Colophon


A lot of blogs that I follow have a colophon page describing their writing process, and they always provide me with a new way to reflect on how I work, so I’ve decided to join the club!

RSS

I am trying to cut down on the amount of content I consume that comes from social media algorithms. Even if you disregard how widely they are used for advertising, misinformation, and to manipulate you into just feeling bad, I find that when I am more intentional with what I choose to engage with, my whole day improves as a result.

What this means in practice is only using RSS feeds as much as possible.

  • I’ve converted my YouTube subscriptions into feeds so that I don’t have to engage with the actual YouTube site. (Which you can do just by appending /rss to the end of the channel link)
  • I subscribe to a few news sites (mostly tech focused)
  • I converted any email newsletters into feeds using https://kill-the-newsletter.com
  • Everything else comes from blogs I have discovered over the past few months

My RSS Reader of choice is NetNewsWire, which is pretty basic but has everything I really need.

Obsidian

Anything that I engage with that I think is of value to me goes into a note in Obsidian. Each note links to at least one tag which then makes it easier to both find the note later on and find links between ideas/notes. I don’t limit myself too much by what should constitute a note, it can be a quote from an article, a summary of an essay, a full guide to a subject, or simply a link to the resource with a small explainer for why I found it valuable.

Here is a little example for the nerds like me that are interested in this kind of thing:

A screenshot of my Obsidian setup.

Obsidian is also where I do all of my own writing and journalling, which means I can easily link to other notes that I take ideas from. I avoid using AI for any writing except straightforward tasks where nothing is lost through automation, I’m a big believer in just reading the prompt instead.

There are a few plugins that I can’t live without

  • Local Backup — Very occasionally I’ll have an Issue with iCloud where a note I make suddenly disappears, and while it’s only happened a couple of times, this plugin means I don’t worry about it all that much
  • Smart Typography — I just love all my little symbols → ← ≤
  • Zotero Integration — A huge timesaver when doing a literature review
  • Style Settings + AnuPpuccin — My theme of choice

Other Apps

LookAway — This app reminds me to sit up straight, blink normally, and actually blocks me from using my Mac on a Pomodoro schedule so that I actually have to get up and move around once in a while. Life-saving.

FocusDock — Removes all the fluff from my Mac dock when I’m working so I’m not tempted to open Discord every 5 seconds.

Publishing

This site was originally intended to just host a html version of my CV, which I did so using this guide by Michael Engen, but I enjoyed the simplicity of Eleventy so much that I decided to develop it into a full blog. It’s currently hosted for free through Github Pages, which has satisfied all my needs so far.
I expect that the design of this site will change a lot over time, but I’m fairly happy with it for now.