Let them choose
Like it is with everything in life, each of us like different things and favour some option over other. Whether it’s your favourite wine, tenderness of your steak or favourite movie genre - there are personal preferences for everything.
Favourite blog subscription method (as a reader) or social media default feed choice (as a user) are no different. Whenever you find a new blog that you want to “follow”, you probably have a preference how you’d like to stay updated.
It’s certainly true that giving users too many choices, can cause inability to choose anything at all. However, I’d argue that giving some options is still better for the end user than force feeding a choice that platforms owner’s insist being the best. Recent example of this is of course Adam Mosseri’s (head of Instagram) comment on , why following feed as the default in Instagram (or Threads) wouldn’t work.
Two blogs, two languages
In my endless quest of “trying out new blogging things”, I lured myself into a new experiment for this weekend: What if I keep my existing (in english) Micro.blog site where it is at micro.juhaliikala.com, but also start a Finnish variation of the site on a separate domain at juhaliikala.fi. Would that fly? In other words; will I end up writing on both sites for a longer run, or is one or other going to get buried as a failed experiment? Guess we’ll just have to try and see!
Anyway, both now use Hyde theme (or a variation of it), the other one runs on top of Micro.blog and Hugo (actually, the micro.blog version uses my own custom theme), the other’s build on top of Eleventy. If you’re ever curious to try the same, micro.blog’s variation of Hyde can be found here and the eleventy version can be found here.
The idea is not to publish the exact same content in both English and Finnish. Rather, I’ll probably end up writing “independently” on both blogs, depending on the topic and the gut feeling of where this particular post belongs.
Either way, it’s way overdue for me to actually start blogging in my native language. Let’s just do it. No more analysis paralysis on that then! 😁
Back from the holidays, more website tinkering ensues!
Right before heading to summer holidays in June, I launched a new version of this website.
During the holiday, I didn’t do much else than enjoy the vacation views & feels and post some stories and photos on Instagram from the trip. Didn’t even bring my laptop with me, holiday well spent!
Having said that, I feel excited to get back to tinkering with this blog again. Unlike social media channels where you have limited options on “making it yours”, on personal websites, the sky is the limit. It’s fun being able to make this thing whatever I want it to be.
Oh, where did we travel?
In addition to travels in Finland (where I’m from), we went to Northern Italy, near a city called Bolzano and from there, continued to Santorini, Greece. First mountain views with nice 20-25 Celsius weather, then full on sunshine, 30 Celsius and those beautiful Santorini views. It was great and I miss those places already!
Ok, but about that blog / website tinkering topic. Here’s what’s been happening.
Papa's got a brand new blog
Well, I did it again. Started a new blog, that is.
Oh wait, that’s not entirely true. It ain’t new, as I’ve used it on and off for micro blogging. But I haven’t used it for longer posts like this one. Oh, and it has fresh coat of paint too!
The site runs on micro.blog, a blogging platform that also has elements of social networking built in. In addition to the micro.blog community itself, it also connects with Fediverse. And you can easily cross-publish to other social networks, including LinkedIn, Twitter, Medium and more.
It’s neat, do check it out.
Now that I’ve moved around some “furniture”, this place feels more like home. There are few things I’d like to mention about the “making of” this site.
