I haven't heard the term commonplace book until today. It sounds like an art journal, a diary which includes drawings, maybe a scrapbook which includes things cut and pasted in from magazines and other sources. It is a curated collection of thoughts, ideas, and interests. The idea isn't so new but the phrase is new to me.

This description comes from a site which hosted commonplace journals. Its gone now.

A commonplace book is a collection of remarkable quotations, reflections, and oddities gathered from one's reading, thoughts, or experience--in short, a reading and writing journal.

A private commonplace book is also a great way to organize your research by author, source, and subject, and gives you the ability to display and search your notes by each category and by keyword.

I think a personal website is an online page (or more) created to share interests without marketing at people. Usually, its a simple site. Almost something I could build myself (at first glance anyway) limited as I am with plain HTML skills and a dash of CSS, maybe some javascript. Well not really, but I'm not 100% clueless about javascript.

There are less personal websites, or are they just so much harder to find? It could be either way. I tend to find ideas, links, and groups for personal site makers in clusters. Start somewhere and follow the trail with all sorts of interesting and unique stops along the way. So, here are the latest I have found. Some are more for people with knowledge beyond mine: developers and programmers who do not make cookie cutter stuff for WordPress. I don't make stuff for WordPress, but it seems phony (to me) when people call themselves web designers and only know how to deal with WordPress (not always well). I may as well call myself a web designer if that was all there is to it.

Octothorp - Github link

Octothorpes are hashtags and backlinks that can be used on regular websites, connecting pages across the open internet regardless of where they're hosted.

Octothorp is redeveloping/ bringing back the blogroll and webring idea. I think its improved a little. People shouldn't need to update every link in the ring, there should be some automation (as far as I have understood it) that would stop showing a link if it disappears. This was one problem with the old blogrolls/ webrings.

Do you know, the original webring is still online? You may never have heard of it, even if you are as old as I am.

Expanding Unidirectional Ring Of Pages

EUROPa is a different way to connect up and explore the World-Wide Web. It was started at Imperial College, London, UK on 1994-12-22 by Denis Howe just to see how far it would spread.

Blag

blag is a blog-aware, static site generator -- it uses Markdown and is written in Python.

Blag might be even simpler than Chryp Lite, which I'm using now. But, I don't think it is simple enough for me to work with. You need to open up terminals in your OS. I used to do that when I had Ubuntu Linux. But, its been years since I was able to get Ubuntu to work on any computer I have bought (retail) in a long time. I'd go back to Ubuntu, if I could save everything (kind of a big job). Then remove MS Windows, which the PC is not keen on allowing. Installing Ubuntu was not hard, or difficult. Using it was easier than Windows really. Plus, I could laugh at sites claiming I've been attacked by MS Windows in some way. If you are running Linux, you might like to try Blag.

11ty - Eleventy is a static site generator. Requires javascript and being able to run things in your computer terminal. It looks nice and clean but... not so simple as I would like these days.

Bukmark Club - "To be eligible for a listing in this directory, a website must have a curated collection of bookmarks and/or links to other websites".

I have had so many collections of links for assorted topics. It comes from all the years of editing at The Open Directory Project, now Curlie.org. Unless you just have a handful of links, its is a LOT of work to keep a collection of links updated. You need something to help you go through and find any which are broken. But, I'd still like to update some of my pages of links and add them to this directory. :)

Places to list your personal website:

• HTTV - Hypertext TV
• BlogScroll
• A Website is a Room
• Personal Site .es
• URL. Town
• Gossip's Web - "the directory of handmade webpages"
• The Wild Wild Web
• smallweb

Description of a personal website which I thought was a bit rough around the edges but worked:

The entries on this website were written to be written and not necessarily to be read. While they have been made public, the same could be said of garbage bags discarded in the woods or stomach contents expelled against a wall. The author expects nothing from the reader and asks only to be accorded the same courtesy.

Rationale More from the same person, on another of his sites.

There is something inherently suspect about publicly volunteering information without being asked or provoked. Anyone who engages in such behavior bears the burden of explaining why they chose to do so rather than remain silent. In the absence of a satisfying justification, silence must appear far preferable.

Starting a personal website such as this one may come across as presumptuous or arrogant, provided there is no evidence of prior interest in one’s person. The author of such a website appears to be making an implicit claim that it will be useful, interesting, or relevant to someone else. It is only natural to expect them to defend this claim.

I regret to say that any justification I can provide will likely be insufficient and disappointing. At the time of writing, I have no reason to believe there exists any general interest in myself. Moreover, I most emphatically do not believe that such interest ought to exist. I do not particularly wish to be known. I have nothing particularly important to say. I am not even particularly interested in the general concept of communication with others.

The truth is that I created this website for purely personal reasons. I view it as an experiment in proving to myself that I, in fact, do exist, and that there is something that could be said about myself. I needed this because I tend to consistently doubt these two points.

It could be argued that I could have achieved the same result by writing some facts about myself on a loose piece of paper or by digging a hole in the ground and shouting the facts into it, rather than publishing them on the web for the whole world to see. This is a sound argument. In response, I can only offer a vague intuition that proving one’s existence must have something to do with establishing an objectively verifiable presence in the external world.

I assume you have visited this website of your own volition. I am afraid you will have to furnish your own reasons for reading its contents, and if none can be found, you have only yourself to blame. Whatever your motivation, by being here you are contributing to the success of my experiment. Thank you.

I've reposted all of this because some of the best stuff I find disappears without notice. Very likely this site (mine, all of them) will disappear without much notice or fanfare too. If someone does continue to pay the web host, it doesn't last forever. I'm glad for the Wayback Machine and Internet Archives. Now and then I give them a few dollars I can spare, thinking of the future and hoping I won't entirely disappear from it. I'm silly that way. I think its a sign of age.

You don't have to be traveling afar to send postcards to people 'back home'. You can be a pen pal and write to people around the world. You can also join groups like PostCrossing. "A project that allows you to send postcards and receive postcards back from random people around the world".

But, what do you write on a postcard, especially if you aren't traveling, seeing new places and faces?

You can write almost anything, fairly short to fit on a postcard. Introduce yourself. Write about some interesting thing you did, or saw, or heard about. Write about your location - whatever image your postcard shows. Ask questions about where they live - you have their mailing address so you at least know where they live.

Don't assume you have nothing interesting to write about. If you are traveling and sending postcards home to family and friends you certainly have new things to make note of. Silly things that happened along the way. Something that you did or heard, smelled, touched, watched, or tasted. What do you think about the places you've seen. What would your family/ friend like to know about: history, hobbies, different customs, sports, food?

If nothing else, just write about your day. A postcard can be a snapshot of your day, your adventures, your ideas.

Don't forget to use good penmanship. Postcards are usually hand written. Although you could try out mail art, someone still needs to read or understand what you write.

What could you write about if you were sending a postcard today?

Following instructions is hard. I like getting lost and finding my own way. You never know what you find along the way.