57 lines
3.0 KiB
Plaintext
57 lines
3.0 KiB
Plaintext
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TTBP MANIFESTO
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--------------
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ttbp: tilde town blogging platform; also known as THE FEELS ENGINE
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a history:
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in april 2016, i read a short rant by ~minerobber lamenting the lack of cli
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blogging software. this struck a chord with me; years ago, i kludged myself a
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perl script that generated an html blog, complete with an rss feed and a
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crude tagging system. i've known other people who have done the same. what's
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missing, though?
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years ago, i peeled away from livejournal and related web-based blogging
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networks; partially as a participant in the general attrition, and partially
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to escape some personal bad feelings that i coudn't quite put a finger on.
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this is why i started writing on an independent, solo blog; i still had the
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urge to publicly share some of my journaling. but it felt lonely.
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this is what happens when i log in to a unix box: i reattach my screens, and
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flip through irc to catch up on chat, and alpine to check my mail. in the
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past, on non-tilde machines, i've fired up zephyr to message friends. i git
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pull my repos for updates. i check the nethack leaderboard. these are all
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cli-based actions, but they are also based on the idea that when i wasn't
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looking, things changed. those things changed because other people performed
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some actions of their own. i catch up on these updates with the implicit
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acknowledgement that other humans exist and do things in my environment.
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this is what i realized i missed from running my own clumsy blog scripts. i
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had ways to chat, mail, and collaborate on text-based projects through the
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terminal, but nothing that served as a central hub for journal-writing.
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i didn't think of myself as a strong programmer or a skilled developer, but i
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had a few ideas that i thought i could try out. on april 29th, 2016, i put
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out a general call in irc for people to run ~endorphant/bin/ttbp; ~sl2c
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confirmed that it worked. on may 2nd, 2016, i opened it up again, and others
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jumped in; ~sanqui, ~karlen, ~varscite, ~vilmibm, ~insom, ~marcus, ~nossidge,
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~jumblesale, ~krowbar. others trickled in; people sent me crash reports,
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wrote to me about mysterious behaviors, lamented about broken settings when i
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pushed code updates, shared with me how this fulfilled their nostalgia for an
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experience that i personally never had, complained about lacking features
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they wanted, yelled with delight about the interface, filled it with feelings
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they didn't know how to express.
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it's now december 4th, 2016, and there are 42 users on ttbp. some of them
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have never posted, many of them i've never spoken to. there are 581 entries,
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which is an average of almost 14 entries per user, and a little over two and
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a half entries per day. it now takes 11 seconds to load the global feed
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because i implemented it sloppily, thinking i'd handle scaling issues later.
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i've loved every second of this. i'm humbled and pleased and a little
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terrified at the trust and appreciation and responsibility that's been given
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to me in the past seven months.
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the backend:
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lessons:
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future work:
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