#1 — January 2024

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Hello!

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\n This is the first clipping from my digital garden. I’m still thinking through what I want these to be, but my\n rough idea is an email newsletter that I send every month or two (ish) with a selection of stuff I’ve written\n since the last clipping. I planted a note riffing on{\" \"}\n what I want clippings to be, and I’m also writing about\n {\" \"}\n \n my custom email setup using Val Town\n , if you’re curious.\n

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\n There are relatively few of you subscribed, so thanks for being an early reader! Please do{\" \"}\n reply if you feel like it to lmk what you think.\n

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Planting my digital garden

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\n This clipping will be a bit longer than most because I’m rounding up January 2024 and also looking back on what\n I planted in 2023.\n

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\n In the fall I redesigned my personal website as a digital garden. I cover this on my{\" \"}\n about{\" \"}\n page, so I’ll save words here. To learn about digital gardening generally, you can skip right to{\" \"}\n Maggie Appleton’s wonderful essay{\" \"}\n on the ethos and history of digital gardens.\n

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\n I wrote about all sorts of stuff last year. Most of it relates to the Web in some way, but there are some bits\n about effective learning and career ambitions mixed in. It’s the first time I’ve consistently written in public,\n which feels good. I still write plenty for myself—the ratio of private to public writing I do is probably like 4\n to 1. Here are some of my personal favorites from 2023:\n

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\n \n Edison bulb night mode\n . My coworker Danny linked this in a{\" \"}\n post{\" \"}\n on Hacker News, which generated some helpful feedback and sent me over the Vercel analytics free tier (feeding\n my vanity, ofc)\n
\n \n Silly TLDs\n . This is a short, fun one. It’s the thing I’ve written that friends outside of tech seem most interested\n in / leads to the most fun conversations\n
\n \n My next, next, next job\n . I initially wrote this as a private thought exercise then published it after a nudge from some friends\n who I’d shared it with\n
\n \n Weeks of your life\n . I built{\" \"}\n weeksofyour.life—an interactive visualization of your life in\n weeks—during a couple free days over the holidays. I posted it on{\" \"}\n Show HN, which spurred some heady philosophical\n discussions about the meaning of life and also handy tips around performance (and again—vanity food)\n
\n \n Downloading a 30MB map in the woods\n . This was my first stab at a format I came up with called \"Brainstorms\" where I scribble down a thought\n stream of questions on a topic I’m curious about (sans Internet), then return later to research\n
\n \n Add search to your Next.js static site with Pagefind\n . This project was type 2 fun, and I’m really glad I stuck with it. The Pagefind creator{\" \"}\n added{\" \"}\n my show ’n tell to the Pagefind docs, which felt good\n
\n \n Think small\n . Of all the things I’ve written, this is what pops into my head most day to day, probably because it’s so\n widely applicable\n

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January

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\n (Here’s where a typical clipping would start.)\n

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\n There are six hours left in January as I’m writing this, which leaves enough time to finish writing, cook\n dinner, watch an episode of Chopped, read, and sleep.\n

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\n So far this year I’ve planted at least one essay, brainstorm, note, TIL, show ’n tell, and now clipping. That\n wasn’t intentional, and I expect my pace of writing to vary quite a bit throughout the year. Here’s a sampling\n from January:\n

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\n I finished reading The Art of Doing Science and Engineering by Richard Hamming and{\" \"}\n wrote about it\n
\n I also read and wrote about{\" \"}\n Hackers & Painters by Paul Graham\n
\n I learned about blogrolls and{\" \"}\n added mine\n
\n I also planted an art page and a{\" \"}\n tour of my garden\n
\n I planted{\" \"}\n a brainstorm about how you’d build a terminal in the browser but haven’t finished the research yet to answer\n my questions\n
\n I wrote about my Anki habit, six months in\n
\n I’m still working on my email-course creation tool and the POC first course on the science of learning. I’m\n {\" \"}\n writing about it, and you can{\" \"}\n sign up{\" \"}\n for a very incomplete version of the course if you want to get a feel for the structure\n

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\n Thanks for reading! Any feedback is welcome.\n

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– Pete