I recently dropped Dropbox to save myself £10/mo. I’ve replaced it with iCloud Drive, which I pay for already.

Mostly I used it so I can access my files on my iPhone too. But I’ve realised there’s only a few folders I need:

• Documents. For tickets, ID, or personal info.
• Screenshots. I occasionally screenshot info or as a reminder. So I need access on the go.
• Blog drafts. I like to write or refine posts on the train.

The other folders I have are temp ones for getting files from my phone to my Mac. For example audio notes, scanned documents, or TikTok videos I’ve downloaded. Hazel on the Mac then auto-moves them to their final destination on the file system.

I’m 32. So hopefully death is still many decades away. But I still really need to document how I want my family to handle my digital legacy. Especially my websites. I don’t care if my personal files on my Mac disappear. But I’d like my websites to remain online for as long as possible after I die.

Right now I have three sites powered by Hugo and hosted on AWS. They should remain up for a decade or two as long as the $5/mo bill is paid. My biggest concern would be AWS introducing a new login or payment system that requires manually migrating to. A non-techy family member might struggle with that.

I also have my Micro.blog blog. As of today it doesn’t hate enough posts for me to be upset at the prospect of it disappearing. But if I did want to preserve it my main concern would be that Micro.blog could very easily be shut down. Luckily it’s all static pages and is Hugo again behind the scenes, so it shouldn’t be too tricky for a somewhat tech savvy friend/family member to get a copy of it all onto AWS.

My main concern are my Obsidian notes that get turnt into Learnt.me. In many ways that site is the most in-depth digital representation of who I am, so I’d like it to survive after I died. It’s turned into a website via Obsidian’s ‘Publish’ feature. But the site seems very JavaScript-y and not the easiest to have backups of. Luckily all the notes that the site are based on are just Markdown notes. And there’s also at least one other service that offers something like Obsidian Publish. But either way, worse case scenario all my notes could just be uploaded to an Apache web server and be browsed and viewed via the folder hierarchy. However I really like how Learnt.me looks and works. It would be a shame to lose that.

I’m not sure what the best solution is long term. I thought about having all the content hosted on NearlyFreeSpeech. It’s pay as you go, so I could deposit a bunch of money into it. But to be honest, as long as I can find a way for the AWS bill to be paid, that would be the easiest and most reliable route for long term hosting.

But either way, my digital ‘estate’ is in a much more stable long term state than it has been in the past. Sure, I have too many sites, which makes things more tricky. But at least none are powered by WordPress, which would make things very brittle and tough to keep up and running.

“Air” is about the creation of Air Jordan shoes at Nike. It’s silly and corny, but very enjoyable.

Moving along at a quick, fun pace and feels a bit like an Adam McKay film at times.

This is also quite the ‘Dad film’ (another one for Matt Damon, after Ford v Ferrari).

You might have missed “Air”. But you should correct that, as it’s a great way to spend 111 minutes and very much worth a watch. It’s hard to dislike it.

Also: are you ever unsatisfied by the “where are they now” segment at the end of “based on a true story” film, when they don’t go into enough detail? Well this delivers in this department.

After “Air” you should watch:

• The Last Dance, a documentary about Michael Jordan.
• BlackBerry, another ‘business film’. It’s another solid film you might have missed..

71%

Find out where to stream it.
This review is also on Letterboxd.

I recently saw the poet Harry Baker. My girlfriend was the fan and wanted to go, though I had also enjoyed what little I had seen of him.

It was at Saint Saviours Church Hall, St Albans, which is the hippest church I’ve been to. There was kegs of beer, fairy lights and some sofas to the side of the nave. And the vicar had a shaved head, tattoos and wore cargo shorts.

I was a huge poetry nerd in my tormented teen years (14-17). But these days I don’t have much interest – and certainly not in modern poetry. So I wasn’t massively looking forward to a night of non-stop poems.

But the show was great. His poetry is perfect for the modern era. Funny, witty and with a great musicality. The way his voice delivers lines is wonderful. There’s an earnestness to the way he speaks that is enrapturing.

And he didn’t overstay his welcome. I was worried it would be 2 hours+ of non-stop poetry. But it was just the right length, with a break in between where you could buy a book and meet him.

When my girlfriend met him she decided to go down the more casual route. Rather than a “huge fan of your work, you’re my hero”, she went with a simple “hello, how are you?”. He didn’t appear to be expecting such an unassuming greeting and it led to 45 seconds of incredibly uncomfortable awkwardness. The stilted back-and-forth continued painfully as she hurriedly chose a book and he hurriedly got out the card reader. I couldn’t help but laugh.

Dave Winer has been blogging since 1994. And extensively too. His output is remarkable. And the result of that is nearly everything that he references and talks about from the past has a blog post he can link to. You can see his thinking in real time and get a great deal of context.

And it makes me want to both blog more freely and frequently and also live life more publicly online. And I think that there’s good arguments to be made for writing publicly on a weblog, rather than in offline software.

I’ve used the journaling app Day One for years. It’s been around for a while and now that it’s owned by Automattic I expect it will continue to be around for many years.

But generally speaking, software is more brittle than the web. It often uses proprietary formats and is prone to abandonment. Whereas the web is more open, easier to back up and won’t go away any time soon. In 50 years time I’d be shocked if a HTML/CSS webpage can’t still be shown the average computer still. I doubt Day One will still be around.

And in my 20 years of writing and journaling I’ve used many different software. The end result of that is my writing is all over the place, in different formats and different apps.

So what if that whole time I just used something like WordPress instead? Today my thoughts would all be in one place, nicely tagged¹, easily searchable and with a URL that I could link to.

Then there’s the tricky subject of death. If I die today no one is accessing my journal. A journal that might be interesting to my family. But if my thoughts were on a blog they could see them easily.

Of course there’s privacy concerns with the web. WordPress does let you make posts private or hidden behind a password. But data breaches can happen and things can leak. So that is a downside.

But my whole point is that I want more of my thoughts and life to be public. If I’m honest I’m not one of those people who pours my heart out in my journal anyway.² So 90% of what I write I’d happily make public and that’s my aim.

With clowes.blog I’m attempting to live a bit more publicly. But it still doesn’t come close to what Dave Winer’s scripting.com does. For me to get there I need to share and write more frequently.

So I’m going to try it. I think future me will be glad I did.

Good morning all. It’s currently 14°C in London 🌤️

🚆 Trains reads:

• “Another Productivity Hack? Cal Newport thinks working slower could cure your burnout."
• “15 rules for blogging, and my current streak”

🧍‍♂️Me update:

• 4hr 9m of sleep 🛌
• I could really do with my next pay cheque to arrive, I must say.
• I’ve really cut down my caffeine intake these days. But I might try none for a while to see if it helps with my occasional insomnia.
• Had a sore stomach last night that has continued into the morning.
• I have sadly pulled off the mythical upset-your-girlfriend-before-9am 😬

🔗 Stream on

Simon Collison has written about having a longer form blog and also a short one.

A primary motivation for creating my Stream was the paralysing sense that a blog post needed appropriate length and weight.

I understand that feeling well. I am always too aware of my audience when I write. To the point that anything too short or off topic feels like I’m wasting their time. As a result I have created way too many blogs down the years (and I still maintain too many).

So I’ve found my recent discovery of Micro.blog very freeing. I don’t care too much on here. I just share what’s on my mind. No matter how short, long or off topic.

Daughter Realizes Dad Has Worn Same L.L.Bean Flannel Shirt Since 1988

I’m a recent convert to flannel. Like pickup trucks they do just look a bit silly in the UK. But the benefits outweigh that for me.

They’re so versatile. Lovely and warm in the autumn, often letting you go out without a jacket. And you can wear a t-shirt underneath and then unbutton the shirt if you get too hot. And in the winter they’re often thick enough that when paired with a jacket you are nice and toasty.

Flannel is also hardy and long lasting (though not as hardy as they once were I’m sure). I drunkenly fell off my bicycle last year wearing an Abercrombie & Fitch one. It has a few scuffs, but it survived very well indeed. And if I wasn’t wearing it my skin would have been covered in road rash.

Another reason I like this story is because it reminds me of the ‘capsule wardrobe’. The idea that you have a default outfit – or a few default outfits. Meaning you don’t spend a bunch of time working out what to wear each day.

I have too many clothes to have a ‘capsule’. But I would say I have a ‘uniform’ at work. I wear the same Cos fleece, Charles Twyitt trousers and Clark’s dessert boots each day.

At least once a week I think about what’s going to happen to my websites once I die. Within a month or two they’ll probably disappear, which upsets me.

What can I do to avoid that? It shouldn’t be too difficult. All my sites are static, aside from Learnt.me which is put online via Obsidian Publish. But Learnt.me is probably the site I’d like to remain online the most after I die.

WordPress now offers their 100-Year Plan. But it’s $38,000.

NearlyFreeSpeech is pay-as-you-go. So I could conceivably top up my account with as much as I could afford and it should last a while (assuming they stay in business).

My current sites are largely on Amazon S3. So as long as there’s an active card to pay the $3-4 monthly pay it should keep working for many years.

But ideally my Will gives some instructions and some money for preserving my digital legacy. And one of my more tech-y friends could carry it out.

I don’t plan on dying any time soon. But it would be good to put a plan in place.