vanderwal.net

Honey, The Thing Ate My Blog

In the past few months I’ve looked at the history of my blog analytically and captured some of it in, Personal Blog Data Analysis - Looking at 25 Years :: Off the Top, and I could see the changes in posts over time. I used to joke that “Twitter ate my blog”, as what I was posting on my site, was going into Twitter and not my site. Looking at the analysis that transition is clear. I have my archive of tweets from my three accounts (my main one turned private and two public accounts with one more work-related and the other responses to others and tracking sports).

Twitter vs. Blog

During that time posting to Twitter, my posts grew less frequent, but also longer. Twitter helped me write shorter sentences as it started with just 140 characters available. During this time I was still also keeping regular notes in text in my Notes directory. I most often used NVAlt that allowed for tagging the note file and it had really good search for the Notes directory that predated my using NVAlt by 10+ years (I started keeping notes there in 2003 in text, OmniOutliner, and HTML, but shifted to mostly text until about 2010 when it was a mix of text and markdown).

As my use of Twitter dwindled and conversations I had been having there moved to back channels and topic-focused groups, my blog post didn’t come back. The ideas and content had outlets, but that wasn’t my blog.

Notes Stayed Local

In June 2020 I had been trying to find a new notes app that worked similarly to NVAlt, which had stopped opening in the prior year. I had a few text and markdown apps I used to add notes to my normal location (one was Notional, which I used for about a year). I tried Notion for a short bit, but not having local notes and it being cloud only made it a serious no go for me. I tried Logseq, a couple apps heavily focused on zettelkasten, and I tried Obsidian. Obsidian stuck for a lot of reasons, but the most important was I just set it to watch over my existing Notes directory and just keep going. The ability to use backlinks / wikilinks, tags, and transclude notes was a great fit.

I went back to a daily note pattern using my Daily Dump set of sections as prompts for quick access to an area in the note to capture ideas and notes around things found, worked on, and ideas I cared about. The ability to have concept pages and hubs that linked back to everything related, make notes in my Daily Dump and then highlight a section and extract it out as its own separate note and bring a transclusion (see it in another context) back into the Daily Dump and other relevant concept pages, was magical.

It became the note platform I’ve long wanted. I was capturing and making notes in it a lot. Notes could easily turn into blog posts. But, they weren’t turning into blog posts they just stayed notes. “Obsidian ate my blog” became my tongue-in-cheek joke. But, it was pretty much what happened.

I was writing in my notes, much like I used to blog. From short snippets to longer worked-through ideas and concepts. It was pretty much (and still is) all in my notes that Obsidian sits over.

The Daily Notes Out to Blog

I run analytics on my Obsidian notes and I’m creating and touching 10 to 20 different notes a day. Some of these, thanks to Blaugust, have been turning into blog posts, which was my intent with Blaugust. But, I also have been fleshing things out that started as blog post ideas and I flesh them out in my “Thoughts” section of my Daily Dump note (just like this one is). This new idea blog posting isn’t helping work through my large (over 100 notes) that are flagged as “blogfodder”. Many of the blogfodder ideas are half-done and sitting for months or years. Others have been nearly fully drafted and need an edit. Some have been stuck because the post (in my belief) needs another post or two to set the foundation for the post that to be shared out (I realize this as I go to point to a post that doesn’t exist, as it is only regular content in Keynote for workshops, presentations, and work engagement foundation setting).

I’m starting to work through the some of the blogfodder. But, I’m working on my daily notes becoming blog posts more regularly. Blaugust has been helping move from notes to post. When Blaugust wraps I need to see where all of this lands.

Who is Who and Who is Real – Getting to Identity

It is getting to the point where “people” asking to connect or engage bring that uncertainty moment. A photo that looks older than their age, or looks straight out of the 2000 to 2010s stock photo collections, has odd generic postings (and very few of them). The image has AI telltale signs of touch-up or whole cloth fabrication. Is this a real account? Is this a real person? Is this a real somebody with a real identity?

I know many people who have limited, erased, or never really had an online presence. Quite a few of them are college-age age or out 3 to 6 years from undergrad. Having an online presence that is easy to find is a problem. When this is paired with questions of reality, it creates challenges.

Erasing Digital Self of a Person

In the late 00s I was talking to grad students who were focussing research on online presence and one of their questions was how easy would it be to erase a digital life that is created by the person or created through other’s capturing images and content and writing about it or them. The conversation was sort of funny as they felt I was the most difficult person to delete existence for, should they try. I can think of many more, but they are well-known individuals. I was a non-celebrity (who has had some moderate media coverage over time) who is known in some communities and academic circles. But, I have also found my work and sites have been translated to other languages and fully attributed to me. I have also been claimed to work with organizations, where they thought this inclusion was going to matter to getting money or attracting others (this at times has been quite problematic).

Now we are in a world of “manufactured” identities and “faked” accounts of real people. Where the questions of, “Is this who I think it is?”, “Is this a real person?”, “How many, not actually you(s) are there?”. But, how do you get rid of them? How difficult is it to remove the unreal you(s)?

Who is Who? I am Just One Thomas

My dad had a similar name with a different middle name, but same middle initial. Often we resorted to “older and younger” for a while. I have had a life of, “I’m not that person”. My dad went by Tom and I Thomas (getting Americans to say Thomas and not Tom when you state your name is Thomas can be a real challenge at times). I often don’t push on it, but the era of people politely asking about pronouns for a person, also has people thinking to ask what they should call you. To paraphrase Prince, “my name is Thomas”.

I also lived in a neighborhood for four or five years where in four houses in a row there were four Tom / Thomas names and a Tim. When outside and somebody calls out Tom the odds were it wasn’t me. I’d hear, “Tom. Tom. Tom. Thomas!”, and I realized when they hit Thomas it likely was me, and may have been me all along they were trying to get the attention of.

I do know around 12 other Thomas Vander Wals and I’ve had email, message, or calls with many of them, which is fun. In the last year there are one or two new ones that have a similar professional focus and I’ve not met them, but this gets messy. I’ve had people try and use my identity (personal, professional, and my (old long gone) company – I think I know who is behind some of it as they have tried it with others and I’ve know their past and it fits). So, I get wary. I still get confusion and messes around my dad and have to still prove something wasn’t me many years after he passed. Identity is tough.

Are You a You?

But, now with “crafted” and fabricated identities and backgrounds it is so much more difficult. It is to the point of a new identity I run across that wants to connect, unless I can trace back to real context I know is valid, I don’t think it is real. If I’ve met somebody in person, it is easier to some degree to know somebody is a somebody.

A Book Encompasses More than the Pages and What is on Them

Last evening I went down an odd rabbit hole. I’ve been doing two conflicting tasks with my bookshelves: 1) Taking pictures of them and converting that into markdown for titles and author lists of what is on what shelf and capture what I own; 2) Culling books that are vastly out of date, I didn’t find interesting nor helpful, or poorly written (or produced).

In doing this I ran across a book I picked up (or was gifted) in college during one summer. The book is Habits of the Heart - Google Books, which is academics and research writing a popularly approachable version (think of it as the precursor to Bowling Alone - Wikipedia). The book is a mixed social studies and sociology research look at patterns in America as of the 1980s. My paperback copy binding is a little brittle, but still doing alright. I remember reading the first half and then moved through reading what was of interest and new to me as it was covering familiar ground. I don’t remember much of the book, but I remember I did have a few long discussions about it. I thought I’d see what I highlighted and annotated to job my memory, but some of the notes and cues weren’t mine and I remembered two friends borrowed it (one for class and one also out of curiosity). My own highlights and marginalia are a mystery over time to myself, but now having mine combined with two other’s it is really muddled.

I had two “bookmarks”, one from Kepler’s Books in the first third and in the second third a airplane ticket sleeve for AirCal - Wikipedia with the paper ticket in it typed out for a $59 round trip from Oakland to San Diego. The ticket was from the travel agency connected to the college.

This had memories of college fresh in my head and thinking of great conversations with professors, classes that drastically changed and expanded my understanding of the world (in class and the many office hour visits to discuss something for class or say “hey” and then have an amazing couple hour conversation), and conversations with the president of the college, Brother Mel Anderson (there were a lot of these conversations).

The Habits of the Heart was largely calling out a pattern in the US of embracing individualism and going it alone. My college experience and beyond has all been heavily social and personal individual curiosity and drive, but those two have blended. I have long blogged to connect with others with similar curiosities. But, many years of focus on social software and its multiple patterns and scales with the differences as things scale. But in these, folksonomy / folksonomy - category is individuals tagging in their own vocabulary and out of their multiple deep contexts that are unique and this tagging is primarily for their own retrieval. But, in this tagging it is also social (public or semi-private) and others who have one or a few similar contexts and vocabularies using similar terminology sets use the tags to find the resources as well. This individual and social participant interweaving is key and essential. I don’t know how much I would agree with Habits of the Heart today. I may gut it to refresh it for me.

I wasn’t expecting so much to be wrapped in picking the book up off the shelf (it sat behind a stack of other books) and having the cover bring back memories before opening it and having so many more flood out along with a myriad of contexts colliding.

My Automations Over the Ages and Today’s View

For a few decades I’ve converted regular manual tasks into automated tasks for many things. I use short code keyboard conversions with TextExpander (TextExpander), Alfred (Alfred), Keyboard Maestro (Keyboard Maestro), Hazel (Hazel by Noodlesoft), Apple Shortcuts, and a couple other small apps and services. But, I also have quite a few scripts in python and Ruby, but a few pure bash scripts. I have a handful of apps that use Claude Cowork (Claude Cowork | Claude by Anthropic) on a schedule and used where the data is not always standard, so it aggregates and structures the data where it often later gets processed by python.

I started building and running automation scripts in the 1990s to handle tedious tasks with multiple steps, or would likely be victims for typos, and which I was handling daily. A task that would take 3 or more minutes (often longer) and had structured stable data I could search made it viable to become a script and automated. I had them to filter email to folders, filter downloads to common folders / directories, and one to turn off audio for the evening which monitored Twitter every 30 minutes for my nightly signoff (“off to read and sleep - zzzz”) and it would mute audio. I’ve had a few for audio that would capture podcasts I was on for a local copy during recording that took just one button click to set Audio Hijack Pro properly and it just worked.

Moving to the Current Adaptive Flows

The last six months (or a little more) I’ve been building aggregators to capture what I’ve done the day before (and the week prior for a manual review). I’ve also automated my morning Obsidian (Obsidian) setup, so that my daily note (or Daily Dump for my notes, in my vocabulary) templates are created for the week ahead with a python script, rather than creating a new note and use a TextExpander snippet to build the structure each morning. But, doing this I realized that I could take my daily task list and the list of potential tasks I keep at the top of my Daily Dump and script the moving uncompleted items to that day’s Daily Dump from the day prior, but also quickly run a calendar scan for the day with Claude and the BusyCal MCP to have my known items at the top of the note written directly in the note. The completed items and checked off were left on the prior day’s Daily Dump in their sections.

In order to run the scheduled python scripts I need my laptop to be awake in the background (but it still the screen remain locked) so to run early morning tasks. I found PMSET as the key to handle the wake-up for the first run and have a python script handle the remaining wake-up processes for that day.

I now have a mix of Claude Cowork Skills (which if I sort out the data is stable enough I convert them to python for consistency, speed, and sustainability) and python scripts that pull my prior day’s files created and worked on list, my items in a feed of the prior day’s additions to Instapaper, Pinboard, and a list of new items in DevonThink as PDF (with links to the PDF as well as a working URL to the source of the item), a list of Readwise articles and video transcripts, and videos I liked and sent to my personal instance of Slack. These lists are in markdown and placed into the directory Obsidian watches over. Most of them a little later in the morning are transcluded into my Daily Dump note for the day where I read through them.

Morning Process

My morning process is to read through what was done the day before and edit them to add links to other resources in Obsidian and write notes. Often I have some entries that will turn into that day’s list of things to do or one of the “potentials” list. I will take items that need to be their own item note or be included into a concept note. This keeps the items fresh on my brain and connecting things to where I can get back to them more easily.

I write this today, as this morning I found my morning automation hadn’t fully run properly, because my Sunday evening script to create the week’s Daily Dump notes didn’t run as it was a cronjob and I was cooking with the laptop asleep so the job didn’t kick off. This morning I converted the cronjob to a launchd task instead and to run on Sunday during another automated wake open window.

Weekly Aggregation

Sunday’s I also run a weekly wrap-up, that pulls everything done for the week. I’m finding this is a bit too much information for a quick review and a manual assessment for the week where I aim to map out things for the upcoming week. It is a bit too much information overload. I don’t know what I’m going to do about it. Now that I have things automated and aggregated I need to rework my human side of things.

The Value of the Automation

The goal of my automations is to give me time back and remove the manual and grunt work so I can do the thinking work. I’ve done this with personal life and work life (and large systems and projects). The current round of automation and aggregation surfaced that I am doing more than I thought I was doing. Another goal is to give more time to do the human thinking and the projects and work needed. I do this so I can do the creative human work and the human thinking work (I find large errors in summarization in nearly all generative AI and creative work so I keep that at bey and use it for grunt work that I check). The scripted automations don’t need the hand holding and I have some occasional test run to check on them to see if they need attention and honing.

Spokane Fire Loss

I’ve been monitoring the fires in Spokane, Washington the past few days. There is a very good chance my childhood home there, were I lived for about 18 months or so, is gone. But my grandparents former home is fine.

When I was a kid I’d go to my grandparent’s house for a week or two over summer. One summer there was a large fire on Old Trail and up on the southern hill from the Spokane River. We could see the fire from the porch across the river, but could also see the Old Trail fire ignite trees and flames lick up the tops of trees about a mile or so away on our side.

My first thought when I saw there were fires in Spokane was the Old Trail fire when I was a kid.

This now makes two childhood homes gone (or likely gone) in the last two years, with my junior high home in Pacific Palisades destoryed in that huge fire. It is a strange feeling to lose one childhood home, but two is a little more odd.

With Spokane I don’t have the exact address as the address book my mom kept was lost in a move, but I keep expecting to find it. While she was alive I always knew I could ask her or my dad for certain information as they were my Local InfoCloud resources I would query for certain things. I figured they would always be available to answer the queries. It is more of an interest than a need, but still odd not to have it at the ready.

My thoughts are those who are victims in the Spokane and other Oregon and Washington fires.

Peter Gabriel's New Blood Always Strikes Deeply

Peter Gabriel’s songs from his New Blood album have surfaced in playlists lately and they really resonate more than the original versions. The New Blood album is a hi-res recording with Gabriel reinterpreting his works to work with a symphony. Unlike nearly every rock or pop group that does an album with their songs it isn’t layering in swoopy strings and creating syrupy saccharine interpretations. Gabriel’s New Blood rewrote the pieces to be solid pieces and uses the orchestra as a percussive and large bold sound supporting his work. The deluxe version of the album includes instrumental versions and they hold up incredibly well on their own.

The album has no drumkit nor any other common pop or rock instrumentation. There is an abundance of strings, horns, woodwinds, and percussive instruments with a wonderful use of marimba (or possibly xylophone). The creation works really well for Gabriel’s music. There is really good interplay between sound and silence. The outcome is something more emotional and impactful.

Many of the songs selected and arranged are my favorite versions. San Jacinto is one I really like live versions, but the New Blood is incredibly moving and very cinematic. In Your Eyes is incredible on New Blood and it moves me really deeply the more I listen to it over the years. Don’t Give Up also hits much harder deep inside on New Blood.

About an Update

Earlier this week James popped up to ask if I truly still used Dreamweaver to build my website. I was a little lost as it has been 15 to 20 years since I used Dreamweaver for much of anything. He was reading it on my “About” page.

I had pretty much forgotten about my About page and looking at it needed a lot of content help and updating. I’ve mostly highlighted areas that need updating, adding, as well as adding, but I have had a few things ahead of it on my list and hopefully it will get done in the next week or two.

When I did my backend updating I updated the front page of the site, but not the about page. I need to get about updating my About page is what this is about.

In Our Time Loses Melvyn Bragg

I woke a bit early this morning, and as one does when not quite ready to get up and embrace the day, I talked to the lady in the can to play an episode of In Our Time. The episode was preempted with a notification that Melvyn Bragg had retired so there would be an episode from the catalog.

I had completely missed that Bragg had retired on September 3rd. He was doing a lot of wonderful interviews the last few years that I’ve really enjoyed. As I had read them I was impressed how he just kept going and going with In Our Time. Bragg presided over and lead discussion and inquiry into each week’s subject for more than 1,000 episodes.

I got hooked on Bragg and his good interviewing method on The Southbank Show (it was broadcast on Bravo not long after each episode came out). I was pleased to find he had a radio show (In Our Time) and finally sorted out how to listen somewhere between 2001 and 2003, but listening wasn’t easy to do on a regular nor consistent basis.

In Our Time has been an utter gem of an offering as its half hour to hour of in depth and intelligent conversation around a specific subject. Bragg would bring in three academics (usually) with deep expertise on the subject having solid in depth conversations about the subject, while keeping the depth of the discussion to a level it is accessible to non-academic audiences.

I always learned something from each episode I listened to and they give me a better foothold to learn more. I also often look into who the people were that were part of the discussion for deeper dives into their works.

I feel a great sense of gratitude to Melvyn Bragg for all the enjoyment, discovery, and learning his leading In Our Time has brought me. There have been times where I will listen and have no idea what the subject is nor fits into anything I remotely know and in 30 minutes to an hour I have a relatively decent foothold to explore more, it not a solid understanding. I know of little else out like this.

I hope the BBC keeps In Our Time going as it is a real treasure. It won’t be the same without Melvyn Bragg, but it would a complete shame to lose something of this great quality and capability to provide a wonderful way to learn as a great value to civilization.

If you are new to In Our Time the BBC site is a good place to start, as is Braggoscope by Matt Webb who has built a great way to navigate all the episodes of In Out Time.

Second Person Bird Carnival

Sophia took on the September 2025 IndieWeb Carnival with the topic second person birds. I had some different takes, but settled into one…

Growing up on the US West Coast there were two birds I knew of birds that I had never seen, thanks to sports teams. Cardinals and Orioles are the two that stood out. We had robins, scrub jays, woodpeckers, and a multitude of other birds, but there were no orioles nor cardinals.

Moving east for grad school I saw my first oriole, which I found was more rare than I figured. But, cardinals are more abundant.

A few years back I found the Merlin Bird ID app and its ability to recognize bird songs. I hear many different bird calls and songs regularly. During the pandemic lockdown there became even more birds signing and calling out. Merlin helped me find out what my favorite discernible songs were. One I regularly heard and enjoyed, particularly in the morning on walks is the cardinal.

As we started coming out of lockdown I took my son to a workout with his trainer. The training sessions were outside and to fit in to the outside environment he asked, not what music, but what bird song he should play on the speakers. My son didn’t have any idea and he looked to me and I knew exactly what I would want another (second person) to play, the cardinal bird song (go ahead and go listen).

Getting the summary Complexity Lenses - An Overview Out

I finally got a “simple” overview post out and posted today to my Personal InfoCloud site - Complexity Lenses – An Overview – Personal InfoCloud.

This post isn’t really long. It is a short version of a few elevator pitches about my Complexity Lenses / Social Lenses. Today there are more than 90 Lenses (actually just shy of 100) and each have elements that are beneath them and many elements have components under them. My full outline in Outlining Software For Pros - OmniOutliner - The Omni Group has more than 1,500 nodes between the parents (lenses) and children combined.

Getting this boiled down to a few paragraphs is a bit of a chore, to get at a high level explanation why the Complexity Lenses are used to tease apart complex environments to see more clearly through the fog of complexity (and even help make a dent to find something to hold onto in times of chaos). Every attempt to tease this out and whittle it down turned into something I didn’t like. These also turned into something more dense than I wanted.

Breaking it down to sentences

Today I looked at the task item for the Overview on my list and then clicked to look at the current state of the draft (or more like multiple drafts) and decided to take a different route. I took the core sentences and put them into a box in an Obsidian Canvas and honed each sentence a bit. I had about 10 sentences and moved the boxes around to get an order. I put lines between the sentence boxes that would be a paragraph.

I then looked at what I had and started asking the editor’s questions: “What are the Lenses”; “What is the value to people using them”; and down the line was “What is the background”. I didn’t have the first answer to the first question at the top. This helped change my structure, which helped keep things relatively tight (for me). I then realized I had a gap in the middle around what are traits of people who use the Lenses and have success with them look like, so I pulled that in.

I had a set piece around “seeing through the fog of complexity” that often helps start the Complexity Lens portion of a talk, so I added that in. The final paragraph became a mixture of other summarizations I’ve used across the years and edited that down.

Wrapping it and Posting

With this in Obsidian Canvas I copied each sentence back into my draft and wiped the initial variations of drafts I had been trying to bludgeon for months. I did a quick read through and another light edit. Then I moved it into Personal InfoCloud and posted it.

I’m may tweak it a little in coming weeks. But, this post will likely be pinned to the top on the Personal InfoCloud, so I can regularly refer to it. This referring and pointing capability is something I haven’t been able to do and I’m happy to have it now.

James’ Gravity Button

Thinking about James’ gravity button, which I find to be fun.

It was in part was inspired by my gravity story about the time I was working in San Francisco and the bottom of a file box I was carrying gave out. Rather than picking up the files and papers, I turned to my desk and picked up the phone and called the property management office for our office to ask them to, “Turn down the gravity as it seems a bit too strong.” I then went and picked up the files and papers and put them back in the box, which I had reinforced the bottom with packing tape.

Gravity could (/ should?) be a controllable element much like a thermostat does with temperature. Right?

IndieWeb Carnival - Totems

This is following the prompt - IndieWeb Carnival July 2025: Totems | Maxwell’s Realm, as set by Maxwell Joslyn. All interpretations of totems have come to mind from things I’ve kept in my pockets, a Swatch watch on my belt loop from high school through much of college, my dad’s watch, to a regular cap. But, growing up in the Pacific Northwest the idea that comes to mind when someone says “totem” are the native tribes of the Pacific Northwest’s totem poles and art.

As a young child living in the Seattle area and Portland there were not only totem poles around, but a lot of Totem poles - (Wikipedia) around and I enjoyed them and if we were traveling and there were totem poles around, we needed to go see them. I picked up a couple replicas for my book shelves as a kid and had them for a long time (I swore I still had them). But, it was not just the poles, it was Northwest Coast art - (Wikipedia) that also drew me in.

We would take regular trips each year to Vancouver, British Columbia, which meant even more totem poles and art. Stanley Park had is large totem pole, which we needed to visit, but as I found or more we needed to go see those as well. I could stand and look at them for a long time, but my parents didn’t have the same interest in staring at them and walking around them.

Once my family moved to Portland, Oregon the opportunities weren’t as prevalent to see the totem poles, but the art was all around. In my perspective the best thing about Portland was being close to Lelooska Foundation & Cultural Center – Living History Museum. Going to see Chief Lelooska and the Cultural Center for school trip and cub scout trips, and any other opportunity, was a perfect time in my book. Going to the long house celebrations with the stories and dancing, which came with explanations were fantastic.

This art and gathering called out the local salmon, ravens, hawks, orcas, and more in celebration and made each of them seem even more special. The sometimes world around you that can get overlooked by the day to day (even for kids) gets pulled into pure focus.

Gutting Book Basics

I continually think I have written about gutting books in the past, but have only mentioned it and alluded to it. When I bring it up I often get asked about and want to point to my explanation, as there are few resources elsewhere (there is one that surfaced in 2009 from Naomi Standen guiding her students How to gut a book).

My Background with Gutting Books

I took my last semester / term of undergrad in England in the tutorial system. I ran into “gutting books” in a lecture in the naught week leading into the term at the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in Oxford where it was pointed out that the tutorials with papers to be written each week, there would be more reading than there would be time. For each tutorial there would be required reading and ancillary reading that could be 800 to 1200 pages a week, for one tutorial. Many of us had more than one tutorial, so learning to gut books would be a very helpful practices.

Most tutorials are aimed at the student answering a question about a subject to fill in their gap of knowledge through teaching yourself and showing your understanding and the paper you write is the means to express that knowledge had been acquired. You then read the paper to the tutor and work through anything you many have missed and the paper may be marked by the tutor in more detail.

Gutting a Book

There are essential readings that need to be read closely, but if you are familiar with the subject you shouldn’t read what you know, but approach it looking for something new and / or contradictory to what you know and focus on that.

Then approach the related readings by focussing on what is relevant and what you don’t know. Using the table of contents and the index to get to the parts of a book you should or need to read is the primary focus. This can cut down a 500 page book into 40 to 90 pages or reading. Also focus on the book’s preface or introduction and skim the beginning of each of the chapters to get better context.

Pulling notes out of the readings and using multiple bookmarks to reference as you take notes, so you can do back and verify the passages as your are structuring your paper or writing.

Key Concepts

The key concepts are:

• Don’t read what you already know, but skim it looking for nuance and counter arguments or information that you may disagree with
• Use the table of content and index to focus your reading
• Read the preface and introductions (if there are any) as well as skim the beginnings of other chapters to look for shifts in context
• Read the chapter conclusions and look for changes in context, focus, and shifts in polarity (going form a great thinker to the conclusion alluding to the person being a hack or plagiarist – sort of shift, but also more nuanced)
• Find areas where you need to read more closely for better understanding

Naomi Standen’s Book Gutting Guide

For the last 15 years or so when somebody asked about where they could find out about gutting a books I would point them to Naomi Standen’s class guide for gutting books - How to gut a book. This has basically been the only resource that I’ve found that is the same practice as what I learned many years prior. I am a bit surprised that this page is still around and available and I’m deeply thankful that it is.

Naomi has a conclusion that I really appreciate:

2025 Vanderwal.net Backend Modernization is Done

A couple years ago I thought I would update the backend code from PHP 5.6 to PHP 7 and initial progress on it was hindered by time available.

Planning the Modernization Work

A few weeks back I started looking at it again and mapped it out properly like a project. I realized PHP 7 was deprecated and I should really head to PHP 8, so that target was set. I was planning on keeping things relatively simple using a database connection quite similar to what I had used, but digging through PHP 8 books and resources on O’Reilly Learning Platform everything was using a newer more flexible method. After digging further I took the route that would take a bit more work modifying existing code (some going back to 2000 and 2001). But, as I dug into the work I realized I was only needing to modify and modernize about 20% to 30% of code on the pages and templates.

In doing this I also realized my old method of security around the system management backend was no longer working, so it had to be rewritten as well. That meant rebuilding the backend screens. Those updates went live two days ago on the 19th.

With that done it was back to the last third or so of the pages and templates that are public facing. I had already reworked the category output pages and adding pagination to them. No longer will all 121 Folksonomy categorized posts show up on one screen, only 15 at a time will. The “Personal” category has 369 posts (it is a blog so it is about me, you see, but just not all of it).

The RSS feed received a very minor update to RSS 0.92 to keep in line with many of the OG methods that remain.

The Actual Homepage has been Restructured

The homepage for vanderwal.net has been restructured to make it easier to find information that isn’t directly in the blog and I get emails and DMs about somewhat regularly. Moving it to two columns helped this. I do need to modify this to flex or grid CSS model as tweaking the layout was rather tedious.

This Modernization was like Changing the Plumbing and Wiring in a Building

This modernization was like bringing the plumbing and wiring of a building up to new building code. The walls and structure are all pretty much the same. The top layer stays the same for now.

This modernization does allow me to hopefully finish setting up webmentions, which I’ve had partly wired since around 2021 or so. I just need the last piece to that to work. There are also other IndieWeb related updates I’m planning on making and have been waiting to get this code updated before modifying and adding them into place. By the way, if you are running your own site and/or blog, the IndieWeb community has a gem. There are a lot of resources in their wiki and pages helping anybody with their own site.

The pagination for the blog is likely going to change from a date with month focussed pagination to a page model with the oldest selection being page 1. The archive page will get a long over due update so it doesn’t stop at 2003 (looks at calendar, yep it is out of date). I’m hoping to have an archive page that shows activity, but also addresses the different post types (essay, journal, and weblog) that only lasted the first few years, but also around the 2014 code update and site move the entry type template went missing.

The category listings pages will also likely get an update and the category page may likely get some ease of moving through the posts over time, beyond general pagination.

Assistance with the Update

This being 2025 the question pops up if and how I was using generative AI as part of this. I was using Claude.ai from Anthropic with some initial questions, then I’d head to O’Reilly’s resources to validate them and learn what I needed to know (it had been about 10 years since I was knee deep into PHP). When coding and modernizing the pages and templates I’d and hit defects I’d run those past Claude to sort out what the issue may be (sometimes missing “;”, others the new query wrapper and parsing method caused me to miss something, or I had deprecated code I hadn’t converted). Claude would point out my errors and instruct me how to correct it. Sometimes it would offer a few options for approaches (some were not quite right and others were good and I needed to select a path - after verifying and learning about them further). It also would crank out code. I gave Claude instructions not to bother with large chunks of my pages and code, which it left alone.

I use Claude stand alone and used is Project function to keep things focussed. I fed it the outlines and high level task areas I have in GitHub and Obsidian and it was keeping track of what was accomplished and how the work met the goals. The most impressive thing, compared to other generative AI options is it was very strict with identifying things not viable in PHP 8 (and its iterative versions) as nothing else did this well. Claude also had the code of pages and templates I had worked on and would point out I was using a structure and method in other page and ask if I shouldn’t use that practice on the page I just fed it to sort out some defect I was working through. My code has had four or more iterations over the 25 years and my early coding wasn’t so hot and still remained. Claude helped my code get more consistent, not by it fixing it, but pointing out I had something good and modern and I should keep consistent with that. By the last couple of templates I didn’t need to have Claude check them as they worked with my own editing, but I still fed them in as it seems to help improve suggestions and catching lack of consistency of my own doing.

A year ago I tried this with OpenAI and its ChatGPT and it was a hot mess. It couldn’t keep PHP versions correct. I try it with every update and I find it really problematic and what it outputs (code and other attempts) as nothing better than mediocre and often not correct.

IDE Use

In the last 10 to 15 years the IDE I’ve used to code and work on vanderwal.net has been from Panic and either Coda or now Nova, which have worked well. I have kept a good firewall between AI assistance and the IDE. I don’t mind type ahead suggestions. But, finding deprecated code to address was something I was going to need. Some friends suggested I try PhpStorm by JetBrains, which seemed good as I’ve used PyCharm a few times in the past and really enjoyed it. I knew I didn’t want VS Code near this, as I’ve pretty much had it with VS Code (I mostly use it with Python for data analytics) due to plug-in issues and lack of ease keeping projects separated.

I picked-up a trial of PHPStorm and after a day or so I had the hang of a good portion of what I needed to do. My favorite part is the setting the exact version of PHP you are working with. It highlights where there are errors and problems. In the last couple of days as I finally was getting the hang of PHP 8 and the methods I was regularly using PHPStorm was helping with type ahead suggestions (there were a few times where I accidentally triggered them when I didn’t want them and nearly turned of that functionality - control Z is your friend). PHPStorm also can make use of GitHub CoPilot, which I don’t find helpful with OpenAI connected to it, but is better with Claude Sonnet. The downside with CoPilot is it doesn’t have access to the Project space in Claude I’ve been working with and therefore its suggestions are less on target - CoPilot with Claude is light years better for PHP than OpenAI offerings). Essentially I didn’t use the incorporated genAI functionality and I was very happy with that setup.

Posting Ease

One of the things I’m looking forward to are slightly better methods for posting to this site and managing posts. Many of the steps beyond creating and posting are manual steps, like kicking off creation of the RSS feed (I do that after a quick review of the created post as it is live, I kick the RSS feed after that review). The alerting the media, or the alerts beyond basic RSS, is also a manual step done after that review. I may automate the combination of those two kicks after a review.

A Blog Move and Thin Catch-up

Yah, I know. It has been a while. Some things have changed, as I’m searching for what is next on the work front. Where I was it was a bit restrictive on sharing outward, so things got a little quiet. I’m still working on the Social Lenses / Complexity Lenses and have 80 to 90 stubs of ideas in my backlog of blogfodder, for here or the Personal InfoCloud.

A Move of Personal InfoCloud

I hadn’t posted to my blog, Personal InfoCloud in a long while. I was in the midst of a 16 part “Shift Happened” series, which was hitting embracing complexity as the next part of the series. I’m not sure if or when I will return to that. But, my work agreement frowned on sharing things out and I had a long negotiation about my prior work and corpus of IP around the Complexity Lenses. But, now that I’m back and able to freely write and share again I realized my blog where that happened much of the time needed to move off SquareSpace. Why? Poor customer support and small things breaking and them blaming me, when I hadn’t touched it in years.

The last two plus months I focussed on the move out and into another platform. I had looked at a few options for a month or so prior, but SquareSpace had one easy export path out, which is to WordPress, which I could self host (I have a few small blogs and sites that I have on self-hosted WP and they are fine). While there is a lot of turmoil in the WordPress sphere, going with the self-hosted option seems viable as a transition, if not longer option. I did an export of my SquareSpace site and in 20 minutes of export I had all my posts in WP and all comments, tags / categories, most media in blog posts, and the structure was there.

While the first step was 20 minutes to get to about 80 percent of a move done, the next portion took about two months between many meetings around advisory to start-ups, discussions about next steps (everybody was holding out until after the election, then to sort out what level of chaos may ensue, now…, and finding a lot of interest it is just getting things to a reality), mentoring professionally to director and up leadership in product management and cross-functional design and development engineering (with a lot of data focus and AI), data analytics and analysis of my own 20+ years of what I know so it can be better organized for others to pick-up. But, I had a deadline of the first week of February for the move out of SquareSpace to take place, as it was the next billing cycle.

The last two months of the move of the blog focussed on getting the design transitioned over or finding a viable design theme to use and bend to something I could work with. I found something, but it came with a lot of options and capabilities, which I initially embraced, then started printing out screens to single screen PDFs and taking the red pen to them (even after the move I think there are some things that may go, but also things that need work to come back). The next big haul was touching every post fixing some media links broken and fixing the URLs, which included the pre-post name date slug as part of the post name. I got those finally sorted out at the end of last week and Thursday I started moving the domains (from where I was developing it in a sandbox), shift to the production site, adding certificates, fixing odd typography issues, fixing routing issues, and other oddities. I hit the deadline.

Move Done and Next Steps for PIC

With the move done, I didn’t realize how much stress and mental clutter I had tied up in that move. I was managing todo lists in Obsidian, GitHub, and some quick reminders with times and dates on them. I felt free to start thinking about what I was focussing on two months prior and a ton of pressure released.

With the Personal InfoCloud blog I still need to fix links that go to Slideshare as most are broken, but I need to sort out what I want to do with those presentations. Jon and Rashmi have started a new replacement for Slideshare as a modern attempt, which I need to try a bit more and assess the fit for needs.

I also need to sort out the homepage of the site, as I’ve long wanted to have a homepage that sits in front of the blogs. I have that now, but I’m not happy with it. With the deadline out of the way I can have it as one of my projects I’m working through.

The categories, post listing, and search is also something I need to re-think and get into a better state. When I moved from TypePad to SquareSpace in 2011 to 2012 there wasn’t a good way to manage this, and what I cobbled together I hated. But, for PIC the platform is something I don’t want to think about I just want to use to post things I write. WordPress has a lot more options and I played with a couple before I put a hard focus on making the deadline about 5 to 6 weeks ago.

I have quite a few blog posts ready to be written. An introduction to the Complexity Lenses (there are over 90 of them now and in my master outline of them with sub-nodes there are over 1,500 nodes all together, which each node capable of being a page to at least 5 pages of explanation). This introduction post may iterate over time, which I’m fine with and not true blog with a line in time tied to it that other posts have. I also need to write up my “20 Social Roles”, which I do a lot of work around helping organizations sort through the roles and dynamics of their work, collaborating, cooperative, and collective environments, but also tool and platform builders creating tools that close the gaps of missing support for any and all of these Social Roles.

What Happens Here?

Here at vanderwal.net I need to get back to building a habit of blogging again. The weeknote is something I may do to help my rhythm. I still write a ton, but it is all in my notes. My daily notes, or “Daily Dump”, looks an awful lot like my first 4 to 7 years of blogging here (so 2000 to 2007 / 2008), before short snippets and observations started ending up in Twitter.

I still need to spend a week of heads down work to update the underlying code that the site runs on. I started that about 2 years back, but a day or two here and there weren’t cutting it and not a good way to make progress, particularly since it requires rewriting the code on my many templates to get data out and filling the pages in. Once that is done I have a few things I really want to address, like pagination on tag pages, and fixing the flow of the blog across time.

Whew!

If you have interest in chatting and catching up, or if you have a project, product, or work you would like help with please reach out.

Take care.