TTBP MANIFESTO
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ttbp: tilde town blogging platform; also known as THE FEELS ENGINE

a history:

  in april 2016, i read a short rant by ~minerobber lamenting the lack of cli
  blogging software. this struck a chord with me; years ago, i kludged myself a
  perl script that generated an html blog, complete with an rss feed and a
  crude tagging system. i've known other people who have done the same. what's
  missing, though?

  years ago, i peeled away from livejournal and related web-based blogging
  networks; partially as a participant in the general attrition, and partially
  to escape some personal bad feelings that i coudn't quite put a finger on.
  this is why i started writing on an independent, solo blog; i still had the
  urge to publicly share some of my journaling. but it felt lonely.

  this is what happens when i log in to a unix box: i reattach my screens, and
  flip through irc to catch up on chat, and alpine to check my mail. in the
  past, on non-tilde machines, i've fired up zephyr to message friends. i git
  pull my repos for updates. i check the nethack leaderboard. these are all
  cli-based actions, but they are also based on the idea that when i wasn't
  looking, things changed. those things changed because other people performed
  some actions of their own. i catch up on these updates with the implicit
  acknowledgement that other humans exist and do things in my environment.

  this is what i realized i missed from running my own clumsy blog scripts. i
  had ways to chat, mail, and collaborate on text-based projects through the
  terminal, but nothing that served as a central hub for journal-writing.

  i didn't think of myself as a strong programmer or a skilled developer, but i
  had a few ideas that i thought i could try out. on april 29th, 2016, i put
  out a general call in irc for people to run ~endorphant/bin/ttbp; ~sl2c
  confirmed that it worked. on may 2nd, 2016, i opened it up again, and others
  jumped in; ~sanqui, ~karlen, ~varscite, ~vilmibm, ~insom, ~marcus, ~nossidge,
  ~jumblesale, ~krowbar. others trickled in; people sent me crash reports,
  wrote to me about mysterious behaviors, lamented about broken settings when i
  pushed code updates, shared with me how this fulfilled their nostalgia for an
  experience that i personally never had, complained about lacking features
  they wanted, yelled with delight about the interface, filled it with feelings
  they didn't know how to express.

  it's now december 4th, 2016, and there are 42 users on ttbp. some of them
  have never posted, many of them i've never spoken to. there are 581 entries,
  which is an average of almost 14 entries per user, and a little over two and
  a half entries per day. it now takes 11 seconds to load the global feed
  because i implemented it sloppily, thinking i'd handle scaling issues later.

  i've loved every second of this. i'm humbled and pleased and a little
  terrified at the trust and appreciation and responsibility that's been given
  to me in the past seven months.

the backend:
lessons:
future work: