I am notorious for never grasping how many people know how much about what. To save myself from any further embarrassment I won’t spend my time here telling you what the app is about. The team does that nicely over here. I do think I have something to say about what Scriptogr.am came exactly at the right time for me.

As we more further down the line of Web 2.0 and slowly into the abyss that is Web 3.0, I feel the definitions of web design are evolving greatly. I remember back in the day when it was just one website out of fifty that looked really beautiful, and how I would spend many hours on the site just being surrounded by all the pretty. Now, as more and more distinct design trends are emerging, looking pretty isn’t the main goal anymore. It has become a criterium. And most websites I know meet that criterium in one way or another. Now that the eyes have what they need, the user wants for the website to be up to speed with their brain.

I am nostalgic about the way the Web used to be. I miss the handcrafted blogs that I used to visit, and the intimate windows they gave me into the lives of strangers.

I miss that I knew all the domain names by heart. It is a phantom pain of sorts; an unrest in the tip of my fingers reminding me I no longer need to make series of key combinations to find those personal public spaces, some more arts-and-craftsy than others, because most of them are gone. These days, I just circulate through a small number of news sites, like I did when I first got online as a young girl, not yet having found my way around the Internet.

Ryan Holiday describes the how and why of his ‘Commonplace Book’, a collection of quotes and other pieces of text written down on index cards. I, too, have been keeping such a system since I started college. I always carry a few cards when I’m out and about, held together by bulldog clips.

Incredibly handy and simple, it has turned out.

The only journal I’ve ever been able to successfully keep is a photo journal. Not so much the one-book or one-website type, but more so a simply collection of visual anecdotes, encounters and experiences. My first website was called www.doyoulikemytightsweater.com. It was a HTML-based one-photo-per-page website that I updated very frequently. Ever since the domain expired and I got a little sick of getting pervy emails (I should have known), I had never owned a photo website that I loved so much.

It was indeed great while it lasted, until about three weeks ago. Churning out little posts, coming up with fun tidbits, roaming the streets of Eindhoven with a little noteback. Getting feedback. Compliments. Your mother’s cousins’ daughters’ coworkers are reading your blog. And then university life begins. And there is time for nothing.

So here’s a change of strategy, and of pace.

This website will be featuring different forms of content from now on. No more updates on my general well-being, college achievements, and peculiar trains of thought. Sure, there’s enough happening, but the focus isn’t where it should be: on a white piece of paper. Instead of feeling shame about my lack of commitment, I will simply change the contents.