People and Blogs: Dave Rupert

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

I’m Dave Rupert, a web developer from Austin, TX. I went to college in a time before web design was even a discipline and majored in Japanese. After living in Japan for three years I came back to the states to pursue web development full-time. I started a company called Paravel with two of my best friends Trent Walton and Reagan Ray. We did that for fifteen years with pretty great success then took some funding and tried our hand at a startup for two years. Now I currently write web components at Microsoft and in my spare time I’m busy with family, writing, gaming, and building plastic mech models from the Gundam anime series.

What's the story behind your blog?

This is the third major incarnation of my blog. My first biog I actually consider to be the paper zine I wrote in high school with my friend Michael Rice. It was very low-budget and small-time but got me addicted to the thrill of self-publishing.

When I graduated college I started the web version of that zine and made a blog chronicling my entrance into corporate life and my time living in Japan. It was a great outlet for me creatively as well as a way to stay connected to folks back home. I hosted a few other friends blogs as well as a forum and it made for a nice little co-op community of bloggers.

That project eventually folded and the current version of my site was started a couple years later after I got deeper into professional web development. My content shifted from day-in-the-life random observations to more a tech focused tone. I only posted a few times a year but a switch flipped in me when I met Jeffrey Zeldman and Eric Meyer at SXSW one year and it motivated me to pour more energy into blogging regularly.

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

Most of my ideas come from my work experience, tangents I’m chasing down, or seeing an intersection of two completely unrelated ideas. It’s pretty whimsical and I don’t try to pigeon hole myself into only talking about websites, although most of my posts are tech adjacent in some way since that’s a big part of my life. I care about the Web, so I write about the Web.

I have hundreds of draft posts that I organize in a blogging kanban which I originally created in Notion but now do in Obsidian. With too many drafts in a folder I had a hard time figuring out the state of my ideas, so the kanban adds structure to help get my posts across the finish line: published on my blog.

I like to say “it’s overkill, but it’s my overkill” because I’m not a linear thinker (ADHD), and I’m always working on five ideas at once. It really does help me get a grasp on my writing. I even created a “Deadpool” status so I can let half-baked ideas die. It’s not a particularly efficient process but it works for me.

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

I have a nice recliner I like to write in. I also have a cool backyard office that is a great space but feels more like work and I prefer the coziness of the chair. Digging in and writing often happens after the kids go to bed when the house is finally quiet and nothing is being asked of me. Then I can put hands on keyboard and get some thoughts out.

I don’t treat it as something precious, but I think your environment absolutely influences your creative output. Whether it’s noisiness, cleanliness, or being surrounded by your favorite tools; our spaces (as well as music or general mental wellbeing) enables creativity. You can eke out creativity anywhere, but the right setting removes a barrier for getting into that flow state.

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

My website is built with Jekyll on Netlify. Nothing beats a folder full of markdown files. I also have a folder full of assets that I sync to Netlify using Apple Shorctuts. I’ve tried blogging platforms with databases in the past but you’re always fighting against comment spam and hacks and constant updates. A static site generator really smoothes out the technical overhead to I can focus on the writing.

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

If I were to do it all again, I would maybe try a pen name. Having my name associated to my blog has done well for my career, but what if it wasn’t? What if the line between me and writing was a bit more blurry. Dave Rupert is just some guy, but Snake Renegade… he’s a hero.

I don’t actually have the energy to maintain that ruse for decades, but it might be nice … in these uncertain times … to have an online persona detached from the name you put on your résumé.

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?

The domain name is $18.99 per year but beyond that It costs $0 to run my blog. I used to run ads on my site that made me about $100 per year, but I think they ad vendor restructured their payouts and I said goodbye. It was more about a self-imposed third party script constraint than the handfuls of cash I made. I’m not opposed to folks monetizing their blog but ideally it’s tasteful. I probably get more upset at people who disable ads on small blogs than those that run ads on small blogs.

In a perfect world the Web Monetization API would exist and we could passively drop pennies in people’s pockets as we travel from one site to the next. There was a whole crypto grift associated with Web Monetization though, so if they ever do it again I hope it can be more straightforward.

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

One of my favorite bloggers is Susan Jean Robertson. She’s a web developer but her blog is mostly posts about her knitting projects and reaction posts to interesting long reads she finds. It’s so far away from the stuff I write about that I’m kind of jealous of her. I think she’d make a great interview candidate.

Greg Storey is another recommendation I’d make, he’s a prolific blogger from the old days, but I feel he’s recently re-found his voice and is harnessing a deep punk rock aesthetic. Worth a read as well.

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

If you’re interested in stuff I do…. I blog at daverupert.com, I also post my shitty sci-fi on my site, I have a few apps like Mundango hosted on subdomains. And I co-host Shop Talk Show with Chris Coyier from CodePen (and this blog), it’s a weekly web development podcast.

Thank you so much for having me.