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Longer Form Writing...

Dan Smith

• 2 min read
person holding black and red spray can. -- A burst of color as red paint flows from the can onto the wall. Street art in progress, capturing the moment of creation.
Photo by Amelia Ailema / Unsplash

Good to be back

I used to blog a fair bit. Somewhere along the way (2010, perhaps.. yeah, let's blame 2010), I started using Twitter.

I remember it was a relief that they doubled the character limit. I just want to write, and not obsess about removing words and making contractions. It takes 3x as long to make things fit!

Of course, I like to be in the micro-posting space (I am long gone from Twitter, and I focus on Bluesky and Mastodon). Blogging is more for stretching my writing fingers just a bit. It's a little medium to longer form: No sound bite, and no novel.

An aside, the big 3... (click to toggle)

  • Bluesky - bsky.app/profile/dansmithcreates.bsky.social - my goto. I love it there. I do wish they had a longer character limit, and that there was more control over approving and removing followers. Bluesky is the closest thing we have to replacing the Old Twitter.
  • Mastodon - mastodon.social/@DanSmithCreates aka The Linux Desktop Homeowners Association. I do like Mastodon, but I think the onboarding is going to be too much for many people. There also tends to be a bit of gatekeeping. It does lean a bit techy. I do like that the character limit is higher, and it does have a lot of flexible settings. It's my #2
  • Threads - www.threads.net/@dansmithcreates I feel like I am about to delete this one. They get some things right, and they have a lot of users. But, let me think about a "can only have one" scenario: what Sparks Joy, Threads or Instagram? Easy call! Instagram.

    • Yeah, ok, what to do with the blog?

    So, this is my more chatty, creative side. I will send the more techy stuff to dansmithcreates.com (am thinking Obsidian Publish). I tend to chat about music, creative tech, film, and other media. I appreciate art and architecture.

    I have two presentation / writing ideas that I want to pursue. I really want to take advantage of being interactive. I dont write to have my stuff printed out on some papyrus:

    • asides and collapsible content - I like the idea of having more context or secondary content available, but not cluttering up the main flow of the post. I'll experiment with that. I want to take advantage. The default /collapsible functionality in Ghost is a bit lacking (cant put Markdown or HTML in it)
    • my https://alap.info/ links idea - the gist of that is that when I point at links, it might be a menu. I've never liked the limit of "one link, one destination". I will integrate my idea with the ghost theme.

    So what is the plan?

    ...looks around nervously. Oh? Was I supposed to have one? Yeah, I do have one. I want to write well enough to make myself happy. If I get into a groove where I have subscribers, then, wonderful. It is a piece of the puzzle for what I want to do online.

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