About

Why?

That's a fair question. Why write this site? Well, I've had a lot of pleasure from reading blogs over the years and I've learned a lot. So, this is intended as an online Commonplace Book. If the things written here help one person over a hurdle or out of a difficult spot then it was worth it. I intend for there to software over on Github, that'll be my attempt to give something back to the Free Software community that's been so good to me over the years.

About the Author

So, who's the person behind this site? I'm Richard Barker, I'm a geek from the United Kingdom interested in philosophy, technology, writing, programming, rambling, Steampunk, Yoga, and self improvement. I can be slightly sweary, but I don't usually bite. While I'm interested in all those things I've listed, I think it's wise to be a skeptic. I think that the complex solutions should be questioned more, and the quick and easy solutions are usually missing something. In my personal domain these days, I believe that things should be kept simple and that it's better to ask "what's best?" not "what's new?". New shiny should be met with a skeptical eye and some things are better done in a low tech way.

About this website

This isn't the first incarnation of this site. My needs have changed over time, as has how I want to run things. I've moved from third party hosting to my own hosting, from Blogger to Wordpress. This site has rebooted previously, if it seems right, I think it can be good to just get a broom and sweep things clean. This incarnation is in Pelican, which is a static site generator written in Python. I write articles in markdown using a text editor. No databases, no server scripting, just static pages. It's simpler in my opinion, I prefer that. I've avoided using tracking scripts in this page, it sets no cookies, and runs a very minimal Javascript.

Contact me

I haven't enabled comments at this point, they attract spammers and I'm sick of seeing their rubbish. If you'd like to reach out to me, then please email me at 'richard.baker@removethis.quietwatercourse.co.uk' remove the 'removethis.' and you should be grand. I'm also on Twitter, so please DM me there if you're uncomfortable with email.