Neocities.org

new essay: IS THIS WEBSITE A VALID LITERARY MEDIUM? -- in which i do, in fact, get around to answering the question

I know we've been talking back and forth about this topic for the past year and the half, but seeing your thoughts on it all written down in a single essay was the exact jolt of motivation I needed to get out of bed and continue the neverending battle of sitting with my hands on my keyboard in bewilderment, trying once again to write

thanks beautifully for this essay, i resonate with a lot with your approach to your website. i've also been thinking about the essays in compiled form, yes all together on the website, but also perhaps in one volume (book). just like how an artist or photographer's disparate works gain a different meaning when combined and sequenced in one larger exhibit.

i wonder what you think about "releasing a collection of essays" as it were.

i've definitely thought about publishing a collection, but i know how much work it is to publish a book by one's self, and i don't know if i'd necessarily get enough out of it (creatively) to justify the whole thing. i am much more interested in archival than anything else -- for example, i tend to go for "complete works" rather than "collected works" when i have the opportunity.

when creating my website, i've been thinking a lot about whether i'd like to organize the essays chronologically or by subject matter. setting aside the difficulty of determining the subject matter and/or type of many of my essays, i personally tend to prefer chronological organization, so that i can understand the writer's development over time.

and that's how i tend to think of my essays: each as part as a long journey. and this is how i've always read websites/blogs i like -- starting from the very beginning. so my trouble in curating a collection would be: do i want to publish a BEST OF BALCKWELL? or do i want to publish archival volumes? and one way to solve this dilemma is to do neither.

added most of the essays in the "Best of Personal Essays" section + a "not_found" page because of all the links that don't yet go anywhere!

Behold: You Can (Not) Go Back -- August 18, 2022

thanks to the generous advice of some fellow webmasters, i am now able to transfer essays at speeds hitherto unimaginable. Behold: the entire RAINICHI 2023 series (so far) in all its glory!!

of course i begin the long, laborious task of transferring my essays with the two most formatting-heavy essays i've ever composed

how are your essays formatted originally? there may be an easier way than reformatting by hand

immediately after posting this, i looked into it and found a conversion tool online that should remove ~90% of the fuss. unfortunately it's a web app, which i generally try to avoid; do you know of a desktop program that works well? i tried the "export to html" function on my word processor (scrivener) and it output the most bloated nonsensical HTML imaginable (in my amateur opinion.)

ah, unfortunately I don't. I thought if they were originally posted on wordpress that they may be in markdown, in which case you can use pandoc; i don't know of anything from word processors -> html. sorry ):

you can export to "multimarkdown" with scrivener, then use pandoc to convert to html, or anything else that'd process the "multimarkdown" variant of markdown. pandoc html may be less bloated, but mileage may vary. panwriter looks like a reasonable enough application to use: https://panwriter.com/

interesting! I never even thought of converting them straight from WordPress. I will look into all these option -- thank you both! this might end up being much easier than I expected (although i will still be using the opportunity to revise/edit many of the essays)

Working on a hand-made site that will replace the current Wordpress blog. I'll be uploading it here as a work-in-progress because why not!

new essay: THE GEOGRAPHY OF GEOGRAPHY

HOLIDAY UPDATE 2024 -- reflecting on the year gone by, and preflecting on the year to come...

ooo, i have not seen that UCC blended coffee before... i have a sangaria can that sounds similar to the one you described, amusingly the brand name is "Quality Coffee", the kind of name that would be guaranteed cheap junk if it was an american product

https://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%82%B5%E3%83%B3%E3%82%AC%E3%83%AA%E3%82%A2-%E7%82%AD%E7%84%BC%E7%8F%88%E7%90%B2%E5%BE%AE%E7%B3%96-190g%C3%9730%E6%9C%AC/dp/B008985OR4 This is the Sangaria can. Seems to be separate from their main "Quality Coffee" series, and I never saw it in Japan. According to this page it has a coconut sub-flavour, which I definitely never noticed.

Hard to tell based on my destroyed post-COVID tastebuds, but I think the UCC Blend is quite a bit better than the Sangaria. Although I can't ignore the possibility that the can's colour/design is playing a major role in this judgment.

Also I'd like to take this opportunity to admit that it took me about four months of living in Japan before I realized that カフェオレ meant "Café au lait" and not the phrase I kept saying in my head: "Café, olé!"