I’ve always been interested in the concept of building a “home on the internet” so to say. It could be the autistic urge to build a “basecamp” anywhere I go, but whatever it is, I’m gonna go through my “basecamp” on the internet.

WTF Am I Talking About?

What is a “basecamp” you ask? Well the last thing I want to do is speak for all autistic people (doing so is futile, I will make no such attempt), but for me, I like to have a place that’s mine, something that I have control over. So much of the world is a lot for us to handle, so having a place like this is really important. It’s a place to recharge, a place for us to be—well—me.

In the Real World

In the real world, that’s my apartment, it’s a place that’s all my own and it’s something I have complete control over. If it’s too bright I can close the blinds, if it smells weird I can light a candle, if things are too loud I can turn down the music or put on my headphones without having to worry about other people. Within my apartment I have multiple smaller basecamps: my couch, my bed, and—most importantly—my desk. These are the specific spots where I can do that recharging. My desk is like Sheldon’s spot. It’s the center of me. It’s where I work on this blog, it’s where I design and build my apps, it’s where I compose and record. This is my creative home.

On the Internet

Okay so that’s enough backstory, how does this apply to the internet? After all—that is the title of the post. These are going to be the places where I have control over my digital existence as opposed to my physical. Let’s get into it.

Arc

This is currently my browser of choice. I’ve been flip-flopping between it and Zen for a little bit since The Browser Company isn’t really working on Arc these days (which really sucks, but I’m interested in seeing what comes next). I honestly have just fallen in love with how this browser functions. I’ve been using this browser on and off since late 2022 (Halloween, according to my digital member card), my name is even on the credits page. I remember using the browser before it was on Windows, even before it was on mobile (originally with the Arc Mobile Companion, which was actually pretty cool for a mobile browser in its own right).

What’s funny is that I’m singing its praises now, but back then I actually barely used it. I’ve actually spent a lot of time talking about the things that I didn’t like about Arc. At the time I said it wasn’t trying to solve a problem that I had. I wasn’t a tab hoarder and I wasn’t using a whole ton of web apps at the time. Nowadays my life basically runs through Notion (writer’s note: I didn’t even plan this transition it just kinda happened), which is the next tool I’ll talk about.

Notion

A lot of people talk about Notion and similar productivity tools being a “second brain” but for me Notion is probably my first brain. If it’s not there it’s not real for me. This is where all of my notes going back to freshman year of college exist, this is where I keep track of all of my progress for this site, my business, and all of my other content that I create. Notion Calendar basically runs my life. I have all of my tasks connected through Notion and Notion Calendar and I try to use that as much as possible. Unfortunately, due to various circumstances, I can’t use Notion or Arc for work, which is sad and frustrating, but it’s not my call. I’ve got separate stuff over there, but I guess you can say that helps with work/life balance. Whatever. Can’t use the good stuff at work, oh well. But seriously: I wouldn’t be able to function without Notion at this point (hyperbole, obviously, but just barely).

Bluesky & Mastodon

So I’ve been really wishy-washy on my use of Bluesky over the years. I keep trying to make more commitments to it as a platform, but up until around now it just wasn’t where my “home” was. For a while, it’s been Mastodon that’s been my “home” but that’s sorta been shifting really even within the course of this week. I’ve been spending a lot more time on Bluesky as of late, that’s where more of my IRL friends are, and I’m actually starting to find the application ecosystem rather interesting. Both of these networks are an important part of the Social Web, which works with various decentralized protocols that work differently from each other technically, but all want to achieve the same goal: keep social media in the hands of people and not corporations. People have different philosophies on how to accomplish that and that’s fine, but the more that’s out there, the better things will get. As of right now, I’ve been using Bluesky a bit more though.

Ghost

This is the Content Management System (CMS) I use for this blog. I didn’t feel like building this out myself, so I’m using a template and I’m running a hosted Ghost site through Ghost Pro instead of self-hosting (at least for right now). I can imagine that in the future I make this even more my own and self-host a headless instance of Ghost and build my own frontend on top of it, but that’s not something I have the time or desire to tackle right now. I like how modern it feels and how easy it is to use. It doesn’t have the vast plugin/theme ecosystem that something like Wordpress has, but I enjoy using it. In addition to that, Ghost is working on integrating with the Social Web, connecting this blog both to Mastodon and Bluesky in the future, which I’m super excited for. This whole concept of the Social Web is one of the reasons I founded Stygian Tech and I’m excited to be gaining experience and eventually trying my hand at contributing to the Social Web with infrastructure, not just content.

GitHub

It’s GitHub. That’s where my code lives. You can see the source code for both of my apps and I host the code for my websites on there too, but that’s not openly available (for no reason other than I didn’t feel like it, there’s nothing secret about the sites, it’s just some crappy Next.js code). But yeah, you know what GitHub is if you’ve ever written a line of code.

Closing Thoughts

So these are the main tools that I use for building my digital basecamp—my home on the internet. It’s a collection of websites that I can control, it’s something that’s mine and I am free to do what I will with it. Do you have a home on the internet? Do you think this is interesting? Do you think this is stupid? Let me know over on Bluesky or Mastodon.