Neocities.org
Grinds are you still on Mastodon? If yes >> how is it? Do you find it valuable in any way? If no >> lol nice
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mikegrindle
8 months ago
Yes and sorta. At some point I'll prob write a post on this, but in short...
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mikegrindle
8 months ago
It's better than twitter but it's still SM. Lots of the same shitty behaviours (especially recently) only w/ better politics and no ads. Gets better with blocking/filtering & i've met cool people there. But also, I should prob just stay in contact with email.
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mikegrindle
8 months ago
I want to try finding (or making) a smaller instance to see if my experience improves. Otherwise, I feel indifferent to it.
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nohappynonsense
8 months ago
That's about what I figured. I need to get my work "out there" more but SM drains my soul
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Your OBTF post has really gotten me excited about reading and writing in a way that is elusive to me. Frictionless idea-dumping is where it's at.
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mikegrindle
8 months ago
All credit to the plain text nerds of yesteryear. Still, I'm happy to have inspired you by sharing the idea.
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I think the sites that are just plaintext and html and look like they come from 1991 are pretty cool. I think the sites with gifs, buttons, autoplaying songs, funny animations and which look like they come from 1998 are pretty cool too.
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ghostscape
8 months ago
your "can your website fit on a floppy disk" post very nearly swayed me into doing a whole different thing because I'm also so into the 1991 look! but I have a Vision now. the tower has taken the wheel
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nohappynonsense
8 months ago
i will not stand for this erasure of sites that look like mid 00's blogger templates
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ryomakesthings
8 months ago
I haven't had the chance to read the book myself yet but what you discuss in your latest piece reminds me of the premise of Tamara Kneese's 'Death Glitch' - thought I'd flag that up as it may be of interest.
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I really enjoyed your "obtf" post. I've collected everything involved for further investigation. My simple bashscript for "shorts" pales beside obtf. I use another bashscript written by xwmx on github called nb. It's far more robust and collects many things for me.
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mikegrindle
8 months ago
Thank you! I have lots of improvements in mind, but I wanted to get it out there for others to test. I t hink I've tried nb before. jrnl is great too.
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I'm not hating, but it's funny how many times I click on an interesting looking site here only to realize it's yet another 'Serial Experiments Lain' fanpage.
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Hey, thanks for the follow. Love the simplicity of your site so far, and the shorts.txt page. Look forward to seeing how it develops.
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mikegrindle
8 months ago
New post where I talk for a good long while about a £1 album I didn't really like. It's riveting stuff: https://mikegrindle.com/posts/devil-music
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think you've hit several nails on heads: for one thing, novelty is subjective and there's a huge amount of digital content out there to explore without the latest smart fridge or whatever
Great stuff as usual, Grinds. Reminded me of a stretch of time in HS when I started replaying SNES games of my childhood. I'd put a CD on the stereo and jam out peacefully playing through all the classics I had never proper beaten. At the time, it was seen as anti-social or weird for me to do this, but I think if I could get back to that space of genuine contentment with a "simple" set up, I'd be radically happy.
A much better and more comprehensive version of the points I attempted to lay out in my article User Engagement is Code for Addiction
Between this essay and this one by Corey Doctorow, https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/20/ransom-note-force-field/ , I feel like a lot of new tech is not as counter-cultural and more corporate, hence less 'novel'.
Thanks for the feedback everyone. I wondered if this would come across as a "tech is bad and everything is bloat (except the stuff I use)" type of post. Glad it hasn't.
@ghostscape absolutely, the internet archive alone offers a near-endless stream of entertainment. @nohappy, I was a certified Sega-boy, but I have similar memories of simpler times. Radically happy times even.
@misterdizzy That was a good article. I remember reading it ages before we were following each other here. I don't know if mine is "more comprehensive" though. @murid, Doctorow is always an interesting read. Intriguing that he brings up Mark Fisher in that essay, because his writing has been on mind a lot as I think about this stuff.
What a great gift! My Ps2 is still going after all these years, I love it immensely. I rarely play games anymore but its just such a fun little console
@murid @misterdizzy both those articles absolutely fuck, thanks for the signposting!! all making me think about a thing I've been circling around on the idea of satiation and how to centre/recognise it instead of *gestures vaguely*
I really enjoyed this. I think there's a way aging can effect our craving for novelty, too. There's only but so many times you can be sold the "next great thing" before you anticipate the rush wearing off before it's even started. Best to just find the things you enjoy for their own sake, not because of novelty.