As I recently posted on Bluesky, using Leaflet has helped me rediscover the joy in blogging. I still remember the early nineties, when I had manually code HTML pages. Any other old-timer bloggers out there?

Scanned page from a 1995 computer book titled HTML & CGI Unleashed, Chapter 2. The section, "Individual Communication: Home Pages," describes personal home pages and uses Debbie Ridpath Ohi's website as an example. A yellow circle highlights the caption "Figure 2.10. Debbie Ridpath Ohi's home page," with a yellow arrow pointing to a small screenshot of the homepage, which includes a photo of Debbie at a computer and a list of links. A note at the bottom reads that the page is from the first edition of HTML & CGI Unleashed by John December and Mark Ginsburg, shared with permission.

Back in April 1997, I also started a personal blog called Blatherings (yes, the original version). I didn't have any particular theme or goal in mind, but just found it a fun venue for talking about whatever was on my mind. The term "social media" didn't exist back then.

Anyone else remember Livejournal? Greymatter? Movable Type? I've also tried Blogger, Squarespace, among others. I've had a Substack And my DebbieOhi.com website blog is hosted on Wordpress.

My goals with blogging have changed over the decades, and I have also experimented with different kinds of blogs for different kinds of content. There are so many wonderful blogging tools available now, compared to the Ancient Days.

In the past few years, however, I've been blogging less and less. I've been thinking a lot about why, and the reasons basically boil down to the following:

Reason #1: I have been focussing on lengthy articles that require a lot of research, interviews that require a lot of back-and-forth and finessing and editing.

Reason #2: Twitter changed in ways that made me realize it was no longer the place I wanted to hang out. I left, and so did many in the communities I was used to finding on Twitter. Unless people had my blog in their RSS feed, Twitter was also the platform where most of my readers found out about new posts. (Psst: Now you can use , or subscribe via Bluesky, or one of many other ways!)

Reason #3: Interaction with blogs declined as more people's attention spans declined as so many of us were stressed out by what was happening in the world, and also were overwhelmed by all the social media and blogging options out there. This meant that I could no longer just post content on my blog and expect people to find it. It was frustrating when I put so much time and effort into those lengthy articles mentioned in Reason #1 but then felt like very few people were actually reading them, largely because of Reason #2 (I no longer had a place where I could let people know what/when I was blogging about).

AT Proto blogging platforms like give me hope! So much so that I decided to start up a blog called Blatherings again. And while I don't entirely understand all the techie nuances of AT Protocol, I grasp enough to be excited and hopeful about blogging again.

And I look forward to doing more Blathering in a blog whose content will not be carefully scheduled and planned out and outlined in advance.

This post is an example. It was originally supposed to be JUST about trying out Leaflet's image gallery feature! But then I started writing about the old days of blogging and decided to go with it. 😜

Found object art featuring a sheep made out of a white lilac blossom.
Photo of lights shining on notebook with found object art of sheep and lilac blossom
Found object art featuring tea bag dragon head looking at a drawing of a small girl holding up a flower
Found object art featuring a crumpled napkin that is incorporated into the drawing as a dancing woman's dress
Found object art featuring small celery slices turned into mini art pieces
Found object art featuring a raspberry that has been incorporated into a dancing woman's headpiece

But I digress.

Above: my experiment with Leaflet's grid display of images.

Below: my experiment with Leaflet's carousel display of images (in theory, you should be able to use the side arrows to navigate through):

Broken art art with yellow crayon, portraying a duck.
Broken art art with a blue crayon, showing a child floating in blue water.
Broken art art with a red crayon, showing a child flying out like a Canadian flag caped superhero
Broken art art with a yellow crayon, showing a child holding a bowl getting filled with light pouring out of the broken crayon
Broken art art with an orange crayon with two children happily sliding down like it's a playground slide
Broken art art with a black crayon and a ninja
Broken art art with a blue crayon with a dreamy girl imaging all kinds of things
Broken art art with a brown crayon with a girl writing in a notebook
Broken art art with a yellow crayon breaking an egg into a frypan
Broken art art with a blue crayon and a joyous boy in swimming trunks running through water
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I also love that Leaflet makes it easy to add alt text to each image!

QUESTION: Any other ancient bloggers out there? If so, what were YOUR favourite platforms?

Debbie's Blatherings - by Debbie Ridpath Ohi

My Blatherings (aka "But I Digress....") is place for my posts that are too long for social media but (I feel) are too casual or unplanned for my regular website blog. Browse archives here: https://debbieohi.leaflet.pub/ More about me and my work: https://debbieohi.com/