Jason's Blogroll

Here’s a list of other folks’ personal websites (or small businesses/publications) that I enjoy keeping up with and would recommend, in no particular order.

Most of these are focused on software development or tech. I would like to branch out more but don’t put much time/effort into finding new stuff – email me if you have suggestions.

• Low-tech magazine: Online magazine with long-form articles about solving problems in simple, low-tech ways. I find it fascinating and wish I had more time to experiment with the things I read about there. (RSS)

• Daniel Gedge: A friend of mine who likes to write. (RSS)

• Andrew Cox: My brother :) His website is focused on his hiking/climbing and the photos he takes while doing it. (RSS)

• Tom MacWright: Software engineer and co-founder of val.town with views that I find interesting and balanced. I enjoy both his main writing section (RSS) and the micro section (RSS).

• pico.sh blog: Small business providing ssh-powered services for software developers. I do not use any of their services but find them interesting. (RSS)

• Matthew Butterick: Font designer and lawyer with programming skills – an interesting intersection. His chron has new posts every once in a while. I’m also a fan of his Practical Typography book.

  As far as I can tell there is no RSS feed. Expand the box below for a script that I use to make one.

  rssify-matthewbutterick

  #!/bin/sh
  #
  # Outputs RSS on stdout. Requires curl and htmlq.
  
  URL="https://matthewbutterick.com/chron/"
  ITEM_CACHE_DIR="${XDG_CACHE_DIR:-$HOME/.cache/rssify}"
  
  mkdir -p "$ITEM_CACHE_DIR"
  
  add_item() {
      item="$1"
      item_hash="$(echo "$item" | sha256sum | cut -d ' ' -f 1)"
      item_cached="$ITEM_CACHE_DIR/$item_hash"
      cat "$item_cached" 2>/dev/null \
          || make_item "$item" | tee "$item_cached"
  }
  
  make_item() {
      item="$1"
      title="$(echo "$item" | htmlq --text h1)"
      link="$(echo "$item" | htmlq --attribute href a.chron-index)"
      date="$(echo "$item" | htmlq --attribute datetime time)"
      contents="$(curl --silent "$link" | htmlq --base "$URL" '#doc-inner')"
  
      cat <<EOF
          <item>
              <title>$title</title>
              <link>$link</link>
              <pubDate>$date</pubDate>
              <guid>$link</guid>
              <description><![CDATA[$contents]]></description>
          </item>
  EOF
  }
  
  cat <<EOF
  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?>
  <rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
      <channel>
          <title>Matthew Butterick's Chron</title>
          <link>https://matthewbutterick.com/chron/</link>
          <description>Recent content on Matthew Butterick's Chron</description>
  EOF
  
  curl --silent "$URL" | htmlq --base "$URL" a.chron-index | while read -r item; do
      add_item "$item"
  done
  
  cat <<EOF
      </channel>
  </rss>
  EOF
  

• /dev/lawyer: Technology lawyer with lots of thoughts on software licensing and open source. (RSS)

• Craig Mod: Writer, walker, and photographer living in Japan and subsisting largely based on his private membership program. (I am not a member.) He has weekly and monthly newsletters that I sometimes read. I really liked his book Things Become Other Things. (RSS)

• Justin Duke: Software developer and founder of Buttondown. I mostly stick around for his thoughts on running a small software business. (RSS)

• Jamie Brandon: Independent software developer doing (from what I can tell) mostly databases and systems work. I find it interesting to follow someone living in a different part of the dev world than me. I particularly enjoyed his reflections on a decade of coding. (RSS)

• Julia Evans: Software developer who writes about her learnings about various technical topics in a very accessible way. (RSS)