January 14, 2024
Why Am I Migrating to Micro.blog
Feb 04, 2024
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This is my 7th blog migration now—away from WordPress, Obsidian Publish, Super.so, Ghost, Substack & Hugo.
Admittedly, it’s a form of procrastination. Spending more time messing around with websites means less time producing content.
But I don’t think it’s time wasted. I’ve learned a lot about web hosting and publishing with each content migration, and I believe that Micro.blog is just one part of a long journey ahead.
Motive
- I love sharing, but I dislike social media
Micro.blog is part of the IndieWeb & Fediverse movement, where the key idea is to have content ownership in the hands of users.
By committing to social media platforms, I’ll lock myself into walled gardens where content is difficult to migrate and control.
Moreover, it creates bad incentives—such as paying for exposure, preying on people’s insecurities, and developing addictive time-sink features.
- Pure blogging isn’t right for me either.
The 6 blogging platforms mentioned above have one big challenge— Reach.
Despite hosting content on my own domain, I find myself still sharing them on platforms like LinkedIn & Facebook to get some semblance of visitor traction.
Solutions like RSS feeds & email subscriptions aim to help with that, but the “marketing” aspect of publishing can’t be ignored.
Hence, I find myself maintaining several platforms instead of one, while facing the same aforementioned walled garden problems.
How I Came Across Micro.Blog
I first heard of webmentions while configuring the Anubis Theme for Hugo.
I tend to remove unwanted features from my themes to make my site more efficient. But learning about webmentions led me down a deep rabbit hole of IndieAuth, Micropub, Brid.gy, and a whole ecosystem of IndieWeb tools.
Getting my website “Indiefied” wasn’t difficult, and there are many resources out there that have helped. But I tried hard to make Micropub work on my site, but I can’t seem to get it right.
My site passed many of the micropub.rocks tests, but I can’t connect it to iA writer for easy content publishing.
Not to mention, I dislike how fragile everything was. My site was held up by a ton of providers like GitHub, Cloudflare Pages, Netlify, Webmentions.io, Brid.gy, IndieAuth…
Knowing how each of these services works with each other is amazing, but they represent points of failure that need to be tackled in the future. I foresee myself spending hours troubleshooting issues rather than learning new things.
Micro.blog was brought up early on during my research into the IndieWeb. I’ve held off making a $5/month subscription because hosting my Hugo was free.
But a deck of cards is the only thing keeping my Hugo website afloat. The idea that Micro.Blog is also powered by Hugo, and it has all the IndieWeb configuration sorted (with a few minor tweaks), plus I don’t need to worry about hosting issues—I think it’s worth a shot.
career
CoThinking
productivity
January 14, 2024
Side Projects Within the Workplace
Jun 18, 2023
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Isn’t it ironic?
Many companies preach the values of creativity and innovation within the workplace, but don’t provide the breathing space to do so (Thankfully, mine is a rare few who does).
To use office hours for self-development is viewed as slacking; to stray away from ordinary work is “risky”, “not towing the line” and “showing off”.
In fact, many people prefer working remotely because nobody will judge them for watching YouTube tutorials, experimenting and making mistakes.
But I have a hypothesis: that high-quality output are fruits borne from personal growth, cultivated through freedom of expression and room for error; not wrung out from employees like a sponge in the pursuit of “perfect execution”.
Which is why I pitched the idea of having Freedom Fridays to my department. It’s a day where teammates can pursue any side projects they want, be it inside or outside of work.
The catch? As long as existing commitments are fulfilled (meetings & deliverables) and the chosen work is productive or creative. It could be a coding project, filming TikTok, pursuing side hustles, or even writing a song.
Why Bother?
It is colour that breaks the monochrome shades of the daily grind. Even the most ambitious of us can find corporate work soul-crushing after long hours. So why not look forward to Freedom Fridays the same way we look forward to recess and gym class in school?
It is a judgement-free space for people to grow. The key is being judgement-free. Only you can define what personal growth is, what to focus on, and how to achieve it. Personal growth isn’t something that managers nor other people can dictate for you.
It is room to make mistakes. Most times, the workplace demands perfection from us. But mistakes are part of the job; they are not problems, but opportunities to learn. If they’re not normalised, then we would rather choose to do less work instead. Less work means less errors, and zero work is perfection.
To my surprise, the pushback for Freedom Friday didn’t come from the upper management, but from the team itself. A common concern is guilt. The stigma towards misusing office hours runs so deep, that even the intern without prior working experience felt it.
It is a culture that needs to change. I will still test my hypothesis and the next few weeks will be my experiment. Thankfully, it’s not without precedence.
For instance, I’ve used my blog as a testing ground for many of the company website’s SEO initiatives. Sitemaps and subdomains can be confusing the first time around. Configuring SEO settings is highly technical, and there is no room to mess with the company’s DNS settings just to experiment.
There’s a reason FAANG companies have implemented side project time. If done well, it benefits everyone involved, from the company to the employee. How else are we going to make 80,000 hours of our lifetime working a bit more fun?
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CoThinking
entrepreneurship
productivity
January 1, 2024
Plight of the Malaysian Young Adults
Jan 01, 2024
I had a discussion with a friend about rising property prices. Both of us are in our late 20s.
“We have it tough. During our parent’s time, homes could be bought with cash. The economy was booming back then, and that’s how affordable houses were.”
Someone older heard us and came over. “Yeah, but have you seen current interest rates? You young people have it easier. Housing loans are so cheap now, and easier to obtain.”
I was stunned—enraged, even. As if lifelong debt to the bank is preferable to saving up to outright own your own home! But my anger soon mellowed into confusion, then settled into disappointment.
After all, he’s not alone in his perspective. The things we take for granted, like private vehicles, air conditioning and computer devices, were considered luxuries back then. My parents had none of these, and no doubt, our lives are better thanks to their hardships.
But does that mean we have it easier?
In the end, this isn’t a conversation about which generation has it worse; it’s a moot topic with the only outcome being a race to the bottom. Each of us has our own plight regardless of race, religion, age, or gender.
The truth is, there is never really a bygone era that is “better” or “worse”—only unique circumstances we are facing today. The better question to ask is, how do we operate under these conditions? When looked from this perspective, perhaps this era is ripe full of opportunities for us young adults.
We live in an age of access. I have plenty of friends freelancing for overseas companies from the comfort of their gaming chairs, benefitting from the exchange rate. I can access lectures from Ivy League on YouTube for free. I can get in touch with my local MP with a Tweet or WhatsApp message. We no longer have to wait hours in line to complete a simple bureaucratic task. The world fits in the palm of our hands, and we are just as accessible to it.
We live in a web of ideas. In the past, our belief systems were formed through our education, community, and surroundings. But on the internet, we are exposed to all forms of media from all corners of the earth. Every stupid statement or nugget of genius is constantly contested, defended, and scrutinised. Exposing ourselves to these ideas and seriously contemplating them builds character, empathy, and tolerance.
We live in an era of productivity. Not everyone has financial access to a highly qualified personal assistant. But today, I have A.I. and automation software that automatically schedules my calendar, transcribes and summarises meeting notes, writes my emails, and organises my files. It is entirely possible to run an entire company as a solo entrepreneur using the right tools.
We live in a time where change is attainable. It’s now easier to mobilise movements and create impact as an individual. A village girl can highlight issues with internet connectivity in rural areas, compelling the government to speed up digitalisation efforts. Students from the UNDI18 movement have successfully lobbied Parliament to amend the federal constitution. We’ve changed our government several times now, something that was unfathomable many years ago. I can easily publish this article to thousands of readers with just a few clicks—try doing that using pen and paper.
I don’t deny that we’re moving towards adversity, but we’re also equipped with the resources to better our situation.
We can choose to upskill ourselves and demand a self-respecting wage from our employers equivalent to the value we deliver. We can choose to point out and respond to everyday injustice with a “👁️ 👄 👁️”. We can choose to break down the racial, religious, and language barrier with a smile and a nod. A simple kindness can go a long way in humanising people across a divide.
Because what is change without action and willpower? Would we rather live in undesirable circumstances than do the undesirable work? We all play a role in deciding who we are and who we want to be. We all can decide what this country is and isn’t—so don’t let other people be that voice for you.
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CoThinking
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