Welcome to Conduit (new blog engine)

If you're reading this, you're looking at a completely rebuilt blog.

Not a theme change. Not a migration. A from-scratch rebuild of everything – the content system, the search, the social layer, and yes, even the way you can tell me I'm wrong.

I'm calling it Conduit.

Why Rebuild Everything?

Last year when I built Humbled and Grateful, I put together a content pipeline that actually worked. Automations with n8n. Search powered by Meilisearch. Video processing with ffmpeg. It was fun, it was clean, and it made me realize how much of modern publishing software is solving problems that shouldn't exist in the first place.

So I kept building.

What started as "I should probably update my blog" turned into "what if I just built the whole thing properly?" And here we are.

What's New

Comments are back. Not some third-party widget that loads seventeen trackers. Real comments, hosted here, under my control. You can actually have a conversation now.

Upvotes and downvotes. If something resonates – or doesn't – you can say so with a click. I'm genuinely curious to see what lands and what falls flat. It's a feedback loop that doesn't require you to compose a tweet.

Search that actually works. I cannot overstate how refreshing it is to have search that just... finds things. Type what you're looking for. Get results. No SEO gaming, no mysterious ranking algorithms, no "did you mean" nonsense. Meilisearch continues to be a reminder that software can be simple and still be excellent.

Bluesky integration. Posts automatically syndicate to Bluesky. If that's where you prefer to follow along, you can do that now. The fediverse is getting more interesting by the day, and I'd rather be part of it than watch from the sidelines.

The Plan for Open Source

Here's the thing: I didn't build this just for myself.

Conduit is going to be open source. Not "eventually" in the vague way that means never – I mean actually released, with documentation, once I've stress-tested it enough to feel confident it won't embarrass me.

The goal is a publishing platform that's opinionated about the things that matter (clean URLs, fast search, no tracking garbage) and flexible about the things that don't. Something you could actually run yourself without needing a DevOps team or a subscription to seventeen SaaS products.

I'm doing the stress testing now. You're part of it, whether you know it or not. If something breaks, let me know – that's what the comments are for.

What Stays the Same

The content isn't going anywhere. All the telecom policy rants, the technical how-tos, the occasional detour into whatever happens to be annoying me that week – it's all here, and there's more coming.

Same voice. Same opinions. Better plumbing.

Welcome to Conduit. Poke around. Break something. Tell me what you think.