Just a Theory

Trans rights are human rights

Evolutionary Theory

Back in 2013, a slew of new top-level domains became available, and I pounced on a number of them, thinking it’d be good to make a shorter domain my own. My favorite was theory.pm. In the early years of Just a Theory, I wrote mostly about Perl and related topics like Bricolage. I thought naming a Perl blog like a Perl module would be appropriate. By that time I wrote a lot about Postgres, and didn’t want to mix topics. So alongside theory.pm, I also launched theory.so — as in “stored objects”. Both used a new static design built on Octopress hosted on GitHub Pages.

Unfortunately, by this time I wrote very little about Perl anymore. I wrote more on Postgres and Sqitch, but had to shut down theory.so when the domain registration became too expensive. I merged it into theory.pm, but it never felt right to post about Postgres a “Perl blog”. I wrote a few link posts about security and privacy, topics I’ve been thinking about quite a lot, but it still felt…off. My last post to theory.pm was nearly two years ago.

I’ve posted little personal writing, either: no politics, photos, travelogues, essays, or anything else. I let Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook fill those gaps.

Lately, though, I’ve had the itch to write my own site again, both to think through technical and cultural issues in the technology business, but also to reclaim a personal space on the net. The recent privacy challenges for the big social media companies finally drove me from their easy embrace back onto the open web. But where to put down my hypertext roots?

My friends, Just a Theory returns

In retrospect, I now realize that my original domain name was just right. It’s, me, just me, but not topic limited. I can post whatever I want, without constraints imposed by attention-limited domains. I decided to rehabilitate it.

Of course I could no longer use the old design. Inspired by the likes of Slashdot, it was boxy, crowded, and 2004-era ugly. I took a few weeks, imported the theory.pm posts into a new Hugo-powered site, and revamped the design from there. I took on the arduous task to import all the original Just a Theory posts, cleaning up typos and fixing images.

The result is the revamped site you now see in your browser. Or perhaps in your RSS reader (The old URLs should have redirected you here). The result is something far better than any of the previous sites:

  • The design emphasizes readability above all. I’ve made it as clean and attractive as I can. The design is my own, and likely full of flaws; don’t hesitate to holler if you spot anything that doesn’t look right.
  • No baggage. The new design uses no JavaScript — no tracking or analytics at all. I’ll never host ads, so I don’t need all the weight of ad-tech. The site is 100% HTML and CSS and nothing else. Only the custom fonts, Source Sans Pro and Source Code Pro, add to the bandwidth.
  • No comments. I’m serious about shedding the baggage. Wading through comment spam wastes valuable writing and family time, while the comment services demand heavy JavaScript and tracking penalties. I generally get very few comments, but if you really want to talk to me, hit me up on Twitter or drop me an email (david at this domain).
  • The imported historical posts have no comments, either, but you can still browse the old design if you need to see them. Each migrated post links to the original, as well.
  • History. Previously, it was impossible to find stuff on Just a Theory. The new design borrows a page from kottke.org to provide links to all the tags, and all tag pages are paginated — as is the home page. Plus, the Archives lists every post and link post on the site, nice and friendly to search engines.
  • Speaking of tags, each has its own RSS feed. If you’re only interested in a particular subject, you can just subscribe its feed. I will never create topic-specific sites again; tagging is so much easier.
  • Identity. Yes, this is really Just a Theory, and you can tell because the TLS certificate proves it. Thanks to CloudFront and Let’s Encrypt for making it a cinch.
  • Scaling. It’s unlikely Just a Theory will be Fireballed again anytime soon, but since I’m using CloudFront for TLS already, this is a no-brainer. Just a Theory should be served from somewhere reasonable close to you.

Punctuated Equilibrium

I plan to write a fair bit over the next few months. I’ve been thinking a lot about security, privacy, and the impact of data privacy regulations like the GDPR on data rights and the technology business in general. I’m happy to once again have a place to write on such topics. I expect to make social posts too, to share what’s going on with friends and family. Before long, I expect to also make photoblog-style posts and perhaps integrate micro-blogging posts.

Let’s find out if I’m as good as my word.