People and Blogs is a series by Manuel Moreale featuring the people behind personal blogs and the stories of their corners of the web. This conversation is with Carl Barenbrug. Do go visit their blog and say hello!
A native Scotsman, albeit half German, living in the beautiful, cosmopolitan, and windy city of Edinburgh. I live with my partner and two Burmese cats. I'm a digital product designer, founder, and aspiring entrepreneur with a long-standing love for minimalism and rock climbing. But I'm also interested in fashion, architecture, tennis, cycling, football, and, admittedly, experimenting with AI tools too. Right now, I'm working in the field of chat communication, creative tooling such as 3D mockup production, and a bit of consultation when I have the time. Slowly preparing for a probable life where my skills are surpassed by robot while trying to figure out how to independently survive and thrive.
I think I created my blog around 2011, which was pretty much focused on design curation. Predictably named after myself, I was simply sharing aesthetic things I liked and it helped shape my taste at the time. My personal site has taken on a few different forms and functions over the years, but since 2020 it's been exclusively a blog — a digital space where I can think in public. The topics vary a bit, but typically I'll be yapping about projects I've worked on, perspectives on procedural design, and the occasional lifestyle story or social experiment. I don't write as often as I'd like or once did, and I think the main reason for this is that I've stopped reading and listening to books for the past year or so. Reading seems to fuel my writing, but I'm prioritising creative output over consumption right now. I reckon this will change next year though.
My writing process varies depending on the topic. If I'm blogging about work I've done, there's very little research I need to do. It's just a free-flowing explanation of what I've made. Yet, if it's more of a thought-piece, then I'll make a note of the topic and some references that have inspired the thought because I also like to cite those if I can. I'll then start drafting in iA Writer. I'll usually leave it a few days or weeks and come back to it. When I feel like I have a decent post, I'll share it with robot to proof and get some feedback — mostly grammar, structure, and light shaping. I tend to take a bit more care in what I publish on my blog than when I journal offline.
I enjoy silence or natural sounds if I really need to use my head. It's really the only way I can truly focus. But sometimes I love to write with instrumental music (house or techno) if I'm running with an idea that requires a little less attention. In terms of the physical environment, space matters, but I'm pretty flexible. Normally, it's when I'm home in my office or stretched out on my sofa, locked in by my cats. And I'll only ever write on my laptop — never on my phone.
The site is built on Kirby CMS, where all my posts are published as markdown. The domain is registered with Hover and is hosted by Hetzner. I tend to follow Manu's advice when it comes to such things, even if he insists he has no clue what he's doing.
I probably would have moved to Kirby sooner. It's a fantastic CMS, even for a basic blog. But I also use it for my portfolio, so I feel like I get a lot out of it. And as it's modular, it can be as light or as heavy as you need it to be. No built-in bloat. There are other super lightweight blog-specific solutions out there that I like the look of, but not enough to convince me to change. In terms of doing things differently from a writing perspective, I think we naturally express ourselves differently as life happens. Looking back, I think some of my posts might have tried too hard to be intellectual, but I think I've generally maintained a consistent tone of voice, which I like.
I don't monetise my blog, so it earns nothing in a tangible sense. But if it helps me connect with people, whether sentimentally or collaboratively, that's good enough for me. The domain is $19 per year, Kirby is a one-off payment of around $115, and hosting is on a shared server, so I don't pay anything for that.
These are all worth a look:
There are a few projects I've worked on that I'd like to share:
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