P&B: Sebastián Monía

This is the 92nd edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Sebastián Monía and his blog, site.sebasmonia.com

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

My name is Sebastián, I was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the early 80s.

I have been working as a software developer since 2004. Over time I did a bit of everything in terms of technologies, but also roles: pure coding, team lead, analyst... I got into programming as a way to run more games in an aging 486 computer. I was 14, and I quickly realized that programming was not gonna free up more memory (unlike playing with config.sys and unloading stuff), but I got hooked into building little programs.

I was never good at building things with my hands, the abstractness of code suited me better :) It wasn't my first career choice. As a teen, I wanted to study astrophysics - inspired by a lot of Carl Sagan books. But I thought that if I did that, I would have to move to another country, and I didn't want to leave even my hometown. That's not the end of the ironies, I also thought that the alternative was to stay and end up in a teaching job, which I didn't think I was cut out for. Yet I became a TA in college (briefly) and after that experience, prepared talks and presentations at most of my jobs >_>

I live with my wife and son in New York City (if you are familiar with the NYC metro area: I don't really live in NYC). I spent 10 years in Denver before that (if you are familiar with the Denver metro area: I didn't really live in Denver). We moved to USA when our son was 8 months old, which was a bit stressing, but here we are. I was also still working on my engineering degree, which at this point I don't think I will ever complete.

Despite being Argentinian, I never cared for football, until the kiddo and I started attending Colorado Rapids games in Denver (at his request). Seeing the game live made me appreciate it and understand it in a new way. We are still fans, and we go to matches when they play close to NYC. Watching the games on TV is a weekly appointment for us. Football is one of our biggest topics, we talk players, tactics, tournaments. I read football books...combining passion with nerdom is fitting for me, I guess.

As for other hobbies and things I enjoy...

I love everything animated, from deeper adult-oriented movies to silly cartoons for kids. My favorite medium is stop motion, because it creates fantasy out of physical, tangible, things.

I have been getting back into reading, I used to complete a few books a year and for no particular reason I stopped at some point. A shame!

I also like playing videogames, rarely if ever online, and mostly independent (smaller) games.

I used to stargaze, but gave away my telescope right before moving here - I had stopped using it much.

I sometimes write code as a hobby, too.

I've been meaning to write an about page for my blog, I should totally copy and paste this :) Speaking of which...

What's the story behind your blog?

I toyed with the idea of blogging many times over the years, when I was younger I used to write a lot. But as with many other things in life, I felt (blogging, writing open source, etc) was best left to people more qualified than me. I finally created a (very short lived) blog about configuring Emacs (a text editor) in Windows in 2017. But publishing a new article was convoluted, and I didn't quite find the tone for it, so I abandoned it.

Speaking of Emacs, it is a 70s/80s editor, but has support for advanced features (like, undoing in only a portion of your document at a time, and multiple clipboards), which gave a new bar to evaluate technology. More importantly, it is also free and open software. And over time, the ideals of making technology accessible, open, free and privacy respecting, started getting into me.

In 2023, I found out about Gemini. Not the Google product! A "protocol": a way to access pages that is not the Web, but its own thing. And it is really small, has no tracking etc. I found an easy to use service to publish a "capsule" (the Gemini term for page). So I created one! Which I won't link, because you need a special browser to access it.

That last point is what pushed me towards creating a regular Web blog. The true resistance to the modern, privacy invasive, and bloated web, isn't to go away to a different place. The best way to fight is from the inside: to stay in the web and keep it real, independent, interesting. Outside of walled gardens and social networks (yes, even Bluesky and Mastodon, the new darlings. Such a contrarian, I know).

My email service includes hosting of static files as web pages, I figured I could use that for the blog, and thus "Hoagie's small corner of the internet" was born :)

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

I have ideas at random times. Sometimes I write while waiting for something else to happen at work, other times I have ideas while walking, and make a quick note on my phone to write about them later. For a couple posts, the ideas come and go, simmering for a few days, until the way to go about them clicks. One time, I wrote about having no idea what to write about :)

I publish the text within a couple hours of typing it - and many times almost immediately, after a quick spell check. And then I have to go back and correct the text, because spelling is not the only thing that can go wrong when writing. Who knew... >_>

I only draft and revisit the (few) pure technical posts, to make sure that the code has no errors, and the explanations flow correctly.

So far, I haven't had to delete any content for being too silly/confidently wrong/hurtful, and maybe if that happened I would think of having someone proof reading the text. But on the other hand, I like the idea that my blog is stream-of-conscious-y.

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

The one thing I would say I "need" to write is either my mechanical keyboard, or using my personal laptop (that happens to have a keyboard I like. Or that I am used to. Maybe both). It's the digital version of having the right pen.

Other than that, I can write anywhere. I noticed that the more personal a post is, the more likely it is that I write it at my desk, at night.

I do believe that the physical space can make a difference. I haven't tested it for a blog post yet, but I am one of those people who equate writing code with writing prose: closer to a craft than an engineering practice. I've been stuck in the past with a coding problem, and moving to a different area, or working from a coffee shop for a day, got the thoughts flowing again.

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

My hosting only supports static files, so that settled a lot of technical decisions right there. But I always knew I didn't want to tie myself to a tool (site generator, framework, etc). Part of the fun of the site was coming up with my own "publishing tools". So I write directly in HTML, and have a few commands in my editor to synchronize the content, add formatted footnotes, links to images, etc. The whole thing, can be found in SourceHut. I don't expect it to be re-usable at all, but you can take a look, if you are curious. The downside to this custom tooling, is that there are features that that are still unsupported, like tag navigation. Some day...

The domain is a subdomain of the one I used for my email, sebasmonia.com. Which is the why of the funky website URL, too.

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

Well, speaking of the URL, it would be nice to have something...different. I am not sure what. The name is a mouthful, and while I don't care for concealing my identity in any way, having my full name right there feels...dorky :)

I know other sites do that too, but in my case it wasn't a conscious and confident choice. So, dorky.

Other than that, no, I wouldn't change too many things. The blogging is happening at a somewhat regular cadence (knocking wood), and the fact that I have a very simple site helps me publish often: I feel like I found my way of making it all work.

Sometimes I wish I should have started earlier! But then, I wouldn't have the same confidence to "put myself out there". Wishing for changes is a slippery slope...it happened when and how it happened for a reason. (Probably a less meaningful reason that we give the universe credit for. Usually chance. And that is OK, too.)

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?

The blog is, in a way, free? Because I am paying for the email and domain anyway. But since that's a lame answer, here are the costs:

My position regarding monetization: I think people should do whatever works for them.

One of the curious changes I had when I became more concerned about free software and privacy and all that jazz, is that I am more likely to pay for my tools and services. Example, paid email instead of Outlook.com/GMail/etc. And I started donating to people who wrote libraries and tools I found useful. I have made small donations, here and there, to independent websites, too.

In my own blog, I don't see the need. I think if I monetized it (which I hadn't considered until this question), I would write thinking of an audience, it would spoil the mmmmm voice? I have right now.

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

This is a difficult one, as I am working through the list of People and Blogs to keep adding bookmarks :) But excluding people already featured in P&B, a few recommendations:

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

To no one's surprise, if they ever read my site, or made it this far in the interview, I will share some random commentary :)

This was the 92nd edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Sebastián. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.

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