Why Another Blog?
I found that I've been making lengthy posts on Mastodon, even though they should really be blog posts instead, and even though my (very small number of active) followers probably don't want to see them.
I already have an active blog. I can easily post everything there if I want. In practice, I don't because it doesn't feel natural to mix content. The breakdown of places I post for public consumption is roughly
- My professional website for anything related to my professional work.
- My existing blog for computing-related things (programming, Linux, etc.)
- My Mastodon account for boosting news posts and interacting with people. Sometimes for shitposting.
Critically absent from that list is all the other stuff I'd like to share. Some of it ends up as long posts (sometimes multiple long posts) on Mastodon, and most of it ends up never posted at all. Starting a second blog will give me a more appropriate place for all the other stuff. Hence the name "Leftover Thoughts". Literally any thought I want to post that doesn't fit into one of the other three outlets.
I've disabled analytics. It feels to me as if there's something unnatural about tracking statistics related to a website. Maybe that's because I view the web the way I did in the mid-1990s, as a good place to dump textual information. If others find it useful, great, but numbers are irrelevant. The goal is to increase the availability of information so that it's there in case someone needs it.