Moving Away

Hello! I’m Chris, this is METAGAME, and you are one of my precious subscribers!

First, let’s dismantle that somewhat click-baity title. I’m still in Hong Kong and not moving (not yet, anyway). That said, Hong Kong summer (feels-like temperatures around 37-40 degrees and 80%+ humidity 24/7, 8 months in a year) is making me question my life choices. I do not recommend running in these conditions (why did I then register for Singapore half-marathon? idiot!)

What‘s moving is this blog and that’s why this newsletter has been quiet in the last few months.

I’m trying new things. It’s all still a little bit broken, somewhat awkward, and a whole lot work-in-progress (just like the author…) But it’s fun work and it’s rewarding progress. And it’s now in good-enough state to show it.

So… what is going on, exactly?

The address remains the same: metagame.hk. But once you click it (please click it!), you’ll see that everything else is different. I’m no longer hosting this blog on Ghost. Instead, it’s a static-HTML website built with 11ty/Eleventy and hosted on GitHub Pages. A lot of it is hand-made in HTML, some of it is vibe-coded in CSS.

And it’s not just back-end and hosting. The way I publish changes as well — and big time.

METAGAME now has two feeds. One is Articles — which is exactly what you would expect from a blog. Which is just regular blog posts. Second one is Updates — and these are social-media-like statuses. This way METAGAME is now my home base and a place where most of my internet activity begins. It’s what I’ve always wanted.

Updates are automatically cross-posted to Threads, Mastodon, and Bluesky. They’re meant to cover my social media presence. You can also subscribe to them via RSS if you want.

Articles have their separate RSS feed, if you’re just interested in those. And there’s a third RSS (is that too many?) with everything, if you want everything.

Does it work? Does it make sense? I hope so. I do want to have these two separate categories of entries on my blog. Doing it this way today; maybe in the future I’ll do it the way The Verge does it on their main page.

These RSS feeds are the best way to keep up with METAGAME for now — because I haven’t figured out the newsletter part yet. My Ghost subscription will expire this October and I can’t justify sending them another $108 to host a tiny, unprofitable (non-monetizeable?) blog/newsletter like this one.

So please consider adding METAGAME to your RSS reader. I’m sorry for this inconvenience — but it’s for the best in the long run! This will be my last newsletter email for a while.

To-do list for things for the blog remains huge (newsletter, ethical analytics, some automations on the back-end, slash pages, favicon and maybe a logo, etc.) and I’m happily tackling it one item at a time (I added blogroll page just this week). I’m claiming my own place on the web this way.

Okay, announcement time over. What else has been going on? All still within the theme of trying new things. Trying — with various amounts of success.

• This is the Year of Linux on Desktop for me — I’m trying to detach myself from Apple’s ecosystem. I feel kind of done with US big tech (and late stage capitalism overall) and experimenting with Linux and open source is my act of defiance.
• To no surprise at all, I go back and forth between Linux and Mac. Just like I go back and forth between to-do, notes, and journaling apps.
• The latest state of affairs is that I’m looking forward to checking out iPad OS 26 public beta next week(?) This might be the one (I say to myself every year…) One last chance, Apple!
• I tried to talk myself out of purchasing Nintendo Switch 2 — didn’t work.
• Lastly, in this post I wrote about the principles behind the blog re-design and included a few tips for those who are also considering switching away from platforms and to static-HTML.

So far, this transition has been super enjoyable. Diving into HTML again makes me feel like it’s 2015 or 2010 again. When the internet was smaller but more genuine and personal, and not yet claimed by corporations and enshittification (or is it just nostalgia speaking?)

And if you allow me one last announcement… For those of you who subscribed to METAGAME because of Season One’s photowalk across Japan’s mid-tier cities — I’m excited to reveal that something similar is finally coming! Be on the lookout for new posts coming to you from Morioka — this September.

(Yes, that’s one more reason to add METAGAME to RSS!)

Thanks so much for reading! —Chris