OK! Checking in now on all things garden-ey from the past few weeks…

A place for me to keep record of my (coffee) cold brews. I’m no coffee tasting expert, but will add some notes as I go! ☕️

It’s time. I’m gettin’ into gardening. Have I grown anything ever? Nope. Do I simply adore the taste of a garden-fresh tomato? 100%. So, as is my custom, I’m going to attempt to document the journey—to include all the successes, failures, and hopefully delicious moments along the way.

Here’s a blogging challenge kicked off by Forking Mad. Here’s 10 “pointless” questions, and their answers, from me!

Here’s my submission to lazybea.rs series Over/Under. The idea is simple, Hyde gives me some topics and I state whether those things are overrated or underrated, with some text about why. Here were my chosen topics…

• Indieweb
• Slashpages
• Sharks are dangerous
• Ransomware
• Octopus dishes

Did you know if you have your own website, you can do whatever you want with it? Like… it doesn’t have to be all snobby or professional. Or like… some of it can, but some of it could just not be, y’know?

The CVE program is dying. Damn. ¹

What does this mean? What were CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) doin’ for us anyway? Are CVEs considered critical cybersecurity infrastructure? What are we gunna’ do now?! Panic!! Read on for more hyper-composed and ever-well-researched analysis! (Plus, plenty of related resources, per usual.)

Much digital ink has been spilt on the plight of the cybersecurity workforce. Is there a talent shortage? A skills gap? Other, darker issues? Here’s what I think…

This month I’ve decided to participate in my first IndieWeb Carnival—a once-a-month writing prompt organized by the IndieWeb.org community. This month’s prompt is “Renewal”, hosted by Jamie Thingelstad.

There’s a lot on my mind lately in regards to this term—“Renewal”. I recently moved into a new house and with it I have a yard. The yard has a lot of plants and trees that are now flowering—cherry blossom, red bud, skip laurel, rhododendron and more! This is my first spring here so it has been fun to see what bloomed, and given me an opportunity to learn more about these plants.

If you’ve got something to say, something to share, something that others might be interested in—why not just put it on your blog?

This week’s Blog Questions Challenge is called “Nature Appreciation”.

Home is a place of comfort. Home has that particular smell. Home is where our stuff is. Its halls you know so well. It’s where we gather with friends, and the decor is uniquely you. It may have cracks in the foundations, and another issue or two. It won’t ever be perfect, always a work-in-progress. But home is home, and you love it nonetheless.

A website, your own personal website, is just like this—a digital home, on the web. With all the same comforts, familiarities and problems that need-a-fixin’. You can design it how you want, add rooms (pages), invite friends over, paint the walls, hang some art, share your recipes, get some much-needed peace and quiet, anything! But unlike actual home ownership, it’s a lot more attainable (financially-speaking).

Indieweb.txt is an idea for sharing information about one’s indie site with the world. It is a proposal which resembles other plain-text, web-bourne, information-sharing documents such as humans.txt and security.txt. As initially proposed, it would contain information such as the tools one uses to implement IndieWeb capabilities, information on Indie-Web-related strategies employed by the webmaster and writings on why the site owner has embraced the IndieWeb.¹

This is an idea / proposal to extend indieweb.txt with a new section I’ve dubbed “Reference Information” (I’m open to better ideas for the name). Its usecase(s) are somewhat simple. It is a place for you, an owner of an IndieWeb site, to share information about how you would like to be referenced on other sites.

This is the Manual of Style for Shellsharks.com. It details the conventions and other practices used for writing, editing, styling and generally composing content across the site.

Here’s a list of things I wish I had known before I set out on my blogging / site-making / IndieWeb journey. (In no particular order)

Had I known these, and carefully considered each, I would have saved myself A LOT of time fixing stuff, and even now, would have a lot less things to fix and add. For example, my CSS files are a mess, I have a lot of poorly managed inline .JS everywhere, accessiblity nightmares abound and much more… Learn from my mistakes!

Here’s another Blog Questions Challenge. This week, it’s all about Travel Adventures!

My site is over 5 years old at this point, and in that time I have had several noteworthy site redesigns. In between those big remodels, I’ve also been near-constantly tweaking design elements, and tinkering with the CSS styling. Along the way, I’ve discovered certain site decor and design choices that I think are pleasing. Now I understand that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, which makes this quite subjective. I also am very aware that my site is probably riddled with CSS-related atrocities, accessibility faux pas, and other web design best-practice deviations. But, with all that said, here are some things I have done with my site up to this point that I think make it look and feel great. They are what make it enjoyable for me to just scroll around on and experience, even when I’m not looking for anything in particular. Sometimes I just browse and click about enjoying the UX I’ve put together.

I am procrastinating. Like, right now I’m doing it. I’ve got a ton of other more important things to work on - at home, at my job, even for my site. I gotta do taxes for example, *blegh*! But, I kinda don’t have the energy, or don’t feel like it, or just saw something else shiny to work on instead (e.g. this post). I am great at procrastinating. World-class even. This site makes for a fantastic vehicle by which I can constructively procrastinate. Because you see, it’s not like I’m sittin’ around doin’ nothing. I’m creating! I’m working on my site. Yeah, I’m procrastinating, sure. But what comes out of it all is something I’m proud of. So it’s completely justified right? I’m sure you’re nodding your head right now in agreement, and I appreciate that.

Inspired by Tracy and James, I’ve wanted to document the guiding principles by which I approach how I work on and write for shellsharks. Naturally too, I am taking this opportunity to bring this forth via a /why “slash page”. These tenets are not always concious decisions in everything I do, but they are unmistakably part of the foundation of this site, and of myself as a person.

I enjoy writing, it’s why I have this blog. But my style is far from perfect in the technical sense. I’m very aware of the many interesting and possibly unique writing quirks and habits I have. So, here I reflect on and catalog those distinct writing mannerisms.

Joan Westenberg recently published a (relatively short) post titled “The Only Metrics That Matter” where she calls out a number of toxic metrics that a lot of sites and site-owners obsess over, i.e. page views, time-on-site, bounce rates, etc.. She (expertly, as usual) calls out that these are the focus because of the ad-supported business model that the modern web survives on, and that that system is not one she cares to participate in with her own site and writing. Can’t disagree with any of what she’s said so far. But she loses me a bit with the next bit. She goes on to say that…

Taking on the Blog Questions Challenge Bot’s challenge about Movies, which asks these four questions…

Greetings weary hyperspacelink traveler, welcome to shellsharks dot com, a world of whimsy, infosec, technology, life, and of course, sharks! Now that you’re here, have a byte and refuel, maybe partake in some interstellarweb idea trade (e.g. email me about somethin’!), and when you’re ready to depart, I offer many <a> portal outward and onward, into the expanse of space the web!

Blog question challenge is back! This time, it’s all about TV Shows.

A lot of people worry that no one will read their blog. I did too. But it turns out, not only did people find and read what I had to say, but they were nice enough to tell me they liked it too. This post is all about that. Kindness. I’m very appreciative of everyone who has taken the time to reach out and let me know they liked something they saw on my site. Thank you! 🧡

Similar to the Google Doodles, my site has its Shellsharks Doodles. They are celebrations of various events and holidays throughout the year, each designed by me using the Assembly app. Some of the doodles are merely thematic additions to the plain shellsharks logo, while others completely re-visualize the symbology throughout. These doodles go up and replace the classic doodle at the appropriate times throughout the year.

Every website you go to has a home page, the page you land on when you go to that site’s root domain, i.e. for Shellsharks, when you go to “https://shellsharks.com”. Since 2021 my home page has had a very simple design - the logo, some link icons and the classic list of recent posts. In January of 2024 I simplified it even further, rearranging some graphics and removing the icons, filing them away in the site’s hamburger menu. More recently (~Februrary 2025), I got the itch to start tinkering with the site again and made a few further visual changes to the home page, opening up the feed to all content I write, not just posts, and adding some icons to differentiate the different content types.

A few days ago I confidently stated that “unified timelines are not for me”, but I think I may have been a bit too hasty in that declaration. I’ve been tinkering around with Tapestry for a few days now, trying to find a way to fit it into my daily feed ingestion workflow and I think I’m starting to discover its niche for me. This doesn’t really change what I said in that previous post, Tapestry is not a good (main) RSS reader, especially (again) when you weave together RSS feeds and social timelines (for the reasons I state in the article). Secondarily, Tapestry isn’t a great RSS reader (right now) as it struggles mightily when faced with simultaneously updating 100’s of disparate feeds, which my current RSS app (Reeder) does without breaking a sweat. In time, that performance issue may improve, but the former issue won’t. But let’s not dwell on what I don’t use Tapestry for, let’s instead talk about what I think it can be good at, and what I’ve started using it for over the past couple days.

You got yourself a domain, you found a place to host your site, it’s up and running! Now what?

There’s A LOT you can do with a website. I mean you can pretty much do anything y’know? But here’s what I recommend you do first, before anything else.

Several unified, social-web-forward, chronological timeline apps have popped up recently. Notably Reeder (not to be confused with Reeder Classic), Tapestry & Surf. Though these apps differ in many ways, they have these core commonalities…