy breaks, intense bassline, wild tempo shift in the middle.

But her style goes way beyond these pure dancefloor tracks, with songs and emotions and poetic lyrics. So Tell Me… sees Nia talking about how her head gets stuck in a loop of revisiting events over and over wondering what she could have said or done differently - very familiar to me. Gud Gudbyez is about the end of a relationship, choosing to look after herself, finding the good in an ending / beginning; really feel this one. The lyrics are actually incredible - short, punchy, really excellent way of communicating complex emotions in just a few words; but combined with a really catchy way with tons of stylistic effects. Oh, and of course, layered atop some fantastic beats. Jungle music rarely even has lyrics, and here’s Nia making one emotional song after another.

Besides all these singles and EPs, Nia has a new album, Emotional Junglist, just released on Friday. Her first album, Silence Is Loud, is that rare thing - an album without a poor track, pure quality from start to finish. Emotional, complex, brilliant. So good that I often listen to it again as soon as I finish it. Nia cited Britpop as one of the influences on the album, and I can totally hear some of that vibe - Britpop via jungle. Was really looking forward to the new one.

And wow. Emotional Junglist. What an album. Leans more heavily into the Britpop / indie sound; lots of jungle but very different. Never heard anything quite like it. But it’s good. Like really, really good. Telling the story of a failed romance over the course of 2025. The raw, primal passion of Danger (very NSFW)¹, or the intensity of getting lost in somebody in Vertical. The pure, vulnerable hope in This Could Be… (all the more poignant upon repeat listens, knowing where it all ended). The devastation of Lovers Grief; that special contempt of the infinite let down in Boys In Blue. Nia’s vocals shine through the whole album; her incredible ability to rhyme words, her way to communicate, her lyrics. Sounds reminiscent of early Prodigy, old rave motifs; Nia really knows her music history, too. Listened to this album more than half a dozen times already over the weekend. Love it. Emotional indeed.

Aside from her own releases, her label, Up Ya Archives, is about a year old. Seems like her focus may be on promoting other artists in the scene - it doesn’t really feature much of her own work. Already within the first year are some incredible tracks. Fez The Kid - Ghost Ship; Janaway - Code Switch; Worsleyy & Chimpo - Northern Step. Underground business.

Nia was born towards the end of 1999, so she is essentially a product of the 21st Century. Despite all the difficulties the world is throwing up these days, Nia (and artists like her) are out here excelling. It makes me happy to see such a strong, vibrant youth culture, keeping the underground spirit alive, and such talent as this to come from modern Britain.

Keeping Faith

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Keeping Faith

I was looking for something to watch recently. Nothing on my list really stood out, so was scrolling through things on BBC. Came across the show Keeping Faith. Three seasons. Easily one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. And the performance of Eve Myles, in her role as the titular Faith; I’ve never seen anything like it.

So let’s write about it.

The show is about Faith. A woman whose husband disappears. She’s a professional woman; a lawyer. She’s just coming to the end of maternity leave with their third child when her husband goes missing.

So the storylines all revolve around her dealing with this trauma. The unknown, the emotions, trying to figure out what happened and why. Keeping her kids together. That kind of thing. It’s set in a small town in Wales; fictional but like in any number small towns she also has to deal with the talk of the town.

But there’s just something about the character of Faith. Such a lovely, kind, generous person. Despite the trauma and pressure she is under, she is still there for everybody around her. Truly the kind of person you want in your life.

Eve plays this role to perfection. By the end of the first season I was already thinking that this is the best acting performance I’ve ever seen. A phenomenal performance.

But then season two she somehow manages to step it up another level. Honestly I did not know it was possible for a person to act this powerfully. She just absolutely blew me away. I mean like actually in awe of her.

Eve stars alongside her real-life husband Bradley Freegard - who plays the role of her character’s husband, Evan. Which is really nice.

The other characters are also brilliantly acted. I especially loved their two daughters, played by Demi Letherby and Lacey Jones; just spot on.

The show itself was filmed in Carmarthenshire, Wales, set in a fictional town near Swansea. But it was part of a trio of shows that were filmed simultaneously in both Welsh and English; in Welsh it was titled Un Bore Mercher (One Wednesday Morning), and broadcast on S4C. I had no idea such a project existed, but it’s fantastic and I hope Welsh people produce more dramas like this.

As an aside: the other two shows in this bilingual trio were called Bang, which I’ve not seen; and Hidden (titled Craith in Welsh). The latter I have seen, and it was also excellent - though I did not know at the time that it was a bilingual production too.

But there’s actually more to write about Eve Myles. Yes this is mostly just a fan piece for her because I was so affected by her performance in Keeping Faith that I had to read more about the show and her. As mentioned, it was filmed bilingual; Eve is Welsh but did not speak the language. Indeed, she initially turned down the role, because of the bilingual aspect. She learned Welsh in order to play this part; described it as the hardest challenge of her professional life. Stuff like that always amazes me. She now speaks it at home with her family. Inspirational.

I’ve seen Eve in some other shows. The Guest, on BBC, which I enjoyed a lot; recognising her face from that show on the cover image of Keeping Faith is what prompted me to watch this. She was also in Coldwater, and has a new show on ITV, Gone, which I’m looking forward to watching soon (didn’t jump right into it to avoid merging her characters in my head). She was also the lead female role in Torchwood, though I never really got into that show. Oh, and she voiced Merrill in Dragon Age II.

Keeping Faith was the most popular show on BBC Wales for more than a quarter of a century, and has had more than 50 million views on BBC. It also won three Welsh BAFTAs (best actress for Eve, best writer, and original music - and yes the music was also fantastic, powerful, hit the mood perfectly; really good stuff).

This was a fantastic show, incredibly well made, with some amazing performances - and Eve Myles as Faith is beyond anything I’ve seen before. A really special show.

It's OK to make mistakes

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Spring is here

The world is extremely wide
and it has a lot to offer.
That’s why the first steps.
are almost always unsuccessful.
Helpless first poems are the first.
Unhappy first love.
There are no accomplishments,
but only impulses.
And then years pass,
and a restrained strength emerges.
You look back and the first steps
have long since been covered with dust.
You feel both funny and angry,
and you often forget:
In order to walk well,
you have to fall down ten times.
Lina Kostenko; About the path

We all make mistakes. It can be too easy when we do to say “I’m stupid for this”.

But how many things did you know how to do when you were born?

You couldn’t walk; you had to learn by trying, failing, falling; making mistakes. Eventually you learned, and you forgot all the times you fell. Now you think nothing of walking, take it for granted, rarely trip.

You couldn’t even feed yourself; your care-giver did that for you, too. First with liquid, then with mush. You got it all over your face. Eventually you learned how to feed yourself and keep it in your mouth. Mostly, anyway.

And likewise with reading and writing, even speaking. Hours and hours spent trying to learn what is the difference between a ‘c’ and an ‘e’. Sounds that you could not even pronounce until you were older. Those words that our parents delight in telling us how we used to say them as a toddler.

There’s no reason this should change as we turn into adults. We don’t become static people when we reach adulthood. Making mistakes when something is new does not indicate stupidity or any other negative quality. It shows we are growing as people.

Show me a person who never made a mistake and I’ll show you one who never learned something new.

Of course, I’m not talking about mistakes caused by incompetence or arrogance here. We’ve all met people who cause problems precisely because they are not trying to learn. People who really should recognise that their ability level is not close to where it needs to be for a certain role.

But the rest of us? Who are just trying to be better in the world? Trying to be the best person we can be, but are faltering along the way? Maybe we can afford to be a bit more generous with ourselves, and the people around us who are trying, too.

It’s OK to make mistakes.

Long covid diary week 289

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A full 289 weeks have passed since my covid infection began. Or, 2,023 days, if you prefer. Today is day 2,024, the first day of week 290.

I don’t know if I’ll actually post this, or just write it. But woke up today feeling awful and just felt like putting my thoughts into words.

This week has been pretty rubbish, physically.

It’s Friday today. For most people that probably means “Friday feeling”. Greeting people with “happy Friday!”. Asking about evening and weekend plans. That is a feeling I experience only rarely. Friday is usually a pretty poor day for me, as it comes after four days of work. By the end of the week I am usually completely smashed. Going out on a Friday evening feels like a long-distant memory.

Last weekend was a bit poor. Not the worst I’ve had, but I struggled. Was feeling pretty low, and didn’t have a ton of energy to do much. But, I tried my best. And achieved the most important thing for me every weekend: preparing a batch of soup to last the week so I don’t have to spend energy making lunch every day.

Making lunch is hard. You have to decide what you are having; plan out the steps; stand in the kitchen to make it. Try doing all that when you might not even have energy to stand in the kitchen by lunchtime. So: soup every day is a big energy saving, a big help.

Let’s summarise my week. Nothing on here is new or unfamiliar. This is a relatively normal week for me; below average certainly, but normal.

Monday

Having not really recovered over the weekend, Monday was not ideal.

I did achieve some useful stuff at work, though only completed one of the two items that I planned when the day started.

In the afternoon we had our weekly team meeting. For me this is often more like a form of torture; my brain cannot hold so much information all in one go, so after about 20 minutes of people talking I begin to lose track of what is being said. It becomes physically painful. Like my brain is being slapped over and over and over. And people just keep talking and talking and I want to tell them to just shut up and stop please, please stop. But they don’t and it drags on and on. This week’s meeting was particularly hard. 45 minutes. I don’t really know what anybody talked about.

Half an hour or so after the meeting, my brain was really in pain. My cognitive ability massively reduced. Was struggling to write proper sentences using actual grammar, that kind of thing. Fortunately, I finished not long after, and rested in the evening.

Of course, the evening was very low quality and I didn’t actually do anything of any real value. The cost of being in that meeting. Managed to watch an hour of TV, but it was hard work concentrating, probably took me closer to an hour and a half to watch this much because of needing to take breaks to rest. Yes, watching TV is that difficult sometimes.

Tuesday

Woke up feeling dizzy. Not like, the room spins when you move kind of dizzy. More like my sense of balance wasn’t working properly. Sitting down, even, just felt unstable in some kind of generalised way. Felt like my immune system was firing, felt a bit rough like when you’re unwell. Makes sense, given we’d had that team meeting that hammered my brain so badly. Ibuprofen helped, dizziness faded - but didn’t disappear entirely.

Afternoon much better than morning though and achieved some decent work and felt useful; that was good. I often feel pretty useless, so any time I feel like I contributed some sort of value to the world is a positive.

Evening was totally wrecked with exhaustion and in a significant amount of pain. Maybe one day I will write more about how this pain feels, it’s not like acute pain when you bash your arm on the door or whatever. All-over, generalised, and kind of deeper - like my soul is in pain or something. There’s a radio show I listen to Tuesday evening, the pain was so intense that I struggled to enjoy it properly, but it did help. Also probably took a bunch of ibuprofen again, I don’t know, but I imagine that helped. Again, an hour of TV; again, hard work and breaks required.

Before work, put food in the slow cooker; enough to last three evening meals. See previous comments about the benefits of not having to prepare meals every day. But that did help with the next few days, glad I invested the energy in doing that.

Wednesday

Woke up feeling unwell. Nothing specific, low-level immune system firing rather than full illness. A bit under the weather, as we might say. Fortunately, no dizziness. So that was good.

Work was OK. Achieved some good stuff, finally managed to complete the second of the two items I began on Monday; Tuesday I focused on other stuff because I knew my brain could not process this particular task. It was heavy on investigation and writing it up to communicate with others. That kind of work requires holding a whole bunch of stuff in short term memory. Stuff like “what have I looked at”, “what have I done so far”, “what do I need to do next”. Plus the energy taken in actually doing each step. And keeping it all in short term memory in order to write it up effectively so that others can understand. But I got it done, and that felt pretty good.

Spoke to my dear friend Five, about whom I wrote a few words previously. She’s just got the most wonderful nature, truly never met anybody more special. Talking to her feels like a rainbow came out. So yeah. My Wednesday was much better than other days this week. Wonder if she’ll read this.

Thursday

Well. Given how much cognitive burden I’d put on my brain with that work on Wednesday, it was no real surprise that Thursday was hard. Did not feel too bad on waking, but within half an hour of starting work my brain was so sore. Like barbed wire being pulled through it whenever I tried to think. Obviously, ibuprofen again. Day did improve as it went on, afternoon definitely better than morning. Achieved another important work task. And another regular radio show early evening that brightened my mood. Again, watching an hour of TV was hard work.

Friday

Woke up today feeling pretty rough. Like, that feeling when you’re coming down with a cold (or, perhaps more precisely, with covid). Head felt inflamed, sore throat, sore nose, coughing. This is a regular thing for me, just a normal day. Immune system going berserk after having a hard few days. Don’t think I’m actually unwell, as in I don’t think I have covid. Feels like it, but no, think it’s just my immune system doing its usual thing of behaving as though I do and attacking me.

Did manage to get some food in the slow cooker again, so that will be ready by the time I finish work. Enough to cover four evening meals, so that will be good and help bring me some ease over the next few days. Especially on Sunday when I will be making a fresh batch of soup - needing to also make an evening meal after preparing soup in the morning is always a lot.

By lunchtime today I was feeling pretty terrible. Brain fog, mental exhaustion. Body shaking, reduced hand-eye coordination, some light muscle spasms. Ate and went to bed for half an hour. Actually, go to bed after lunch every day. It helps. Usually sleep, 10-15 minutes. Don’t think I slept today, so feeling very groggy in the afternoon. But resting wrapped in the duvet does help.

Positivity

I always try my hardest to remain positive. Falling into negativity is so damaging in so many ways. But also, that spiral of negative thoughts - it takes so much energy. It’s so exhausting, and for me that has such a destructive impact on my quality of life.

So has there been anything good this week?

Five

Yes, talking to my friend Five on Wednesday, absolutely wonderful. Talking to her would be the highlight of any week, regardless of my disability. But this week, wow. Was lovely, am still living off that.

Music

Music really helps get me through. Lifts my spirits, calms my nerves. All stuff that reduce the amount of energy I expend. I can’t listen to it constantly like an able-bodied person might; I may be able to manage an hour before I begin to struggle with the energy requirement of listening.

Listen to a few radio shows regularly; the station plays about 50 minutes and then goes into ad breaks. That allows me to rest my brain. Suits me. The shows this week were good, though I was in a lot of pain for some so did not enjoy the time as much, but it helped.

Bought Paradise (2024), by Purple Disco Machine. Such a joyful, free album. Pure uplifting sounds, like 80s freestyle filtered through Daft Punk. Listened to it three times already, not a poor track on there. Also today been listening to a bit of Louie Vega’s Expansions In The NYC (2022) that I bought a few months ago. Some lovely, soulful deep house vibes; lots of musical talent on display here, by one of the masters.

Walking

In early summer, there was a work project. Brutal for me. By the end I couldn’t leave my flat; the final two weeks I was trapped indoors except for one time going out for maybe ten minutes. I still haven’t fully recovered from that. But I have been out walking 2km every day for about two months now. It feels like a really big achievement, considering where I was in summer. This week there were a couple of days the sun was warm, managed to sit in it. Life is much easier when it is sunny.

Colleagues

I have some really supportive colleagues, who really make a big difference to my quality of life. I don’t communicate this to them often enough, but I will try to do better.

Cover image

Not enough spoons right now to pick one. I don’t like it being empty. Will try to fill it later.

The nature of achievement

Sun, 03 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Adalar, İstanbul, Türkiye

Not the most well-developed post I’ll ever write, but had some thoughts I wanted to get out. And rather than overthinking it and never writing anything, I’m just going to do it.

The problem with how we think about our achievements

I feel that, sometimes, we can be too critical of our own achievements when we compare ourselves with others. And, in doing so, undervalue our own accomplishments.

I think it’s quite common to look at what others are doing and say “they’re doing great and I’m not”, and therefore conclude that our achievement has less value.

But when we do that, we may, inadvertently, disregard the importance of effort.

Just because somebody else can lift 25kg, or can cycle 50km, it’s not really that relevant to what we ourselves achieve. And likewise in any other domain.

A personal example

Recently, I ended up essentially housebound for many weeks. I went out one day, as I tried to recover. Literally a 200m walk up the hill, to sit on a wall in the sun. Took me at least five minutes to reach the destination. I was shaking and felt sick from the exertion. It took me 15 minutes resting on the wall before I felt capable of walking back down the hill.

An able-bodied person would do that walk like it was nothing. I mean, I didn’t even really go anywhere. But for me, the effort involved was enormous. The recovery time was huge. That was the main thing I did that day. It felt like I’d gone hiking.

Was my achievement nothing, because most people could do it in two minutes and think nothing of it? Or is it better to think of it in the context of how much effort I put into this activity?

Obviously, this is an extreme example. But I think it’s kind of instructive in how we should think about our achievements, regardless of disability-related issues.

The flip side

We can also consider this from the other direction. When we are out cycling, and overtake somebody going slowly, are we really doing ‘better’ than them? Do we know what is in their life? How much effort they put into even going out on their bike? Or their run or hike or the trip to the gym.

It feels kind of wrong to think about it in this way, of course - we like to be compassionate to others. But essentially we’re treating ourselves as the ‘other’ in this scenario when we negatively compare ourselves to somebody who has more ability. We’re not treating ourselves with kindness and compassion.

Celebrate what we achieve

Rather than minimising what we do by looking at what others have done, we should celebrate what we do when it takes a lot for us.

Celebrate that walk we did, that photo we took, that run we did. Or, indeed, that blog post we wrote. If we did it and it was hard, we deserve to celebrate it.

That is the real achievement: that we pushed ourselves in a way that challenged us. That we overcame ourselves and did something good that we wanted to.

Cover image

A photo from a few years ago. Adalar (‘Islands’), İstanbul, Türkiye. Returning from a boat trip to one of the islands.

On the hierarchy of jobs

Sun, 08 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A big yellow sunflower

Had some ideas I wanted to get down. Not sure how successfully they make it through the brain fog, but just putting this out while it’s still fresh in my head.

Intro / about Five

I recently had a conversation with a dear friend, about a project she’d worked hard on over many months. For the sake of argument (and anonymity), let’s call my friend Five. I provided Five with some praise about her role in this work.

Five commented something along the lines of “So and so did most of the work building this, I was just on the creative side”. By which she meant, of course, that she helped devise the ideas behind the project, understood the needs of the organisation, communicated the value of it to others.

Leaving aside that Five is a quite wonderful human being. Deeply intelligent, exceedingly kind and compassionate, funny. And that she pours everything into succeeding at tasks she does. Absolutely deserving of the praise I gave. Indeed, it feels almost absurd to even use the word ‘just’ about her.

I felt that there was something in the way she compared her role with that of a technical colleague that I wanted to write about.

About the way we tend to perceive the relative value of different jobs and skills in our culture. About the way we think about the structure of our society and the relative status of the people within it.

I’ll focus on two main skill sets, but we could expand this further; it doesn’t only apply to these roles. Essentially all other roles could be written about in a similar way, I imagine.

Technical people

Of course, technical work is important. People to build the future, people to maintain the present. All vital stuff in our modern society. We’re so reliant on technology for so much now that this is arguably essential work too.

These skills are critical, and it’s essential that we nurture them. When projects fail on a technical level, it can be disastrous.

But I think that, generally, the value of these skills is recognised.

In fact, if anything, we probably over-emphasise the value of technical work like this relative to non-technical skills.

Creatives

Technical people by ourselves are not enough. We’re often not great at communicating our ideas to non-technical people. We might be able to see technical solutions to problems, but often the problems are human not technological, and we can easily miss things.

We often miss what colleagues or the public want because we focus so much on what we can do. Building new things that nobody asked for because we get sucked into the shiny new technology.

That’s where we need creative people. To guide us on what to make by showing us what is missing. To help us communicate ideas and the value of what we’ve made. To help people understand why we’re doing something.

I’ve worked on many projects where this stuff is ignored. The consequences can be just as significant as technical failures. Features that nobody uses, because they don’t suit how they work. Reputational damage to the product or organisation. But also, the missed opportunities; missed because we were fine with the way something worked, but didn’t understand the costs associated with it for others.

Communication between the people who will use the product, and those building it, is just as critical. It’s essential that we properly value this work too.

Hierarchy

I’ve focused on two types of roles. But, again: similar things could be said about others.

All of these roles are essential in their own way. They’re all different, but all provide equal value. In a healthy society, a healthy community, we have a variety of skills and roles. We shouldn’t place any above the others as somehow more worthy of praise.

This is what it should mean to be part of a society. That we are all working together for the improvement of the whole.

Society as an organism

I feel that we would do better to conceive of society less as a hierarchy of roles, with some having more value than others. More like an organism, where every organ has its place. And all organs perform vital roles in maintaining the health of the organism.

Cover image

A sunflower I saw one time. The insect on it, helping pollinate, seemed like it could be a small metaphor for the idea that every role is equally important.

GNU Terry Pratchett

Sun, 01 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Sir Terry Pratchett

A man is not dead while his name is still spoken.
Going Postal, chapter 4

I added the x-clacks-overhead header to my site. In fact, it’s been there since my first post. Because of course, this felt essential to me.

Here’s why. With some slightly technical details about what and how.

What is a header?

If you’ve not come across the term before, HTTP requests and responses (like when you ask a website to send you a page, and when it replies) contain ‘headers’. These do various important things. They will state what type of content is in the response (for example, text, or an image), so your browser knows what to do with it. Or they might tell your browser when the page was last modified, so it isn’t downloaded again if it hasn’t changed.

Headers can also be arbitrarily set by the server. If your browser doesn’t have any knowledge of them, they will simply be ignored.

GNU Terry Pratchett

In the Discworld series, written by Sir Terry Pratchett, there’s a book called Going Postal. The story deals with topics around the Industrial Revolution.

A big part of the story is the development of a nationwide semaphore communication network. The system uses letter codes to indicate what to do with the message contents as they transit the network. The system is known as ‘the clacks’.

One of the characters decides to use the clacks network to memorialise a loved one. The codes used in the story are GNU, followed by the name of his loved one. This simply means the name of his loved one bounces around the network indefinitely, never reaching a destination and always being passed along the line forever.

So, in a similar way, GNU Terry Pratchett might be used to memorialise Sir Terry.

The x-clacks-overhead header

Some years ago, fans of Sir Terry thought of using an arbitrary HTTP header to memorialise him. And thus was born the x-clacks-overhead header.

It’s totally invisible to you. Your browser receives it, and does nothing with it. If you know where to look, you can find it. But every time you visit a site with this header set, Sir Terry is remembered. Nowadays, some sites use the header to remember other people they love, too, which seems entirely appropriate.

All of which means: every time somebody loads my blog, the name of Sir Terry is spoken. In my own small way, I am keeping him alive in the world.

Do any other sites do this?

Yes! Quite a few. Mostly indie web stuff, like this blog.

But also some pretty big mainstream names, too. At least at the time of writing, I saw: Marks and Spencer; Ocado; The Register. Likely more that I didn’t spot.

There’s a big listing of all the known sites over on the X-Clacks-Overhead site.

How I did it

I’m using Caddy as my web server. It makes it really easy to add arbitrary headers like this. Just had to add header x-clacks-overhead "GNU Terry Pratchett" to my Caddyfile, like this:

sitename {
        header x-clacks-overhead "GNU Terry Pratchett"
        root * /usr/share/caddy
        file_server
}

And that’s it. Good thing about Caddy is just how easy it makes many things.

Cover image

Photo of Sir Terry Pratchett, licensed from Luigi Novi under CC-BY-3.0.

New blog

Sat, 03 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Kapadokya, Türkiye

This is my new blog. I’ll use it to write about things that interest me in some way.

Platform

I’m using Hugo for the actual blogging, with the Congo theme (in sapphire) [edit: I’ve migrated to using Zine]. Assuming this actually works, it’ll be self-hosted on a tiny VPS (web server) from Ionos, running Alma Linux, and served by Caddy.

How did I decide which platform to use? I suppose that’s as good a place as any to begin my first post.

What about Ghost?

To be honest, if you’re after blogging software, probably just go with Ghost. It’s pretty great.

It’s a solid platform, lots of themes, built in email newsletter and payment options (if that’s your thing). Crucially, it’s open source software and can be self-hosted too, so you can truly own your work. They do of course have managed plans if you don’t want to do it yourself. The wonderful Elena Rossini is showing just how much control we can take back with a little effort, and that there are tools out there making this a reasonable prospect for anybody.

Not only that: they’re helping build the new social web, allowing people to simply follow your blog from their social feed. Check out 404media for one of the pioneers; you can already follow @index@www.404media.co on any modern social platform to see their articles directly in your home feed. This is how we can clean up the web and make it work for us, not for the enrichment of the wealthy.

It’s also reportedly much cheaper than the main competition.

So why not Ghost then?

I mean if it’s that good, why aren’t I just using it? A few main reasons:

Simplicity. Ghost is a really capable platform, but it’s also quite heavy. I wanted something lighter, more minimal. Mostly just plain text with a nice theme and maybe an image or two from time to time. The minimal style is just more my thing.
Learning. I want to learn and become more fluent with some tools (such as git); a platform like Hugo will allow me to do this in a way that Ghost doesn’t.
Ease of getting started self-hosted. I really don’t know what I’m doing, but I know that Hugo is a lot easier to just put something up somewhere without agonising over loads of details. Just pick a theme, get writing. The more complexity, the more likely I am to just delay longer and never actually do anything.
Portability. Hugo is all just plain markdown files. Easy to edit, easy to format, easy to backup. And, easy to just move my writing to any other platform if I decide something else is a better fit for me in the future.
Fun. I want this to be enjoyable. I like using Neovim for writing. The workflow of just making a page in my editor, building the site with Hugo, git for version control, simple files - it’s just nice and feels good to me.

Why Hugo and not something else?

There are lots of other great platforms. Vuepress; Jekyll; Astro. The list goes on. No real objective reason for me choosing Hugo over something else. Mainly just everything else seemed to use npm or something else I don’t know yet.

Yes, I should probably learn those things too, but Hugo just appeared easier to get started for me personally. Lower initial cognitive load means I’m more likely to actually get writing rather than feel paralysed by all the choices and do nothing. I’d probably still be trying to decide which is ‘best’ now if I hadn’t just picked the one that looked easiest.

Also, I came across the Congo theme on Major Hayden’s blog and just really liked it.

…OK but what’s that name all about though seriously

In Season 5 Episode 2 of The Next Generation, Darmok, Picard is called to make first contact with the Tamarians. An alien race whom the universal translator cannot understand. The words translate, but the meaning seems to be nonsense. Picard comes to realise that the species communicate in allegory and metaphor; in memes, essentially. It’s one of my favourite episodes. Maybe I should write about it some day.

In Tamarian culture, there is a legend of two great figures, Darmok and Jalad. How they slew a great beast, on the island of Tanagra, by working together. In their language, this “beast at Tanagra” represents a problem to be overcome by cooperation. I like the symbolism. I’m a big proponent of collaboration, and oppose silos. Plus, I just like the name. I think it’s a good name for my blog. And maybe that’s the most important reason.

Cover image

Just an old photo I took on a trip to Kapadokya (Cappadocia), Türkiye. Somewhere east of Göreme, near Swords Valley. Not really any relevance to the post. But it’s a place I enjoyed visiting and has some unique views.

Some of the rock formations were inhabited in earlier times; you can see the windows and doorways that remain. We did see one formation elsewhere that was still occupied.