Tracy Durnell

Intro

I'm a graphic designer and writer in the Seattle area. I've been blogging on and off since 2003, most recently at tracydurnell.com.

Websites

I use tracydurnell.com as a mind garden to track articles I've read and shows and videos I've watched. I'm tracking books I read there too.

I ran the blog Cascadia Inspired from 2012-2023, where I wrote about creative work and finding inspiration in nature. In 2021 I ran an art project on a subdomain as a pandemic project.

Blog Posts

Blog Posts Related to the IndieWeb

Building community out of strangers - November 2023
Barriers to a more social IndieWeb - July 2023
The IndieWeb as affinity network - June 2023
I asked Substack to add Webmention support - December 2022
Making the IndieWeb more approachable - November 2022
Fixing microformat support on Twenty Twenty WordPress theme - September 2022
Following people outside of a feed - June 2022
Overcoming the societal expectations making it hard for women to leave social media - March 2022
Mushroom Mascot Illustrated at IndieWeb Create Day - October 2021
Getting More Women Involved in the IndieWeb - September 2021
Mushroom Mascot on IndieWeb Create Day - July 2021
Musing on an Indie Web Patreon - quick brain dump on combining Indie Web tools with discoverability - June 2021
What I’m Excited About with Joining the Indie Web - August 2020
Joining the Indie Web, One Step at a Time - August 2020

Blog Posts Related to Blogging / Having Websites

How I approach crafting a blog post - September 2023
My 20th anniversary of blogging! - September 2023
People you know from offline don’t read your blog - August 2023
Following up on delisting my website from Google - August 2023
Playing together online: reimagining interactions - July 2023
Pulling my site from Google over AI training - July 2023
Compromising information - June 2023
Blogging's emotional obstacles - April 2023
What makes RSS better than social timelines? - February 2023
With a blog, everything is a prompt - February 2023
Blogs are a platform for normal people - January 2023
Understanding blogs - January 2023
Deciding what belongs on my website - October 2022
Expanding the blogroll, owning my follows - October 2022
Personal Website Aesthetics - December 2021
Personal Websites are the Best - November 2021
Thinking Better with My Mind Garden - October 2020
Living in the Internet I Choose: A Blog Manifesto - June 2019

IndieWeb Event Notes

Notes and Ideas from IndieWeb Popups and Events

Watched Photo Posting And Presentation - May 2022
Connecting with other readers through our websites - February 2022
Analog Meets Online: Session Thoughts - January 2022
A New WordPress Theme at Create Day - December 2021
Gardens and Streams II - September 2021
Sensitive Data on Your Personal Website - June 2021

Notes and Ideas from Homebrew Website Club

May 19, 2021 - visualizing threads and connected content (for comments or mind garden posts), local community-run web hosting as public service, collating self-quantified data into easy-to-analyze databases on our own websites to spot patterns and make suggestions to yourself
May 26, 2021 - "low impact" websites and the overlap with streamlined code, mini computer interactive art project
June 9, 2021 - teaming up with a webhost to create a one-click Indie Web website install, celebrating birthdays on your website, audiences to invite to Indie Web events
June 30, 2021 - feedback and further musings about how to improve the 2021/homepage proposal I'm chipping away at
July 21, 2021 - future wiki improvement projects, discussion about the philosophy of subscribing to feeds versus things or people
August 4, 2021 - Kicks Condor and the potential of website weirdness, a different format for conversation threading
August 11, 2021 - discussion about making friends and meeting people online through your website - idea of a community challenge to interact with people you don't know in the IndieWeb
August 18, 2021 - what could in-person IndieWebCamp look like in 2022? identified the need for an IndieWeb icon (16px)
August 28, 2021 - hydroponics website, troubleshooting my reading list filter
September 8, 2021 - Self-Sufficient Hosting and the Literacy of the Future
December 1, 2021 - Dystopia and IndieWeb Gifts and Commitments

Itches

Personal Websites

Figure out a homepage layout for my mind garden that makes it feel like less of a feed - I'm thinking something like a "magazine" layout with blocks for each either category or post type - potentially displaying some random posts as well
Would love to figure out how to somehow display a visual web of articles linked by tags but I think that's way outside my skillset - instead maybe adding links to other articles with similar tags on post pages?
- Ideally would love a dynamic visualization similar to this suggestion for threaded convos
- Could probably use a suggested posts plugin to do similar
- A simpler visualization method could be kind of Venn diagram-ish representations by category or tag, showing how other tags overlap with the selected category or tag - e.g. for books would be interesting to see relative prevalence of overlapping tags like novella, non-fiction, etc.

IndieWeb Projects

create an IndieWeb mascot
- Mushroom mascot illustrated
update color palette and incorporate into the wiki CSS
IndieWeb (versus IndieWebCamp) logo and icon
cleanup of key IndieWeb wiki pages for improved readability for new folks
organizers maps for use on who page
active community members opt-in map?

Done

Set up SSL on both websites
- 2021 - ok this took 15 minutes
Redesign my author website (under a pen name) which is using a generic template
- Created a new WordPress child theme at December 2021 Create Day
Adding an index of tags
- May 2022 - have created an index page to show tags, categories and post kinds
Adding a recipe page to save go-to recipes (and notes?)
- 2023 done