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• Post #2453241

  Good places on the internet - GitHub (https://github.com/) GitHub is a platform for hosting and collaborating on code, bringing Linus Torvalds' Git version control system to the internet, and offering a chance for social discovery and the ability to contribute it to a project or fork it into your own version. In recent years the number of Github tools I've found useful has continued to grow, such as boring.notch and slsk-batchdl. Let me know your discoveries.

• Post #2453239

  After @Casey and @kevin showed their websites on hard fork I was emboldened to give designing a new Ghost theme another go. Antigravity (Gemini) sort of got there, but then out of nowhere started researching the GDP of Pakistan and couldn’t be revived. Claude Code got to the end, spun up a local Ghost instance, but when I uploaded the theme it went “oh shit I just took the default and put on a green background”. Am I just doing it wrong? Feels the same as Cursor did a year ago.

• Post #2453238

  Slowly getting there on a ghost blog with the help of AI. Today it's been Google Canvas, Antigravity, then when Antigravity started trippin' over to Claude Code to finish the job. Getting a feel for what the models are good at in 2026, but also it's an admission that eventually they will all revert to the mean in terms of ability. I think thats the point when the whole game will become really interesting. Until then, it's like a room of brilliant but highly ins...

• Post #2453237

  Exhibit B of Gemini overthinking a problem. Yesterday it was the GDP of Pakistan instead of my website design. Now when I asked it about a Raspberry Pi build, it's thinking about the philosophy of the build itself by reviewing Steve Jobs quotes. #DEEPresearch

• Post #2453236

  Habbo Hotel launched in 2000, three years before Myspace. It was the original social MMO, but for me it was always about collecting furni and expressing your personality through your room in the Hotel. Habbo had its problems—child grooming and racist memes like 4chan's "pool's closed"—but it was a pioneering social experiment, shaped by a population who could recently remember a world without the internet.

• Post #2453235

  Another aspect of Habbo's culture that hasn't had enough discourse is the fan sites that formed alongside the game. Many of these had specific written histories of their communities and live radio stations. I've always wondered why the radio stations became a key aspect, possibly due to the popularity of Icecast and being able to stream consistently on DSL speed internet connections. The photo is from a current community, WishHabbo. The layout reminds me of the sites...

• Post #2453234

  Good places on the internet - Soulseek (http://www.slsknet.org/) Soulseek is a peer-to-peer file sharing network focused on music, started in 2000? (I dont trust the dates online) Soulseek for me is the closest thing to a dusty 2nd hand record store on the internet, in the great P2P tradition (shouts to KaZaa and Limewire too). For out of print recordings, bootlegs, bloghouse cuts, or old school music privacy it is unmatched and has survived, probably due to it's P2P pipes and niche...

• Post #2453233

  Snarky reviews dominate Goodreads, Reddit and to a lesser degree, Letterboxd. The hot take for a reaction always gets more thumbs than a considered review. Pitchfork's scoring system and reviews exemplify building authority through the zinger methodology. I personally can't recall one long-form Pitchfork review that deepened my understanding of an album, but everyone knows this one. Pitchfork's inherent value lies between 0-10, except when there's a video of a mo...

• Post #2453232

  Good places on the internet - YouTube Though not always a good place (see @kevin’s podcast series 'Rabbit Hole'), its undeniable that the primacy of Youtube as the visual platform of the world has crystallised in the last couple of years. The main thing I love about Youtube is primary footage. It's an unintentional archive of raw captures from many different types of events in the world. One favourite example - spacewalk footage from a GoPro on the ISS in 2017: https:...

• Post #2453231

  What makes a great comments section? I find the comments on YouTube, the Financial Times, and New York Times have distinctive cultures I value, whether for personal insights that complement the content, or the perfect punchline that sums up the general feeling. On platforms like Facebook and Reddit, posts/comments often feel bot-generated or AI-assisted, skewing sentiment. Why does this plague some platforms more than others, regardless of their size?

• Post #2453230

  Good places on the internet - Bandcamp (https://bandcamp.com/) Bandcamp is a platform for artists to sell music directly to listeners. Launched in 2008, most of its great features for fans and artists have been there since inception. Of particular note for me is the fan collection page, where all of your purchases are displayed. I've never seen a better execution on the internet of putting value and self expression at the centre of (what is mostly) digital files.

• Post #2453229

  I'll never cease to be amazed at the stupidity of different international release dates for books. I heard the Odd Lot's podcast this week with author Yi-Ling Liu about her book "The Wall Dancers" - which is a deep dive on the culture and structure of the Chinese internet. The book is out in the US already but won't be released in Australia for another week, even though it's only the ebook. The printed version comes in May. Different publisher...

• Post #2453228

  Good places on the internet - Wikipedia A free online encyclopedia launched in 2001 that is arguably the greatest testament to human collaboration in history. From a world ruled by Britannica and Encarta, Wikipedia has has become the authority of collective human knowledge. It's hard to illustrate the passion of editors on the site and the sense of mission many of them feel, but @pj 's Reply All episode on Bryan Henderson's "comprised of" edits solidi...

• Post #2453227

  First post on my new blog: https://www.romanticspace.net/the-start/ Will have music to share in the coming weeks.

• Post #2453226

  I'm out of good places on the internet to talk about that have personal resonance to me, and probably posting here too. When I heard about the Forkiverse, I felt like it would be a good exercise for me to highlight some thoughts and history of my relationship with the internet. For now, those thoughts are here on my profile and I have nothing more to say 🙃 If you have places like the ones I've mentioned that have that energy of community and discovery, I'd love to hear...

• Post #2453225

  A new blog post from me: On Contemplation https://www.romanticspace.net/on-contemplation/