Personal Webpage of Blake Watson

One day last week, I updated Visual Studio Code.

I just like saying that.

On my (retired) disability blog, back in 2010, I wrote a post called The tangible world wherein I ruminated on how I felt less and less able to interact physically with the world around me.

I consider myself a newcomer to D&D, based on my age.

Back in July of last year, I blogged about breathing new life into my freeform digital character sheet app.

I stumbled across this set of questions on Shellsharks’ website (which is a cool personal site oozing with inspirational indie web vibes).

Update 2026-07-31: TL;DR don’t install the GSD that I’ve linked to in this article.

A bit of website housekeeping.

I first published this list after seeing a similar post by Robb Knight (2023, 2026) and many others.

You may already know about tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) like D&D.

I always feel like I didn’t accomplish much during the year until I start looking at my notes and commit history.

Back in October, I had the pleasure of speaking at MagnoliaConf 2025.

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) entered my life in 2010.

Now that LLMs have been around for a little while, we can discern what they’re good at and what they’re not.

For years, I’ve used Hoefler&Co.’s webfont service, Cloud.typography, for several of my websites—including, until today, this one.

Nowadays I’m used to signing up for services and discovering that the username blakewatson is already taken—yes I’m one of those people who uses their real name everywhere.

My first foray into digital character sheets was the 5th edition form-fillable PDF, the official ones from Wizards of the Coast.

I don’t know how it got here so fast.

May 4 is a special day.

I’m fascinated by videos and other visual mediums that compare the sizes of objects and structures in the universe.

I’m coming up to a curve in the road.

Chrome Web Store banner image In my last post I mentioned that I was working on a rewrite of my *checks notes…* eight-year-old (!)

I’m nearly done rewriting my browser extension, A Fine Start, moving away from Vue 2 and using vanilla JavaScript.

Sometimes it surprises me how things that I consider essential in my life—things that form parts of my identity—might have never found me.

Well, here we are again—another year.

I’m a big fan of home-cooked apps—a term I first heard from author Robin Sloan and have since run with.

On Thursday, October 10, I released HTML for People into the wild.

I switch notetaking apps constantly.

Spinal muscular atrophy is pretty rare.

The following is a modified version of a writeup I did for my players in a play-by-post game we’ve just started on Discord.

I did a bit of a design refresh Two years ago this month, I decided to make my own little app for keeping bookmarks.

For several years now I have been wondering how I might fit an e-ink display into my workflow.

Screenshot of the homepage for posterity.

My brother, Matt, and I decided to explore our fairly different musical tastes and do a song swap.

No one is ever going to invent a Blake’s Life Simulator.

I don’t link to it often but I do have an archive of my old disability blog.

For two years in a row I’ve taken some time off at the end of the year to rest and relax and, most importantly, to work on personal projects.

I always feel like nothing much happened during the year.

In the fall of 2022, I started using Twitter more.

I’m supposed to be frantically writing a story for National Novel Writing Month.

Links and stuff Here’s quick list of links to the stuff I mention in the talk.

I’m not a functional programming guru by any means, but I have a passing curiosity and I’ve been trying to learn more about it.

In late October 2019, I desperately scoured the NaNoWriMo forums searching for creative inspiration ahead of November’s big writing event.[1] At some point, I decided to write down as many ways to generate a story as I could think of.

One web browser is plenty for most folks but you might find yourself needing more for various reasons.

I had an annoying situation where, when my AirPods connected to my Mac, they would take over as the active input device (ie, microphone).

In high school, I still had the ability to handwrite, albeit with some difficulty.

On June 16, 2023 a storm rolled through Mississippi.

One of my favorite game developers, Zachtronics, released their final game, Last Call BBS, a little while back.

I don’t talk about this often, but I use a team of caregivers to help with all of my daily personal care needs.

Pretty soon after learning CSS and building my first few websites without table layouts (yes I’m old) I stumbled across the world of CSS frameworks.