Let’s start from the basics: can you introduce yourself?

My name is Nick, and I have a blog named Pixel Envy. I live in Calgary, which has repeatedly been rated as one of the world’s most liveable cities by people who do not live here. I went to art college and stumbled into a career in web design, front-end development, branding, and (begrudgingly) search optimization. I like to read, learn about music, cook, take photographs, and — occasionally — I enjoy writing, too.

I read quickly but write slowly; I can type much faster than I can think. I am glad this is a hobby and not my actual full-time job.

What’s the story behind your blog?

I began Pixel Envy by emulating successful writers and formats. Like many people in the mid-to-late 2000s, I created many blogging dead-ends. I overcomplicated past attempts. By simplifying to a text-mostly website without comments or pictures, I was able to focus on what I wanted to do. I cribbed the links-and-articles format from writers like Andy Baio and Jason Kottke; I built more comprehensive narratives with multi-link posts like those on Metafilter and the topical clusters on Techmeme.

I fell into writing about Apple because I find the company’s unique identity fascinating. I have since grown to think more deeply about privacy and digital ethics; these subjects now represent the bulk of my work.

I found my identity and voice by doing a lot of things poorly for a long time.

My biggest regrets are in the things I wrote because I thought they were things I needed to do to be taken seriously or remain relevant.

What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?

For me, the creative process is just a working process — utilitarian from start to finish. I am most often responding to something I see in the news. I check Techmeme throughout the day, I have something like 300-plus feeds in my RSS reader, and I have a Slack-based notification system. This is overkill for a hobby. The way I have it set up is thankfully not as much like drinking from a firehose as it seems in large part because I try to be quite focused in what I will write about.

Usually this comes in the form of little link posts — maybe a few per day — that are specific to topical news. I rarely link to something without reading other coverage or perspectives about the same news, and I do my best to verify what I read with primary sources. These posts help me stay aware of unfolding news, and they shape the longer-form articles I write less frequently — perhaps publishing a few per month. I have several articles I have been chipping away at for a while, and a list in Things of subjects I would like to write about one day.

I have no separate drafting stage; a post is a draft until it is published or, occasionally, deleted. The process of writing is, itself, a process of thinking, so the organization of arguments reveals itself as I put down more words. My workflow is informed by my dependence on documentary sources, and it looks mostly like reading. While I find writing a mostly utilitarian pursuit and avoid publishing anything that sounds too much like writing, I hope a shred of my personality reveals itself.

I proofread everything I write. Still, there is no better spellchecker than the "publish" button.

Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical space influences your creativity?

I am not too picky about my creative environment. These words are coming to you from beside a smouldering fire in a cabin in the Rocky Mountains, but I am not a writer who benefits from seclusion. I like to have a reliable internet connection and to be relatively unbothered by the world around me. Depending on what I am writing about, it can take a beat or two to get into the right headspace. I am at my best on my Mac, and when I am a little bit sleep-deprived. Ideally, I am outdoors on a warm day, with a nice beverage and some great music.

A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack?

I am a reluctant WordPress user. It, in the process of transforming into the CMS for the world, has betrayed its name in becoming worse for websites based on the written word. However, it plays extremely well with MarsEdit, which is a truly excellent piece of software. I designed and built my WordPress theme. I am working on a redesigned website; I am always working on a redesigned website.

I prefer writing on my 2021 14-inch MacBook Pro, which is the best computer I have ever used. Longer-form articles are shaped in BBEdit and, infrequently, in iA Writer on my iPhone. Shorter-form link posts are written directly in MarsEdit. I have a handful of utility scripts to help me do things like converting quoted text into Markdown and finding duplicate reference links.

While I have experimented with various generative A.I. products, I have rarely found they improve what I have written or the process itself. I tried getting ChatGPT to give me headline ideas, but it has been trained on too many bad headlines to produce anything worthwhile. I sometimes paste articles into some generative A.I. tool or another for proofreading and it is occasionally helpful. Generative A.I. circumvents the process of thinking that comes from writing, however, so I find its utility limited, to say nothing of its frightening ethics.

Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?

How I had originally answered this question is that I would almost certainly have a bunch of changes as I have countless regrets. However — and this is one of my favourite things about this craft, as it encourages the writer to justify a position — I recognize I would probably feel the same regardless of the name I chose, the posts I wrote, or the technology stack I use. I do have posts I regret, and I have gone through different phases of what I believe or am willing to defend. I believe this is a process known as “learning”.

Though I have issues with WordPress, I feel certain I made the correct call from day one in using a CMS I control instead of a hosted and managed option. I understand why someone would choose to ease the technical burden. Not me, though. The customization it affords has been instrumental in building the kind of website I want to have.

Financial question since the Web is obsessed with money: how much does it cost to run your blog? Is it just a cost, or does it generate some revenue? And what’s your position on people monetising personal blogs?

One of the nicest things about using a text-based medium — as opposed to, say, audio or video — is that infrastructure can be inexpensive. I spend around $110 USD per year to host Pixel Envy, plus around $40 per year in related domain names. I do not use many images, so I do not need a delivery network or anything similarly intensive.

I offset those costs first with a small, unobtrusive, and non-behavioural ad, and then with Patreon and paid sponsorships. Sometimes I wonder if it is fair to do this for a hobby.

Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And also, who do you think I should be interviewing next?

It feels trite to recommend Derek "Menswear Guy" Guy now that he has become a media sensation, but Die Workwear is an essential read for me. Guy’s passion and ability to describe style as a language make menswear understandable and approachable.

I financially support several publications, including Defector, which is one of my favourite websites despite not being a Sports Person.

Frustratingly, a lot of good blogs are newsletters, which is just a blog delivered through email. I use Feedbin in part because it allows me to reroute new issues to NetNewsWire and treat them as standard blog posts. Anyway, I like Today in Tabs very much (and financially support it), and Web Curios.

Final question: is there anything you want to share with us?

Thank you, Manuel, for inviting me to share my thoughts here.