with words, wonder
James
I'm James (he/him/his). I'm a writer and a Taylor Swift fan. I hope this website can bring a little bit of joy into your day.
August 2026
Top Words
- artemis
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- indieweb
- design
- wonders
- episode
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- software
- designing
- sunset
- morning
All posts (271)
I love watching the sun set, from golden hour to the moment when the last pink hues fade from the sky. Every moment is magical. As I write, there are bands of purple radiating behind the ripples of thin clouds on the horizon.I periodically look out the window when the sky is clear and the sun is setting, eager to...
When I loaded my website this morning – an hour or two after having woken up with great joy to rays of golden light radiating through the edges of the curtains – I noticed the cherry blossom emoji (🌸). It must be the first day of spring! I love moments like this when my website surprises me. The seasonal emojis...
Hues of red and lavender blended together in the clear evening sky. I don’t think I have seen the sky like this before. I write with my laptop propped up on one lap as I gaze out the window, trying to find the words to describe the sky. As the minutes pass, the sky changes. The sun sets further over the hills; pink...
One of the ideas Frances shared when we exchanged blog post titles was to write about a memory from a library. While the prompt “Sparking joy” is the one I ended up writing about, as soon as I started to think about library memories a few ideas came to mind. One memory in particular stands out.Last year I visited...
Two years ago, I visited Greenwich in London. I had been to London before, but Greenwich was that bit further out so I hadn’t made the trip. What drew me to Greenwich was the Royal Observatory and the Prime Meridian line. The day I visited, I had great joy standing over the Prime Meridian line, thinking I had one...
The book for this month’s IndieWeb Book Club, hosted by Nick, is Christopher Alexander’s book The Timeless Way of Building.The book is about architecture, but its principles have broader application to any discipline involved with building something.The idea of a “pattern language”, discussed throughout the book, is...
Whenever I visit an art gallery, there is inevitably a painting that sparks joy, or otherwise leaves me with an impression that sticks with me. Peter Paul Rubens’ Landscape by Moonlight was one such painting.The painting depicts a landscape at night time. The ground and the trees on the left are dark. The river in...
When I write about nature, I sometimes go to my archives and search for what phenomena I am thinking about. I was looking at my previous posts on blossom and saw that I last wrote about the topic on the 5th of April, 2025. I started my post with “One of my favourite times of the year is when trees blossom.” These...
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This weekend I started work on rewriting the static site generator that I use for this website, Aurora. I was looking over the codebase and wondered if I could make the code a bit more efficient and easier to understand. I had ideas for new abstractions – things I could do to reduce the amount of code needed.One of...
I think back to how I used to think about how my finger tips would hurt if I learned to play the guitar. I was right: my fingers do get a bit sore. But with practice playing for longer gets easier. I am so glad I started to play.I have been continuing to learn new Taylor Swift songs lately, singing along where I...
I am trading blog post titles with Frances. Frances wrote Where art exists in my life. I will be writing “Sparking joy”.On the top right corner of my bedroom whiteboard, written in orange pen – one of my favourite colours! – reads:Have a great day xxxWhenever I read this message, added a few days ago, I smile a...
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