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On Learning New and Old Things: Ham Radio & Standard Chinese

hello [at] robyn.digital (robyn) — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 13:28:20 -0700

I shared this post on mastodon a couple days ago:¹

Screenshot of the linked mastodon post, showing a stack of three books. An ALT Text description is available within the mastodon post.

… which reminded me that I had not updated my Now page in a while, so I got to doing that. Once I realized that the Now post had reached the length of a grade five class paper, I moved the .md file over to the main blog posts folder. So: What you are currently reading started as a Now post, then became far too big for its britches, and now here we are.

Now #003 - Ham Radio Course : Standard Chinese (Again) : Mages & Modems

hello [at] robyn.digital (robyn) — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 10:23:27 -0600

Learning

Ham Radio Operator Basic Certification things!
Standard Chinese / 普通话 / “Mandarin”

I wrote a whole entire blog post on those two (which started out as a Now post and then became waaaaay more than that.)

Reading

vga256’s "Mages & Modems"

This book has been my “palate cleanser before bed” reading for a couple days now, and so far, I am really enjoying it. I would recommend it to folks who either were actively participating in the age of early home computing (the 80s, roughly speaking) for a shot of nostalgia; OR those who were not quite sentient yet in those years, and would like to know how it all started. There’s another very enjoyable layer of life in the Canadian North / life on the Canadian prairies as well, so if you have some familiarity with either of those, you’ll probably get even more out of it.

Host Migration and Mastodon Verification (finally!)

hello [at] robyn.digital (robyn) — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 13:28:20 -0700

01. But Why?

You may have seen me post about how my old hosting provider - InfinityFree, which provides free hosting - was blocking mastodon verification requests. That is, by and large, not a huge deal, but it sure is annoying if you’re as into the fediverse as I am, and also trying to advance its usage and prominence in our digital society. But more on that below.

On top of that, site access speed as well as the speed with which I was able to push new FTP content wasn’t stellar (and no shade to the provider for that, it was a free service after all), and - in late 2025 - I was looking for a Canadian host more than ever. Putting my money where my mouth is and all that.

Now #002 - Switching Hosts : Enshittification : Where to From Here?

hello [at] robyn.digital (robyn) — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 17:23:27 -0600

Oh! Happy New Year. I was almost going to add, “same sh*t, different year, hey?”, but then I figured I didn’t want to start the year off that negatively.

Anyways, currently, I am:

Working On

Switching website hosts. I am trying to put my money where my mouth is, and am currently working on switching to a Canadian host (plus, one that will hopefully let me actually verify my mastodon account. I’m still salty about that.)
- Yes, the host may still use AWS (as an example), but I am trying to take small steps that reduce our reliance on US tech - and the hosting provider part is a piece I can control.
Coming up with a “strategy” (that’s too big of a word) for blogging and other digital engagement tasks. See also: Thinking About.

Enjoying

Cory Doctorow’s excellent missive titled Enshittification (StoryGraph | Indigo.ca). You may have heard of it.
- If not: It deals with the, well, enshittification of basically every app and every platform under the sun, plus a host of other topics (digital sovereignty, interoperability, privacy, all that good stuff). My highlighter was red hot after a couple chapters.

Thinking About

Where to go next, essentially, in the digital realm. Not in the sense of hosting providers, although that’s part of it too. More abstractly, in the sense of:
- What can we do to bring back pieces of the old, good internet? Blogging, Mastodon, what else?
- How can we contribute to dis-enshittification? Unions play a part, as does worker power more broadly, as well as regulation.
  - How can we contribute to furthering regulation?
- How can we speak up effectively against the cruelties of the day?
  - What hazards are associated with speaking up against the cruelties of the day?
- How can we contribute to furthering digital sovereignty?
  - On that note, see Senator Paula Simon’s valiant efforts on getting the Canadian Senate off of Twitter (I will never call it “X”): Mastodon

Following

The inimitable Senator Paula Simons - https://mstdn.ca/@Paulatics
Cory Doctorow - https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic

Creating my Site Theme from `XMin`

hello [at] robyn.digital (robyn) — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 08:43:00 -0600

Why my Own Theme?

When I settled on HUGO as the static generator for my first stab at a 2025-era small/indie web site, I was slowly but surely reminded of how no, you can’t in fact just build a HUGO site without a theme.

Whether or not that is the way to go (I would argue that it is not; see also Bruce Wray’s excellent article on Really getting started with Hugo), that’s where we are. I would prefer if a Hugo site worked without a theme - if it spit out barebones HTML, basically - and we could just slap on different themes to see what the site looks like with those applied. And then pick the one we like best.

Now #001 - This Site : HUGO : Japanese

hello [at] robyn.digital (robyn) — Sat, 02 Aug 2025 14:23:27 -0600

Currently, I am:

Working On

Populating this site more! Taking notes of how this process went, what could have gone better, roadblocks I encountered. Also thinking of content for new, less meta, posts. For this, I am taking inspiration from 32-bit cafe’s excellent ideas for your personal website.

Learning

🇯🇵 Japanese. Sigh. My brain decided that was the language it was now interested in. I’ve been studying for about three months, and while I only have so much time to devote to this outside of my full-time job, I am genuinely shocked at what I am able to read/understand.

(Re-)Learning

Hugo, YAML, and TOML - Hugo in particular has changed a lot since 2019! Did you know that orphan files can still be hanging out on your machine from six years ago that mess with your current install? Maybe I’ll write a blog post on this some time…

Enjoying

Playing the ukulele! I have two concert ukuleles (one Kala, one… I don’t know… el cheapo?) and one Enya concert ukulele. I am also part of a ukulele group that gets together to jam, and sometimes plays regional festivals. Playing a stringed instrument with others on a warm summer night is one of the best things ever. 💜

Planning on

adding a section for “cool websites I have come across” and “links you should probably check out”
spreading the love of the small / indie / web of yore 💜
investigating webrings!? they are a thing (again), yes!?

I have (v0.0.1 of) a website!! 🙌🏼

hello [at] robyn.digital (robyn) — Sat, 02 Aug 2025 08:43:02 -0600

I can’t believe it. I have quite often daydreamed about setting up a simple little statically generated website where I can shoot the shii, maybe with myself, because who’d ever read this!?, about topics I am interested in. But there was always more important digital projects, more important home improvement projects, general Life Stuff, so it didn’t happen.

Also the small web is probably dead, and really where’s the value in devoting my time & effort to something probably about 12 people are ever going to look at… but wait! After coming across fantastic small/indie web sites like BinaryDigit.city and 32bit.cafe, I was starting to wonder:

about

hello [at] robyn.digital (robyn) — Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

My name is Robyn.

By day, I am a data monkey in Canadian tech. I once worked in AAA game dev too.