Advent of Bloggers 2021: Day 8

I am writing a blog post every day from December 1st to December 24th, 2021, about a blogger whose writing or site I follow. My aim for this series is to help you discover new blogs and to help get the word out about content creators whose blogs I appreciate. You can read more about this series in the inaugural Day 1 post.

@jlelse.blog

jlelse.blog, whose motto is "Thoughts, stories, and ideas" is an excellent blog to browse. I have been subscribed to the blog, run by Jan-Lukas Else, for months and love seeing new posts. In my feed reader, I see two types of posts: short notes, somewhat reminiscent of life logs. I love these posts because they give me a glimpse into what Jan is interested in. The second type of posts is long-form content, blog posts that go deeper into a particular topic. I read these often, too.

Jan's blog has a simple design: the background is black and the text is white in dark mode, and uses a white background with black text in light mode. It's easy to find your way around the site. There is a clear focus on the content on the page. I love encountering sites where it is clear great attention has been paid to how a visitor like me will experience the site.

Recently, I have been following Jan's blog as he has talked about his thoughts on the Raspberry Pi—and why he is not using it right now—programming, and other topics. Jan's blog is a great one to follow if you enjoy technology. There isn't a particular focus on one area of tech. You'll find lots of different types of content to read. You'll even find some posts on smart homes!

I would recommend these posts for a new reader to the site who is looking for somewhere to ebgin:

• Programming is a really useful skill
• New purposes for my Raspberry Pi 4
• About my new watch: Samsung Galaxy Watch 4

There is also a German version of the blog for those would prefer to browse the blog in German. [1]

Wrapping Up

We're onto day eight of this challenge. I use the word "challenge" deliberately because blogging every day is difficult, especially when I have set myself a goal to blog every day of Advent this year. I typically don't take on challenges because they do require quite a big commitment. But I'm plodding along.

I have found myself thinking about blogs almost as if they were books, figuring out what I should share to encourage others to explore the blog. It's an interesting role and is not something I would have thought about before beginning this series. Ultimately, however, my goal is to share interesting blogs. I hope that readers of this series have found a few interesting blogs to which you can subscribe. I shall see you tomorrow for the ninth day of this series!

Edits

December 8th: Edited to reflect light mode styling.

Footnotes

[1] Jan reached out to me via Webmention to share this comment:

"It doesn’t just contain German translations, it mostly contains posts that are just relevant in German. So for those who understand German, I recommend reading both."

The original reply is on Jan's blog.