Enjoyed the first episode of Star Trek Strange New Worlds Season 4. Warning: Stay spoiler free on this episode.

This visualization by Reuters of the drone kill zones in Ukraine is incredibly well done, and depressing. Drone use in the Ukranian War has changed warfare, and I’m sure every military strategist in the world is currently trying to understand this new drone-based reality.

Maybe I’ll save those old Indesign posts after all...

I don’t have any metrics on bobwertz.com. I have no idea how many people read my posts on this site. I genuinely don’t care. But sketchbookb.com was setup when I was younger and cared about building an audience. I have Google Analytics installed and I can know exactly how many people are visiting there, if I want to look. I just don’t look.1

Yesterday, I noted that I was going to abandon most of the old Indesign posts that currently live on Sketchbook B. I was working through setting up redirects as I move things around and figured I’d see how much traffic was still heading to that site, which has been essentially inactive since 2022. Turns out, those Indesign posts still get a lot of traffic.

Which leaves me conflicted.

Also, there was a point in time when I thought I could build an audience by sharing weekly Adobe tips. I put a lot of time and energy building those posts. That’s part of my writing history, even if I don’t want to be a Adobe blogger any more…

So damn it, I’m going to keep them and add a disclaimer that these tips are very old. That means I need to move over another 20-30 posts that I’d planned to abandon, but I’ll feel better knowing they still exist.

And seriously, GREP Find and Replace is amazing.

Bob Wertz is a type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008 and has covered lots of topics over the years.

  1. I could install a metrics package in Micro.Blog, but haven’t. I’m happier that way. I have recently thought about putting some simple metrics on sbbfonts.com, since that’s a business site. ↩︎

  2. Before Adobe rebranded Creative Suite to Creative Cloud! ↩︎

Choosing what old posts to migrate and preserve

I’ve mostly finished with my project to move selected posts over from my old Squarespace site, Sketchbook B. I’ve been working on this off and on since 2024.

Squarespace export is pretty rough, so it was a very manual process. It includes a bunch of random javascript and junk in a Wordpress format that makes clean import difficult. Recently I changed my approach and used Python to scrape my old site and create Markdown files for each post. Micro.Blog then takes a ZIP archive of .md files and converts them into posts, finding the links and moving them over. It worked reasonably well. I had three total pages where Micro.Blog struggled to move the images over.1 And I had to rebuild the site a couple of times. But now, I have 170+ old posts dating back to 2008. Pretty much every post and picture I care about lives on bobwertz.com.

So what did I choose to leave behind? I didn’t move InDesign tips from 2012. They got a lot of traffic on my old site, but I’m not interested in being an Adobe expert anymore and they’d have to be updated to be useful. I dropped a bunch of random link posts, mostly because the links were broken. I went through a phase where I wrote about my favorite gear, but again, most of those links are broken and the reviews weren’t extensive. I kept a few. I dropped anything about how I was changing or redesigning the site. When in doubt, I aired on the side of preserving the post.

There is one other section of my old site to move… I have years of microblog posts on Sketchbook B. From 2017-2022, my original microblogging setup was connected to my Squarespace blog, which would then crosspost from Micro.Blog to Twitter and Facebook.2 I deleted them from Micro.Blog when I rebooted everything in 2022 — dumb mistake. Much of this is already captured in my Twitter archive, so I’m not too worried about it, but I would like to move some of them over. Once I decide how to handle it, I’ll be ready to pull the plug on my Squarespace hosting plan (and the accompanying monthly charge).

I also need to figure out how to handle my sketchbookb.com domain name. Do I just redirect it to one of my domains? Or maybe I’ll just create a simple new page with links to both sites. I need to think that through for a little bit. I am going to try and use Cloudflare to redirect links so they aren’t broken. We’ll see how that goes.

Bob Wertz is a type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.

  1. On all three, I used a lightbox on Squarespace. I probably could have adjusted the script to address the issue, but honestly, it was on three pages so it was faster to fix manually. ↩︎

  2. In the early days of Micro.Blog, you could connect to a Facebook page. And Twitter wasn’t evil yet. ↩︎

After watching the Avengers: Doomsday trailer, I’ve decided to revisit some of the X-Men movies, starting with the 2000 version.

Before Thunderbolt, there was SCSI. Another t-shirt design for my retro tech merch collection.

A blue t-shirt features a minimalist white graphic of a vintage SCSI connector port on the front.

Michael Tsai with an exhaustive summary of the icon discourse from the past few weeks.

CVS has Halloween candy… in July.

The depressing stickiness of the service formerly known as Twitter

I assumed that people would abandon Twitter after Elon took over. Many people I followed moved to Mastodon, Bluesky or Threads. I moved, closing my account, but many Twitter users that I knew stayed. Even the ones that hate everything that Elon stands for. Even the ones who hate his bullshit white nationalist politics. Even after… everything.

It’s depressing, but the truth is that for many people, social media is an audience game, and it’s tough to abandon an audience. It’s even tougher to build a new audience. And people did the math, and sadly decided to stay.

I left Twitter and don’t regret it. I’m scaling back my Meta usage significantly. I don’t think these large social media companies are good for society. I’m content with alternative social media platforms, but I have to at least acknowledge that many, many, many people love these services. Even if they know the social media services are harmful to themselves and society, they won’t move to a new service. That’s tough to reconcile.

Bob Wertz is a type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.

Building an academic publications plug-in for Micro.Blog with the help of ChatGPT

I’ve always thought that professors and researchers are an ideal target market for Micro.Blog. Many scholars have personal web sites, but they are often woefully out of date. I thought a plug-in that automatically updated academic publication listings could be helpful, but after a little research, I figured out that Google Scholar doesn’t have an API. I dropped the idea.

Last week, I was thinking about this project again and asked ChatGPT how to “pull information off of Google Scholar” to publish on a personal web site. After a couple of questions back and forth about how I was hosting my site and what I wanted to accomplish, it recommended pulling from ORCID instead. ORCID is basically a unique common identifier and profile for scholars and researchers and is often required when you submit articles to publications. Since Google Scholar doesn’t have an API, ORCID was the next best thing. Before I knew it, ChatGPT was providing instructions for creating a new shortcode template for Micro.Blog.

Some background… It hasn’t been part of my day-to-day job for a very long time, but I’m comfortable with HTML and CSS. I’ve played around with some programming, mostly Python. I’ve customized themes for Micro.Blog, and looked at the Hugo templating language to see what it would take to build my own theme. I wouldn’t consider myself an expert on any of this, but I did understand the code I was looking at. Also, as a University of South Carolina graduate student, I have free access to ChatGPT. So my choice of chatbot is less a matter of philosophy and more a matter of convenience.

I started by building something that would just work on my site. ChatGPT navigated the API documentation for Micro.Blog and ORCID. After some back and forth, I got it working. ChatGPT eventually recommended that we supplement the information on ORCID with metadata from CrossRef. The CSS was a little strange, so I had to manually adjust it. Once everything was stable, I asked it to walk me through the process of building a plug-in for Micro.Blog. I fired up BBEdit and GitHub. Within a few minutes, I had a working version of the plug-in. You can see the plug-in, Academia, in action on my new Publications page.1 I plan to make some refinements, make an icon, test the plug-in with some different themes, and then make it available to others. I honestly don’t know how many people would take advantage of the plug-in, but I’m excited that I was able to build it.

I’ve been an LLM skeptic, concerned about the environmental impacts of the technology and the implications for creators.2 But after playing around with this plug-in project off and on for the last couple of weeks, I completely understand why programmers view AI-assisted coding as revolutionary. I was able to build something quickly that I’d been wanting to build for a while. In the hands of a skilled programmer, I can’t imagine how powerful AI-assisted programming could be.

Look for more updates on Academia soon.

Bob Wertz is a type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.

  1. I replaced my CV/resume in the menu with the new Publications page. ↩︎

  2. And I’m still concerned. The costs of this new technology is high. ↩︎

Rocky’s Hot Chicken in South Asheville

A colorful mural of a fiery red and blue rooster breathing fire with the word Hot above a metal entrance door is painted on the side of a building.

Zeldman’s incredible post on digital preservation and decay:

So what do we do? We own our own domains. We keep local copies. In triplicate. We choose open formats over proprietary ones. We treat every platform as temporary, because it is. We archive not out of paranoia but out of love—love for the things we’ve made, the conversations we’ve had, the small, stubborn act of leaving a mark.

The only way to square this Max to McLaren rumor:

  1. Max wants to quit F1 until the regs change.
  2. Zac wants to win the Triple Crown (Monaco, Indy 500, 24 Hours at Le Mans)
  3. Zac is willing to pay Max F1 money for endurance racing.

This doesn’t make sense, but it makes more sense than replacing Oscar.

Cortado.

A cortado with heart-shaped latte art sits on a purple saucer atop a wooden surface.

Our July 4th tradition… catching a Columbia Flieflies game. Although tonight, they are cosplaying as the Capital City Bombers. 🇺🇸⚾️🎇

A baseball player is at bat while the catcher, umpire, and other players are positioned on the field during a game.

Our national symbols aren't as old as you think they are.

US Flag with 50 stars.

I was recently listening to The Rest is History’s series on national anthems. I knew that the Star Spangled Banner was inspired by the War of 1812, but what I did not know was that it wasn’t adopted as the National Anthem until 1931!

In fact, many of our national symbols are no where near as old as we think they are. Lots of Americans probably think that the symbols were created alongside the Constitution, but that’s not the case. Like any brand, the marks and symbols that represent it evolve over time. I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that many of them were codified after the rise of Communism and in the Cold War that followed World War II.

To celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States, I’ve pulled together a list of our national symbols, and the date that the current version was adopted:

While these symbols feel like they’ve always been here, they really aren’t that old. When my grandparents were born, there was no official national anthem. My parents were born when the U.S. had a 48-star flag. And when I started kindergarten, the version of the Pledge of Allegiance that we recited was just over 20 years old. This all serves as a nice little reminder that symbols change and evolve over time as our society changes.

Bob Wertz is a type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.

  1. There is a table on the Flag of the United States Wikipedia page with all of the different official flag configurations over the last 250 years. Many of the flags only lasted a year. And who thought an inverted pentagram star pattern was a good idea? ↩︎

This You.Gov survey on American’s opinion of flags is fascinating. My research is primarily focused on visual branding, and I’ve long thought that what most people think of patriotism today aligns better with our theories around brand loyalty and brand love.

Turned off my alarm last night so I could sleep in today. Woke up at the same time anyway.

The NY Times published a guide to Sandra Boyton’s best books and the whole thing is a trip down memory lane. We read all those books to our kids. I love “Snuggle Puppy” and “Personal Penguin.” I’m a little surprised they didn’t include “What’s Wrong, Little Pookie?” One of my favorites…

A tale of two posts: Tracking views when crossposting from Micro.Blog

There’s been some discussion on Micro.Blog lately about the absence of likes and other typical social media features. I wanted to look at my experience with two recent posts and what they tell us about how posts are viewed on social media. My posts are shared to three timelines:1

As far as I can tell, the vast majority of my posts get limited to no engagement. Micro.Blog offers no engagement metrics. Bluesky shows likes and comments. Threads offers “Insights” on each post that includes engagement metrics.

Post #1: World Cup Watch Party

Social media post about Brazil-Morocco World Cup watch party.

The first was a post about accidentally landing in the middle of a Brazil-Morocco World Cup watch party.

Post #2: Slate’s Final Price

Social media post about Slate

The second was a comment on the Slate truck…

Clearly, if you want people to engage with your posts, the Threads algorithm can provide an audience. Bluesky didn’t generate much activity on either post, but I assume more than one person saw them. For the Slate post, Micro.Blog actually generated a conversation, and another blog post from one of the participants. I decided to follow up with a longer post as well.

These three timelines are different. I use them for different purposes. Is the Micro.Blog timeline quiet? Sure, but it’s full of unique and distinct voices including many I follow from Mastodon. I use Threads to follow pop culture, F1, WNBA, local news, and more. Bluesky has a bunch of academic and political experts that I enjoy following. Each timeline has a purpose. And the character of each is derived from the design of each service.

If I wanted to go all in on metrics, I’d be posting regularly to Facebook (823 friends), Instagram (707 followers), or LinkedIn (750 connections). I wouldn’t have deleted my Twitter account with over 1000 followers. But that’s not why I post on my blog.

I don’t think we’ll ever have a single dominant social media platform. The reality is that I’ve always had two or three different social media channels at a time. In the early days, I used Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. I still use three — Micro.Blog, Threads and Bluesky — but my current setup works better for me because everything is hosted on Micro.Blog and crossposted to other services. I value having all of my content on a single site.

We all use social media for different purposes. One great thing about today’s social media is that we have choices, but having more social media channels available means it’s harder to focus on a single outlet that meets all our needs. Each platform makes decisions that shape the experience, and that’s especially true in the case of Micro.Blog. In fact, I almost wrote a paper for a Ph.D.-level PR theory class a couple of years ago about how Micro.Blog’s structure aligns with Kent & Taylor’s framework for creating dialogic social media. Maybe someday, I’ll get around to writing it.

Bob Wertz is a type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.

  1. Honestly, four. I still share to Mastodon, but I don’t have any followers over there and don’t expect any engagement. ↩︎