Paolo Amoroso's Journal

I rarely post Twitter threads and grudgingly read the interesting ones that cross my feed.

Why? Because threads have terrible usability.

Twitter doesn't provide much support for writing threads, which often makes using specialized editing tools a necessity. But even then, there's significant friction that distracts from writing.

As a reader, consuming a thread feels like an obstacle course at each step of which I bump into buttons, icons, frames, and other user interface junk. I have to scroll, scroll, and scroll. Some authors make this worse by not numbering the individual tweets, or not giving an indication of how long a thread is and how much text is left to read.

It's incredible how many hoops authors are willing to jump through to cram long-from content into a glorified tweet, and how much readers are willing to endure not to click a link and consume elsewhere text optimized for reading.

Long-form belongs to blogs.

#blogging

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It seemed simple enough.

I wanted to start a new blog, a journal for posting short and frequent notes about my geeky interests to complement my main blog. So I began looking for lightweight, minimalist blogging or microblogging platforms that are friendly to technical writing.

On the desktop I use exclusively Chrome OS, live in the browser, and work in the cloud. Therefore, I needed a hosted platform fully accessible via a browser and simple to operate. No static site generators or self-hosting. A platform that supports Markdown well (e.g. with extensions like tables), focuses on writing, has a clean design, and provides an uncluttered reading experience. MathJax support is a plus.

I had already found a good one, Typehut, but it's clearly abandoned. The site hasn't received any activity for the past couple of years, and the developer never replied to my inquiries to multiple email addresses and social profiles.

Googling around for alternatives, the first challenge was going beyond the high-ranking listicles that rehash the usual suspects like Medium and Tumblr. The best list I found is this, which features some little known and unique platforms: Blogging Platforms That Encourage You To Write.

A good entry is Silvrback, designed also for technical writing. It looks nice, supports Markdown extensions like tables, and also MathJax.

On Silvrback, however, Markdown code blocks wrap text lines, which is a deal breaker.

Wrapped code looks ugly on the desktop and a jumbled mess on mobile. I want lines not to wrap, with the ability to scroll code blocks horizontally to view the rest of long lines.

There's apparently no way of changing this behavior and Silvrback shows some hints of bitrot, such as an error when editing post metadata. Most troubling, the Silvrback site has little evidence of recent activity and the developer didn't reply to my email inquiries. Another abandoned platform or getting little work, so back to the drawing board. Update: after the publication of this post Silvrback's founder got in touch with me to confirm the platform is maintained and supported.

I ruled out Micro.blog. I already tried it and it and it's nice, but it comes with a few rough edges.

Is there still activity in this blogging platform space? To find out, I asked for recommendations on Reddit and Indie Hackers.

On Reddit, Jake LaCaze, who uses Write.as, helped me and made me realize that platform is the best fit for my needs. I read all the available documentation, how-tos, and support resources cover to cover. In addition, I created a free trial account to play with the product a bit.

It was love at first sight. Write.as has everything I was looking for, including Markdown tables and MathJax. Plus, a suite of companion tools such as an image hosting and a commenting platform, an active founder with a vision and love for the product, and a passionate community.

But, similarly to Silvrback, Write.as wraps code block lines by default.

I posted for help to the official community forum and Matt, the Write.as founder, provided a CSS code snippet that turns off wrapping. With this roadblock gone, I immediately purchased a paid plan and finally set up my new blog.

It's reassuring to see current activity in the blogging space. But I'm surprised technical blogging receives so little attention outside of dedicated but narrowly focused platforms like DEV.to.

#blogging

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I'm Paolo Amoroso and I welcome you to my new blog, Paolo Amoroso's Journal.

I actually already have a personal blog, Moonshots Beyond the Cloud, where I write about my interests. The new blog, the one you're reading now, is more of a journal, a less structured collection of notes.

What am I going to blog about?

What are my interests, anyway?

I'll write mainly about astronomy and space, Google products and technologies, and Python. But I'm also interested in, and will blog about, software development and computing, retrocomputing, books, digital and self-publishing, blogging, content creation and monetization.

I'll share my projects, works-in-progress, readings, resources, experiences, and ideas on these topics.

Here you won't find any stock photos, clickbait, ads, SEO, or marketese. I'll write for adults with a long attention span who can decide whether they want to read my content.

Why this blog?

Although I already have a blog, it's hosted on an outdated and inflexible platform: Blogger.

I wanted an additional space for more frequent and possibly shorter notes on the same topics of the main blog, hosted on a platform that reduces friction and encourages writing. A space where I could publish thoughts I'd otherwise consider posting as Twitter threads.

I wanted a modern, lightweight blogging or microblogging platform with Makdown support, friendly to technical writing, with a clean design, and an uncluttered reading experience.

I also realized that by writing with a bit less polish, with no obligation to add a cover image to every post, and possibly even without a post title if not needed, I could shave off some more friction from the blogging process and decrease the time from idea to publication. I hoped valuable content would make up for less polish.

After considerable research, I ended up hosting this blog on the Write.as distraction-free blogging platform.

Who is Paolo Amoroso?

I live in Milan, Italy, where I work in astronomy and space outreach and education. Or that's what I did until the pandemic, we'll see.

I've always been interested in the universe and space exploration, and widened my interests to science, technology, computing, and Google — I'm a member of the Google Product Experts program. As a hobby programmer I focus on Python.

Yes, I'm a geek.

Sounds good?

Subscribe to this blog's RSS feed, follow me in the fediverse as @paolo@journal.paoloamoroso.com, or subscribe below to receive the posts via email.

#blogging

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