links.netjustin's links

Justin’s LinksLinks.net : Justin Hall ’s personal site growing & breaking down since 1994 watch overshare: the links.net story back mecontact me human petting zoo dated Tuesday 23 January 2024 How to celebrate the 30th anniversary of a personal web site? I considered this morning as I fashioned a three-legged stool over my morning ritual oracular vapors. I thought it would be good to have a petting zoo here. Basically, I thought, I’ll declare links.net a virtual single human petting zoo mostly in text. I’ve already set myself up as an exhibit, so I don’t have to do very much to decorate. A good chunk of people will at least peek at a petting zoo. What animals did they bring to this situation which doesn’t otherwise have animals in it? And some still-large subset of people will charge in to a petting zoo, sidling up alongside any living thing to begin inter-species speed dating. So I can put myself at the center of this Justin’s Links petting zoo. Look, my virtual skin - doesn’t it look smooth and hairless? That’s because most of the photos on this site are from my callow days. Now I’m a 49 year old skinbag, who had a basal cell carcinoma removed from his right cheek. Aren’t you curious to touch me, to see what I feel like? Meh - you probably have your own problems, and other people in your life you could more meaningfully be in touching. But hey, it’s a free petting zoo here today! It occurred to me to host a petting zoo for the 30th anniversary of the first visitors to this page probably because these days, I generally feel relieved when I encounter a petting zoo. It means two smaller humans I roam with will be excited, engaged, delighted by the chance to rub their dirty hands across a range of allergens, experiencing small animals who have made some kind of peace being handled by huge strangers. So run your rough hands over me. I can take some heavy petting. But no pokey fingers please. Nothing in the eyes or mouth. Not without consent. TBH it’s the images dated Saturday 20 January 2024 I would update this thing with text strings all the live long. But images, I haven’t figured out how I can best get photos from my January 2024 phone situation into my server and embedded in these here texteses. It’s a recurring issue over the last few decades of publishing on the web. Text is cheap. Images are a pain. I’m indulging myself with more and more small text entries, now that I have my software setup to publish. It’s the photos though, that would make people feel more touched and stimulated by my affairs. I’m older now and I’m working to spare fewer shits. But I too enjoy the photos, so I’m working on it. These blog posts are now written in AirTable, the HTML is created by formulas from the AirTable data, and then I paste the results onto links.net via BBEdit and SFTP. So photos will be slid in somewhere there, as soon as I find an appropriate lubricant. Did figure out how to see the images in my collection of mobile phone commentary cartoons from 2004 . But those are old. How about these whiskers??? Library usage stats dated Friday 19 January 2024 I manage most of the library requests for four people, including one four year old and one seven year old. We can bike past a public library branch on our way to school - mad convenient. If my kids mention a topic, I open my phone and put a few books on hold about it. I use my phone to request any book I read about online. If it’s too new, go back and re-read "best of children’s literature 2022" and see if those books are now available from the library, otherwise interlibrary loan. I get a few books for myself now and then - mostly cookbooks. But the vast bulk is children’s books. I did some number-crunching on our family library use. Here’s our stats, not including inter-library loans. 2023: 427 loans 2022: 385 loans We are loving our library. We have given to the Friends of the Berkeley Public Library and we match those donations giving to the Friends of the Richmond Public Library and Friends of the Oakland Public Library . Plus we lived in Fort Bragg California during the pandemic and we donate to their Friends of the Fort Bragg Public Library . oversharing Dean’s List dated Friday 19 January 2024 In 2014 I marked 20 years on this site by starting production on a documentary: overshare: the links.net story. Mercifully only about 40 minutes. And also mercifully I finished in 2015 and didn’t have to answer for broader political and social implications of social media. So overshare: the links.net story is what I used to tell people when they asked about my personal web site. Then I got older and internet security protocols and internet server setups evolved: while I still felt relatively confident about my life choices, my documentary web site subdomain was insecure. So over many months I finally motivated myself to make a relatively simple change to bring that old moving picture into view again. For most sustained historical self-reflection, I’m gifted assistance from another: an internetizen known as Michael Dean. He sent me an email in October 2023. He had written a 7,917 word essay about my work and he had started his own daily online log . I felt an immediate welling up of overwhelm. I wrote back roughly as follows: Thank you Michael. I’m moved by your efforts. I haven’t yet read your essay; I’m a bit shy at the moment about it. My life has changed so substantially recently I feel more distant from the self of publishing because I haven’t made time to make my online presence more authentic to now. A challenging task when I have two live children and I get more emotional succor from our interactions than I feel I would receive from posting for strangers. Plus the range of possible outcomes has become so wide online I feel un-calm when I consider an active online public life. Cleaning the place up for the 30th birthday /bin/bash got me psychologically ready to look at myself again. It took me about four months to read Michael Dean’s link: " The First Online Writer: Lessons from Justin Hall on rendering your unfiltered consciousness into hypertext ". That was about thirty minutes agin. I’m flattered and squirming. It’s my life told through maybe two rounds of telephone, totally not hip to the new shit. New shit has come to light Man. But I am too curtailed to bring the truth as a date to this internet party right now. I eloped with reality. Michael Dean has taken my source material and his 2023 context to re-render me. He has done some serious sifting and analysis of my wordpiles herein. And the papers I’ve soiled elsewhere. I appreciated greatly his approach: he’s steadily encouraging people to find their own self expression, to experiment. The conclusion of his piece has some provocative tips to possibly sustain a life of virtual nudity; public or semi-public personal self-exposure. His dedication to sustained public notation seems to go well with And he provides this amusing graph: I’m writing this at the time I’ve read it. I suspect I will have more feelings about being the object of this scholarship. I’m grateful to Michael for showing me what a personal commitment to daily weblogging and personal hypertext thinking can look like today. leveraging children to ramp exercise dated Monday 15 January 2024 I often thought I should keep lifting up my kids consistently. Never stop doing 10 lifts of this kid per day. if we keep feeding them, they get heavier, and I will gradually ramp up a great workout. It hasn’t been that linear and routine, but I did carry 40lbs #2 on my shoulders for maybe 2.5 miles yesterday so that’s a form of exercise that persists. The last day of last year I met a parent of a 12 and 15 year old, they said the 12 year old can bike along with them and it’s pleasant, the 15 year old only bikes with them if he’s slowing himself down and bored. She told me her husband trained for 6 weeks to be able to take a mountain bike ride with the 15 year old. Yesterday I took the kids on a 4.5...