WEBVTT NOTE This file was generated by Descript 00:00:07.504 --> 00:00:10.274 Hello, and welcome to Dailyish for August 28th, 2026. 00:00:10.304 --> 00:00:14.334 I'm recording an episode every day for this, my 50th year on the planet 00:00:14.886 --> 00:00:14.936 All right. 00:00:14.976 --> 00:00:17.566 First of all, before I get into the topic of this episode, I just got some 00:00:17.566 --> 00:00:21.796 good feedback on the previous episode on workflow and how I record daily-ish. 00:00:21.796 --> 00:00:26.776 So again, feel free to send comments, questions, whatever in wherever you happen 00:00:26.776 --> 00:00:31.346 to see me posting about this, or email me chris.enns@gmail.com with follow-up 00:00:31.346 --> 00:00:33.866 questions or ideas for future episodes 00:00:34.043 --> 00:00:37.853 Recently, we got together with my wife's family and a couple of her 00:00:37.853 --> 00:00:41.563 sisters and their families were here or are still here as I record this. 00:00:41.563 --> 00:00:44.815 But, we got talking one night about, you know, just social media and the 00:00:44.815 --> 00:00:48.925 internet and how people use various apps and what they pay attention 00:00:48.925 --> 00:00:51.525 to on social media, what they don't like on social media, et cetera. 00:00:51.955 --> 00:00:57.754 And my wife's sister commented on how she had suddenly just rediscovered a blog. 00:00:57.812 --> 00:01:01.662 While my father-in-law, her father, was alive, he had written a blog about his 00:01:01.662 --> 00:01:04.242 travels and the various places they went. 00:01:04.542 --> 00:01:07.560 Kind of a little travel blog that he didn't promote it a bunch and 00:01:07.680 --> 00:01:10.040 tell a whole bunch of people about it, but kind of just for the family. 00:01:10.292 --> 00:01:14.602 And she had noticed it, kind of was rereading it, and then while reading 00:01:14.602 --> 00:01:18.632 a post on there, he had actually linked to my sister-in-- her sister, 00:01:18.642 --> 00:01:23.777 my sister-in-law's blog, talking about her own adventures moving across 00:01:23.777 --> 00:01:25.107 the country a number of years ago. 00:01:25.380 --> 00:01:27.820 Well, it was interesting obviously just rediscovering those old stories 00:01:28.121 --> 00:01:31.101 kind of in the context of talking about social media and timelines and 00:01:31.101 --> 00:01:33.721 like how Instagram doesn't show you anything that you actually want to see 00:01:33.721 --> 00:01:36.661 anymore, and how it used to be that you could just, you'd follow people 00:01:36.661 --> 00:01:37.491 and it would just show you that. 00:01:37.784 --> 00:01:42.734 Blogging and these blog posts were kind of like this refreshing reminder of how it 00:01:42.734 --> 00:01:46.264 used to be that you would go to a website and you would just read the website. 00:01:46.284 --> 00:01:49.534 There wasn't ads everywhere trying to convince you like every, you know, recipe 00:01:49.534 --> 00:01:55.005 blog and advice blog, et cetera, website now has just ads everywhere trying to 00:01:55.015 --> 00:01:58.245 get you to watch a video, trying to get you to sign up for their app, for their 00:01:58.245 --> 00:02:00.495 newsletter, go to their YouTube channel. 00:02:00.795 --> 00:02:04.505 All the promotion that happens on every single website these days, 00:02:04.675 --> 00:02:11.368 and it was just barren, regular plain text on screen, readable, nice 00:02:12.121 --> 00:02:16.461 And it's interesting for me as a, a tech person who's obviously been very 00:02:16.701 --> 00:02:21.361 online over the course of my life, but also came from the world before that 00:02:21.391 --> 00:02:25.361 where we didn't have online life, and blogs were kind of one of the original 00:02:25.361 --> 00:02:27.321 ways for us to express ourselves online. 00:02:27.321 --> 00:02:30.041 If you had a-- If you were new enough to have a website and buy a 00:02:30.041 --> 00:02:33.531 domain, you could probably figure out how to set up a blog of some 00:02:33.531 --> 00:02:35.669 sort and write things on a website. 00:02:35.730 --> 00:02:40.600 So my website, chrisenns.com, where I've had a blog for 20-some years, 00:02:40.600 --> 00:02:44.218 I think, has my, been my home on the web, and it's never gone away. 00:02:44.218 --> 00:02:46.728 I've never-- There's been seasons where I've stopped writing, and there's seasons 00:02:46.728 --> 00:02:50.338 where I'm writing more and posting more, but I've never really stopped. 00:02:50.338 --> 00:02:52.918 And that's not to say I'm so great I have never stopped that, 'cause 00:02:52.918 --> 00:02:56.670 I've still spent way too much time putting effort and energy into apps 00:02:56.700 --> 00:03:00.290 and things of the day, like soc-social media, like Twitter and et cetera. 00:03:00.590 --> 00:03:01.350 We've all done that 00:03:01.512 --> 00:03:04.977 And even within the tech world, blogging kind of has this cyclical thing where 00:03:04.977 --> 00:03:08.417 it goes away for a while because we're all like, we love micro-posting on 00:03:08.417 --> 00:03:12.637 Twitter or whatever apps that come along, and then we rediscover blogs again. 00:03:12.637 --> 00:03:17.317 And so, like within the tech world where I exist for my work and, and 00:03:17.317 --> 00:03:20.758 part of my online existence, I guess, blogs kind of have this like every 00:03:20.758 --> 00:03:23.338 four years, three to five years, they kind of come back and everybody gets 00:03:23.338 --> 00:03:24.648 excited about writing their own blog. 00:03:24.968 --> 00:03:30.148 And then they realize that it's harder, way harder to get likes and feedback on 00:03:30.148 --> 00:03:34.308 your own site rather than existing on corporate site like Twitter or Facebook 00:03:34.308 --> 00:03:38.538 or Instagram, where you get likes and you get comments and people share your 00:03:38.538 --> 00:03:41.228 stuff much easier because it's just a matter of hitting a button rather than 00:03:41.228 --> 00:03:44.608 like having to figure out how to share a link from a website, and then where do 00:03:44.608 --> 00:03:47.828 you put that and how do you write your own blog and all that kind of stuff. 00:03:47.848 --> 00:03:53.118 And so, it's just funny to hear and see quote unquote "normal people" 00:03:53.518 --> 00:03:57.078 talking about blogging and being excited at the idea of doing it. 00:03:57.078 --> 00:04:01.468 And it kind of like is a bit of a told- I told you so for those of us in 00:04:01.578 --> 00:04:06.468 that blogging world and just web dev tech whatever, in that from the very 00:04:06.468 --> 00:04:11.328 beginning, the sort of mantra was always own your own domain, own your own stuff. 00:04:11.598 --> 00:04:15.178 You can share that out to Twitter or Facebook, et cetera, but 00:04:15.228 --> 00:04:17.838 own your content on your site 00:04:18.233 --> 00:04:22.153 Sometimes it's referred to as the indie web movement, indie 00:04:22.153 --> 00:04:23.343 blogging, that kind of thing. 00:04:23.353 --> 00:04:27.233 But at its core, it's basically like you write your own stuff, great, put 00:04:27.233 --> 00:04:31.203 it on your website and then share a link to that outside to the rest of the 00:04:31.203 --> 00:04:33.073 world via social media and et cetera. 00:04:33.343 --> 00:04:37.843 But make sure that that site where they come and read it is yours, not Twitter, 00:04:38.123 --> 00:04:40.363 not Facebook, not Zuckerberg's, et cetera 00:04:40.450 --> 00:04:43.430 Which reminded me of a blog post on my blog that I'll link to in the show 00:04:43.430 --> 00:04:49.090 notes back on December 2025 titled, "You Should Start a Blog Now or Later." 00:04:49.460 --> 00:04:53.740 And basically, I just kind of highlight a few blogging CMS websites that 00:04:53.920 --> 00:04:55.890 make it super easy to start a blog. 00:04:56.070 --> 00:04:57.700 You don't even have to know how to register a domain name. 00:04:58.030 --> 00:04:58.920 You can just start with it. 00:04:58.930 --> 00:05:04.910 One is Bear, one is Pika, and basically kind of outlining how to start a blog 00:05:05.274 --> 00:05:06.634 generally, like the tech has changed. 00:05:06.634 --> 00:05:08.044 There's cool new stuff happening. 00:05:08.074 --> 00:05:12.794 Um, if you're on Blue Sky, there's a whole thing called AT Proto for owning 00:05:12.794 --> 00:05:16.234 your data, and then that allows you to set up a blog and other things 00:05:16.234 --> 00:05:20.414 like that using services like Pocket Blog and Leaflet and things like that. 00:05:20.504 --> 00:05:21.254 Doesn't really matter. 00:05:21.254 --> 00:05:23.064 There's a- always new tech around this. 00:05:23.344 --> 00:05:28.014 The core idea is like write your stuff on your domain, own that, and 00:05:28.014 --> 00:05:32.504 then you have control over where it goes, how it's shown, whether 00:05:32.504 --> 00:05:36.354 there's ads, whether there's, you know, sign up for my newsletter, 00:05:36.354 --> 00:05:37.754 those kinds of things on your site. 00:05:37.754 --> 00:05:40.984 You're not subject to the whims of the Zuckerbergs and 00:05:40.984 --> 00:05:42.444 Musks, et cetera, of the world 00:05:42.830 --> 00:05:46.000 I think if you're gonna ask me right now what to do, how to start a blog, 00:05:46.020 --> 00:05:47.580 I'd recommend checking out Pika. 00:05:47.650 --> 00:05:49.670 Pika.page is their website. 00:05:49.790 --> 00:05:50.330 Sign up. 00:05:50.600 --> 00:05:53.820 You can use it for free, or you can pay $6 a month or $60 00:05:53.820 --> 00:05:55.630 a year to get started blogging. 00:05:56.114 --> 00:05:58.924 Another service to check out actually is Buttondown, which is newsletter 00:05:59.041 --> 00:06:03.431 sending, like email newsletters, but it's also kind of like a blog, You can 00:06:03.441 --> 00:06:06.851 use that very easily as a way to have people be able to g- visit your website 00:06:07.141 --> 00:06:11.561 or sign up and get it in email form, 'cause you can do both with Buttondown. 00:06:11.561 --> 00:06:13.601 So buttondown.com or pika.page. 00:06:13.971 --> 00:06:16.941 Links will be in the show notes, of course, at daily.chrisenns.com 00:06:18.174 --> 00:06:21.914 If you've got a blog right now already or you sign up for one and set one up 00:06:21.964 --> 00:06:24.064 as a result of this, please let me know. 00:06:24.184 --> 00:06:29.144 Reply to this on social media or again, email me chris.enns@gmail.com. 00:06:29.544 --> 00:06:32.774 I'd love to link to it in future episodes and subscribe to follow 00:06:32.774 --> 00:06:34.124 along with your blogging adventure 00:06:34.348 --> 00:06:36.618 All right, that's it for episode 271. 00:06:37.058 --> 00:06:40.378 I think this is day 10 now in this little adventure. 00:06:40.838 --> 00:06:42.538 355 more to go. 00:06:43.098 --> 00:06:43.758 Thanks for listening. 00:06:43.758 --> 00:06:44.478 Have a great day. 00:06:44.628 --> 00:06:44.898 Bye.