trying something new, part two

Over the last several months, I've been trying to figure out what form, exactly, best represents the me of now in the digital space (medium being the message, perhaps). Back and forth between this blog being my primary representation and a more informal (heh) and far-less-onerous-than-Squarespace approach via my self-hosted Mastodon instance. Like the proverbial Goldilocks, none of them fit and, though I've yet to be eaten, I knew I needed a new approach.

Thanks to Claude AI, two RSS feeds, and many iterations of back and forth coding, I've got both; enter: Scraps, the best of both worlds, that works for the me of now: when I want to write something longer or post the daily Informality, it goes through the blog. When I want to dash off something of a more ephemeral, fleeting nature, Mastodon. Both, then, are combined in the widget that takes up this Scraps page; the widget is designed to only share posts from the blog that have titles – this post is, itself, a test post to see how full-text posting looks in the widget. If someone wants to only follow longer-form piecs, the blog rss still works great; if you want to go through Mastodon, follow me there or via that page's RSS feed.

Still ironing out the kinks, but I'm rather pleased with this.

another test

with a title, natch. deletion imminent, probably.

just a test and will probably be deleted so

Newly-printed translucent pot has joined K's garden succulent collection. Started as part of a metalwork commission, but liked the color so much, I ended up designing another plant pot with it.

earbliss/20250503

new approach

A shift in my writing practice, from the daily guilt-ridden grind of days, weeks, years past to a more "blast all of it in a few weeks or days when the need strikes" now. Perhaps what I was needing was something like metalwork (and my resultant newfound obsession with 3D printing not only to reproduce metalwork in plastic but to design pots for K since I found scanning and printing different versions of existing ones to be onerous, to put it mildly) to fulfill me in the non-writing parts of my day. Which are a lot of them. Far happier and more fulfilled, creatively, away from the computer, playing with fire and sparks and making weird metal things, than I am staring at a screen and hating myself for not being able to write something no one will read anyhow.

But yes, a new approach. Toying with the notion of blasting out a novella or something in a short time frame, two weeks to a month, when the need to write strikes me; otherwise, I'll tinker with metal stuff and mini-comics and Singularities and etc. A note to myself in my Obsidian canvas: long-form ≠ long-term.

Now I have figure out how to assemble this 3D printer cover because a shed is not the most dust-free place for a 3D printer to while away its non-whirring hours.