Month: September 2010

Day in brief

OhLife – private blogging via email

Over the years that I’ve been blogging, quite a few people asked me if I know of any easy way to maintain a private blog.  They seemed to not care about the rest of the world and just wanted a private diary, but without paper and without too much technical hassle.  Of course, there are many applications, like WordPress, that could be installed on a personal computer and used in private mode.  But that still seemed too much work for a diary.  So I never really had a good answer, except use any text editor and save files in some date-based directory structure.

Recently I came across a very elegant solution to the problem though.  OhLife is a simple and straightforward blogging service.  It has two very distinct features that together set it apart from most other blogging services.  It enforces private blogs – only you see your entries.  No public stuff, no friends, no nothing.  And they help you build a habit out of blogging by sending you an email every night with a question “How did your day go?“.  This seems so natural and so simple that I can’t think of anybody who won’t be able to do it.

OhLife sample email

Typewriter – an ASCII art parent

I’ve known about ASCII art forever.  I came across it even before I first connected to the Internet.  And while I new it was an old concept, I never knew how old it was.  Apparently, ASCII art predecessor was typewriter art.  Wikipedia has this to say:

Since 1867 typewriters have been used for creating visual art. The oldest known preserved example of typewriter art is a picture of a butterfly made in 1898 by Flora Stacey.
In the 1954 short film Stamp Day for Superman, typewriter art was a feature of the plot.

Why would I suddenly remember an ancient topic like this, you ask?  Because I came across some of the typewriter art and it’s awesome!