People and Blogs: Barry Hess

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

I'm a programmer-type from rural Minnesota. I grew up on a farm near a small town. Now I live in a bustling city of 27,000 people…surrounded by farmland. In other words, I'm still in rural Minnesota.

I studied computer science at a small private college, which led to my 26-year career programming computers. First it was at an insurance company, then it was at a SaaS startup, and now it's for myself at a little company I run with my business partner.

My hobbies are mostly typical: reading, watching movies, and the occasional video game (meaning Fortnite). My favorite sport is baseball, though I'll watch the occasional other sport. I also try to do a little woodworking, cooking, and, well, blogging. Blogging is a hobby, yes?

What's the story behind your blog?

I decided to start a blog in 2004. Personal blogs were popping up all over, and I was enjoying meeting new people through the comments section in these blogs. I also have a couple non-blogging friends that were doing their thing on Xanga. The blogs I followed were either friends, friends of friends, about the Minnesota Twins (baseball), or about U.S. news and politics.

Online I generally use the handle bjhess. That was what my college gave me for my first ever user account. Toward the end of college I was looking for a domain name, and unfortunately there was already a techy person with my first and last name who grabbed that obvious option. (They still have the domain to this day!) So bjhess.com it was, and the name stuck.

I blogged via b2evolution and WordPress in the early days, probably at Dreamhost. In the early 2010s I switched over to a self-hosted and customized install of Scanty, and I ran that for a long time. In 2022 I switched to an HTML-only site. That lasted about a year before I and my colleagues built Pika.

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

I don't have a system or process for blogging. My inspiration is generally from interesting things happening in my life. That can be a vacation, a recent discovery, an experiment that I'm trying, or a feeling that I'm feeling.

Most of my posts are written in a single session, with a couple rounds of editing for grammar, tone, and flow. There's only been one occasion where I asked others to read my writing before posting. I've recently tried the "weekly update" format of posts, which to this point has been me adding links and notes to a draft leading up to finalizing the post on Friday or Saturday. I'm toying with updating the draft post daily throughout the week before publishing, but then if I'm doing that I wonder if I should…just post those daily updates daily?

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

Inspiration comes and goes, but I generally prefer to have quiet while writing, whether that's natural or simulated via headphones.

Aside from that basic need, I don't strongly believe that physical spaces influence my creativity. However, I've been noticing that my office is in a state of constant clutter…and I'm starting to believe. Now the question is whether that clutter impacts the mind or whether the cluttered mind leads to a physical manifestation? A little of both, I think.

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

Today, and for the rest of my life, my blog is hosted at Pika. I write my posts directly in the web editor.

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

I would start my blog on Pika, naturally!

I believe pretty strongly that most bloggers probably would be better off not rolling their own static site generators or CMS installations. For those that want to play in that world, though, there's nothing like it. For the rest of us there are a number of small, independent blogging platforms that make things quite a bit easier. They all tend to play nice together, offering exporting and importing options if you ever find a different platform to be a better fit for your style.

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?

If I were paying for my Pika account, it would be $60 per year, and my domain is $13 per year. Not bad for a favorite hobby! I pay $9/month for Plausible analytics, though I'm not entirely sure why. As a programmer, I think it's mainly that I want a place to look to see any weird happenings to make sure nothing is amiss. If traffic to my blog disappeared, I'd be curious if I did something wrong technically to cause it.

All's fair for monetizing. I don't do it, but I know affiliate links and such make sense in some contexts.

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

Let me dial up my feed reader here. Okay, for a selection…

I'm not sure how Chris Glass keeps his daily photo journal going, but it's great. Rafał Pastuszak does fascinating things at Untested. Adam Keys is usually thinking. Since Luke moved away from my area, I like to read what's going through his mind on recursion. I travel vicariously through MacPsych. Maique gives me all the photo inspiration. Holy cats, Jamie Todd Rubin is an avid reader. Brendon Bigley provides cool video game news. Annie lends me insight. Davey and Jamie share lives well lived. I also like to keep up with Derek Sivers, Hugh Howey, Craig Mod, and Cabel Sasser (I still need to read the 2025 snacks rundown). Oh, and, boy howdy, Mike Monteiro.

Any of the above who haven't been interviewed would be a great option to interview next!

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

I won't be shy — I'm working on Pika and I would greatly appreciate it if you gave Pika a look. Our biggest project at the moment is The Pika Pulse, which will be a great help to discover Pika blogs. I think that's a good thing for the readers of People and Blogs!

Mostly, though, I'd like more people to blog. I want people of all ages and backgrounds sharing their experiences at their own domain online. Whether you do that via Pika or any other setup or service (yes, even WordPress), I'll be excited! See you online!