I've wanted a blog for years. As place to documents and showcase my projects and as a place to write up some thoughts. I've actually had several blogs/websites over the years (I think my first webpage, a website for my sister, was more than 10 years ago) but I never had the motivation of writing much. I think most of my interest was in setting up the website and showing off my ongoing project, not in long term documenting my projects. I probably still have at least two of them online.
Looking back on all the cool projects I did and have nothing to show for, I find it a little bit sad. Sure, the point was not to just grow a list of projects. I profited from all the joy of tinkering, knowledge and experience but having a documentation, even a cursory one would be nice, as a proof to myself I was active (somehow, a lot of my energy and joy of life seems tied to doing things) to make the knowledge more dependable and to have support material to show friends when talking.
Also, I often think about random thinks that I think are interesting and that I want to remember. Also writing them allow me to start thinking about other stuff, so it's a way to clear my head. But the thoughts in my head are fuzzy and writing them as articulated reasoning is hard (and sometimes impossible as taking the time to lay stuff properly expose critical flaws in the reasoning). I have been self hosting Outline, a note keeping software, for two years and I usually try to write down the key points of my thoughts there but it's hard to spend the time writing them cleanly since it's only for myself. As a result, they end up being bunched into daily todos and totally unexploitable. Publishing them would force me to do a clean write up on the off chance someone ever see them. Also, I spend a lot of time reading in books or online people thoughts about stuff so it seems natural to do the same.
The not-so-subtle underlying question hinted by the "now" in the title is why start writing in the age of AI. When producing large amounts of clear and cohesive text has never been simpler, and hence valued so little. I think there is a fundamental difference between human-written text (or art for that matter) and machine-produced text. One is intended for though clearing and sharing while the other is designed for mass production. I don't write for SEO algorithms, I write for humans (me and eventually other).
Also, I think the large majority of machine produced text will never be read by anyone. LLM are verbose to the extreme (not sure why) and I don't think I'm the only one skipping the majority of the prompt answer to get to the point. I am not interested in the machine chain of thought (except maybe if things go wrong). My text have at least been read once (by me) !
Aside from starting to write as a reaction to the increasingly LLM generated web I've been navigating over the last few months, I'm currently reading "This is for everyone" by Tim Berners-Lee and it's reminding me of the initial goals for the web, a fun and quirky place to share and discover stuff (the first ever web browser was read/write) and the web I was surfing 15 years ago. Compared to what it is now, I consider this blog as my contribution to shifting it back toward a more human place to be.
(Also, my motivation was supplemented by this read https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/you-have-18-months (on how writing and reading are the twin pillars of deep thinking) which I found very inspiring)\n
Ce que l'on conçoit bien s'énonce clairement, et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément.
Boileau