newsonaut
Turning inner space into outer space
Thursday, August 6, 2026
The story of how Newsonaut flourished, went on life support, and is making a comeback
This is my entry for AuguStory, a blogging challenge from Robert Birming to tell the story of your blog.
Once upon a time, Newsonaut was called Newsloops. The name was a mashup of news and Kamloops, reflecting my frequent commentary on local news for the newspaper where I worked.
The internet was still new-ish back in 2010, but we could see it was coming for our lunch. One of our strategies was to embrace it, doing anything we could think of that would bring us into the digital age. And for me, that included a blog.
About a year later, I changed the name to Newsonaut. I’m a long-time fan of science fiction and I wanted to take my writing beyond the local news.
Despite our best efforts, Google and Facebook starved the paper of ad revenue and it shut down in January 2014. I carried on writing for a couple of years — determined that journalism would in some way continue to be my occupation.
That fell by the wayside, though, as I accepted my new role as web developer for the local university. My focus shifted and I wrote far less often.
My blog never went away, though, and now, in retirement, it has found a new life as I rediscover writing for pleasure.
I’m back to writing for myself. It no longer matters if someone is paying me to do it or giving me some kind of recognition.
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Tuesday, August 4, 2026
My best output since 2020
This marks my 43rd post of the year, which is one more than the 42 I had in 2020. My next goal is to surpass the 64 posts I had in 2014. My best ever was 169 in 2011. In those days, though, it was more like a job. Now, writing has become one of the great pleasures of my life. You can see a graph of my progress on the Explore page.
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Sunday, August 2, 2026
My July replies
#julyreply
I replied three times for Robert Birming’s JulyReply challenge.
He now has a new challenge called AuguStory, where you write the story of your blog. That seems like something I could sink my teeth into.
Here are links to my three July replies:
» Markdown makes learning HTML less scary
» Your metablogging is awesome
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Saturday, August 1, 2026
That time I had my own version of Blaugust, but in Blogtober
Blaugust is upon us, an annual challenge to set goals for the number of times you post in a month. Top prize goes to those how publish every day during August, but even five times will win you a bronze award.
This is the first time I have heard of Blaugust, but a few years ago I took it upon myself to have a sort of Blogtober. In October 2020, I posted every day — twice on one day — for a total of 32 posts.
It was an impressive feat, but what came next was not at all impressive. In November, I dropped to three and in December, I only had one.
In the following years, my output was meagre: 10, 6, 8, 15, 25. It wasn’t until this year that things started picking up again. What changed? I found indie web.
I have become more involved in 32-Bit Café and Bubbles, both of which give my posts more visibility and both of which allow me to feel engaged and connected.
I’m not getting a lot more views for Newsonaut, but knowing even a few people might be reading my stuff is inspiration enough to keep going.
So far this year, I have posted 40 articles. At this rate, I will easily surpass my total of 42 for 2020 — the year of Blogtober.
I’m pretty sure I won’t be posting every day during Blaugust, but I do wish the best for those who take part. It might be the inspiration you need to find a rhythm.
My only advice would be to go easy on yourself. Even a bronze award would be awesome.
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Friday, July 3, 2026
Your metablogging is awesome
Re: Your Metablogging is Lame as Hell
#julyreply
Are you an enthusiastic newcomer to blogging? Write about it!
Do you have tips and tricks that other bloggers might like? Tell us about them!
Did you learn something about blogging that you feel needs to be told? Share it!
Are you blogging about blogging because you think it’s a good way to get attention on Bubbles or Bear Discover? Well, that is kind of annoying. But I’ll read it anyway!
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Thursday, June 11, 2026
Don’t buy me a coffee
Those “Buy Me a Coffee” links have upset the anonymous Hakkerblog, who finds them annoying.
Gordon Mclean and Michael Harley have defended them as mostly harmless.
I have never monetized Newsonaut and never will, but that’s mainly because of lessons learned from Thriftmac, my other site that specializes in free Mac apps.
Back in the day, I was all in with Google Ads and anything else that might make a dollar. In my best ever month, I got a cheque for about $200 from Google. Buy Me a Coffee didn’t exist back then, but I would have used it if it did.
At first it was fun, even exhilarating, but after awhile I got burned out. I realized that as a wage, $200 came to maybe a couple of dollars an hour.
I had to keep the engagement going — constantly thinking up new ideas, constantly finding interesting links. When I finally crashed, the blog part of Thriftmac was ripped out and it became just a fancy list of links to free Mac apps that was seldom updated.
At one point, someone offered to buy it from me for about $2,000. This seemed like a good way to go for a site I didn’t really care about any more, but when I looked at the buyer’s other sites, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Thriftmac was my baby, and I didn’t want to see it ruined.
Gradually I came to the realization that my motivation for Thriftmac didn’t have to be about making money. I now see it as a resource for people who, for whatever reason, can’t afford to pay for apps. I keep it up to date with new apps, and remove the ones that have gone to a paid model or that no longer work. I have even revived the blog part, although on a much less frequent basis.
It’s my own tiny contribution to making the web a better place. I’m not saying this has to be true for everyone, but for Thriftmac, it feels good to be free of any kind of monetization.
I hope the same can be said of Newsonaut. I try to be helpful, or at least entertaining. The site gets very few visitors, but I’m OK with that if those few people leave with something positive.
So don’t buy me a coffee. It would just spoil things for me.
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Wednesday, June 3, 2026
Welcome to Junited — links to blogs I like
Robert Birming, who has a pretty great blog himself, is running a little thing called Junited, where participants give shoutouts to fellow bloggers they think more people should know about.
This post will be updated throughout the month of June.
Now with thousands of posts over the years, Greg Ross continues to find ways to pique our curiosity with a mix of tidbits covering history, literature, language, art, philosophy, and math. I especially like the ones about language. The chess puzzles are fun even though I've never been able to solve one. The math puzzles break my brain, but I find I can still have an appreciation for them.
I found this one on the highly recommended People and Blogs. It’s unabashedly eccentric, eclectic and very likely a third descriptor that begins with an “e.” The posts are thoughtful and original, but you get so much more in the museum and resources sections. The code for a guestbook is right there, not to mention some vegetarian recipes I intend to try out.
Quite possibly one of the most beautiful blogs I have ever encountered. I was first struck by the big, serif fonts, which I find particularly appealing in general. But the more I looked, the more I realized this is someone who sweats every detail. Soak it all in and learn from her design notes.
Entertaining posts with a healthy dose of humanity. Gordon McLean has enough self-confidence to put himself out there more than I would feel comfortable with, but good for him — and us.
It's a blog, but also a massive resource for free educational material. You can learn a little bit every day just by reading the posts, but you can also go on a deep dive into free courses, movies, language lessons, books, art, music, and much more. If you're a blogger, check out the writing tips from famous writers.
This is a great way to not only discover blogs, but also learn about the people behind them. Learning about their background and motivations can inspire you to do greater things with your own blog.
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Monday, June 1, 2026
Go big (with serifs) or go home
I still see many websites where the main content is in a tiny sans serif font. Why do they go out of their way to make their words hard to read?
I suspect it is due to outdated ideas from ye olde web.
There was a time when people running websites felt compelled to get as much as possible “above the fold”, so a smaller font would help you get more words at the top of the page.
Also, they believed that a sans serif font was better for computer screens because the serifs — those tails on the tops and bottom of letters — would look fuzzy on low resolution monitors.
Those are things you no longer have to worry about.
These days, your visitors are so used to scrolling that it is often the first thing they do. They quickly scan the entire page, top to bottom, to make sure it’s worth their while. There are a gazillion other things on the internet that could be more interesting.
Your readers also have much better computer screens these days. Resolutions are so good that they sometimes go beyond what the human eye is capable of discerning. Not only do serifs show up just fine, they also do a great job of helping you read. That’s because the letters of the alphabet are vertical but we read horizontally. The serifs help glide your eyes along.
I try to practise good typography on Newsonaut because I want it to be an easy read. If you want the same thing for your readers, hop over to Matthew Butterick’s Practical Typography. You don’t have to read the whole thing. In fact, he claims to be able to impart the basics in just 10 minutes.
Of course, he would really like you to buy a font, maybe one of his. I can’t argue with that. The quality of a purchased font is often head and shoulders above what you can get for free. Even if you can’t afford to go this route, it’s still a good idea to read his advice. You may be able to find something that comes close on Google Fonts. I use Newsreader on this site.
Just don’t be afraid of serifs. They were invented to make reading easier.
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Saturday, May 30, 2026
Amp your archive with stats
No law says your archive has to be boring. You can nerd it up with stats, which I have done with my own archive.
First, I figured out how to get Textpattern to automatically keep track of how many blog entries I made each year. I already knew how to do this for the grand total, so it was just a matter of making a few adjustments.
Now, as you scroll down, you can see the number of posts in the heading for each year.
Then I came across a nifty sparkline graph on Chris Burnell’s website. It’s an example of his web component, svg-sparkline. So, of course, I made one for Newsonaut.
It’s pretty simple to use, a lot simpler than trying to make one on your own. You just point to a JavaScript library that Chris has made available on a CDN, then customize some HTML to make it look the way you like.
The gradient option is a nice touch for the fill. You can also make it animate, with the line drawing itself from left to right. I thought about doing this, but decided not to get too carried away.
The graph itself, though, is a stark reminder that this blog started with a bang. I posted 170 articles in 2011, almost one for every two days.
At the time, I was working for a daily newspaper, so the idea of churning and burning was nothing new to me. But it didn’t take long for output to drop off. The low point was a single post in 2018.
There was a surge in 2020 when I decided to post every day in October. I thought it might get me into the groove of posting more often, but in the end I was just relieved that the month was finally over and I could relax.
I haven’t exactly been flooding the blog with words in recent years, but things have been picking up. This is my seventh post this month.
What’s helping is that I’ve been finding more and more inspiration from the indie web movement, the latest being a forum called 32-Bit Café. I’ve also seen some great examples at People and Blogs.
There are a lot of little things like the sparkline that keep me going, but mostly it’s the indie web ideal of writing for the pleasure of it.
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Monday, May 11, 2026
How to make your blog or forum post hard to read
Here’s how to make your post as hard to read as possible.
Step 1: Make it all one paragraph, the longer the better.
Step 2: Don’t put in any subheadings. If you’ve followed step 1, you won’t be able to do this anyway.
Step 3: Resist the urge to reformat some sentences as bulleted lists. Keep those sentences nice and long.
Step 4: Most importantly, make everything lower case. This includes the starts of sentences, the word “I” and any proper nouns.
This final step ensures that readers will balk at even attempting to read your post. Seeing a formless blob of grey, they will move on to something more appealing.
Good job. You’ve accomplished your goal.
What’s that you say? All lower-case is more conversational and authentic? Maybe so, but it's still hard to read.
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