People and Blogs: Lou Plummer

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

My name is Lou Plummer. On the Internet typically use my real name and the handle @amerpie, which is a riff on the Don McClean song American Pie. I've lived in North Carolina most of my life, with the exception of various Southern military bases during mine and my dad's Army service. Although I attended 13 public schools, I managed to go to the same high school for three years. That was the end of my formal education. My early adulthood was spent doing jobs I wouldn't recommend to anyone: serving in the Infantry, working in a prison, framing houses and working in factory. There's nothing wrong with the people who do those jobs, they just have big downsides. Right before I turned 30, I bought a computer and a copy of Windows 3.1 for Dummies and knew immediately that I wanted a career that involved tech. After spending some time as a technical writer and editor, I landed a few jobs in IT support, ending up with the public school system, from which I retired in 2020. Today I have a very low pressure job at a private university just to keep myself busy.

What's the story behind your blog?

I was part of the initial wave of bloggers back in the 90s. Mine was hosted by GeoCities although I bought a domain named after a professional baseball player with the improbable name of Wonderful Terrific Monds III. That blog had two sections. One related the stories of my generation of Americans whose fathers had been the soldiers sent to Vietnam and how that affected them and us. The other section was more akin to what I do today which is part autobiography and part social commentary. I stopped writing their after a couple of years. My kids were teenagers and my partner at the time was going to school. Life just got busy.

In 2013, I got remarried and my wife and I decided that we would hike the Appalachian Trail, a 1,986-mile route through the mountains of the Eastern US. It starts in Georgia and ends in Maine, passing through a total of 14 states. I kept a journal on my iPhone 5 every night. When we got to a town, i'd upload the journal entries to a website that hosts blogs for long distance hikers. That blog is still on line today. - Lefty and Hush's 2013 Appalachian Trail Journal : Part of Trail Journals' Backpacking and Hiking Journals

My retirement from my career in the school system didn't go as expected. With nothing structured to do, I got depressed and lost interest in technology for a while, rarely opening my computer. I didn't keep up with tech news for the first time in 25 years. At best, I would doom scroll Reddit endlessly. When I finally began to come out of that funk, I picked up my iPad one day and opened up my RSS reader which hadn't updated in a really long time. I started adding and reading a few new tech blogs. Robb Knight, British blogger, developer and podcaster had inspired his listeners to create a page on their blogs listing the default apps they use in all the different areas of their lives, from their email client to what they use to make shopping lists. For some reason, I badly wanted to take part in this, so I did some research to find a platform, I settled on Micro.blog and bought the domain amerpie.lol. I wrote my default apps list and sent it to Robb. He wrote me a nice note and linked to my blog. This was in January of 2024.

I started off a little slow, just writing tech articles about the app I use as kind of the center of my digital life, Obsidian, which is an extensible markdown based notes app. I wanted to also write the kind of autobiographical and social criticism stuff I'd done back in the 90s, plus there was another blogging platform I wanted to investigate, Scribbles. I started writing essay style posts for my blog called Living out Loudand within a couple of weeks added another part of my online life, writing software reviews for my AppAddict blog.

The final touch came when I got a free domain name for adding a year to my OMG.LOL account. I decided to use it to start a links blog called Linkage. I usually list three to five themed links every day. The daily theme can be anything. I've featured books, music, food, places, people, you name it. I also decided to use yet another blogging platform to host it, BearBlog

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

Early during my first year of blogging I decided I wanted to post daily. When I added other blogs to my little portfolio, I wanted to post to them daily as well. Every day when I wake up, I know I have three posts to complete before I go to bed. I have to do research for AppAddict. I've reviewed over 300 apps. Finding new ones is a daily task. I have a list of websites frequented by developers promoting their projects that I keep my eye on. Some developers contact me directly to ask me to look at their apps.

As I'm going through the day, most of what I'm thinking about in my spare time are different ideas to write about. If I'm not feeling inspired, I'm not above looking at a list of prompts. I occasionally just write about what's going on in my life. When I have time to open up Obsidian and start typing, it doesn't take me long to get my thoughts out. I started using Language Tool, a paid service as my automated proofreader. I suck at commas and there are some words I'll never learn to spell correctly, so I need the help. My next step is just to paste what i've written into the editor of whatever blogging platform I am using, adjust to format a bit and publish. Any after the fact editing of that first draft is the "of shit" variety when I spy a mistake in something online and hurriedly fix it. Or even worse, when someone sends me a message to inform me that I've made an egregious mistake.

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

I could easily write a blog post sitting in the stands at a soccer game. I write at my desk in our busy office during lunch. At home, most of what I write is done with my Macbook on my lap on the couch where I spend the evenings with my wife. I can stop in the middle of a post to have a conversation without being bothered. I've written and published on my phone from the passenger seat of our car on road trips, from airplane seats and even lying in a tent in the woods.

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

I like using different blogging platforms. The people who run the services I use are all personable and approachable. I have different elements of my online life hosted on four different platforms:

• OMG.LOL - my /now page and my about page
• Micro.blog- everything gets POSSEd here for one master feed
• Scribbles - AppAddict
• BearBlog - Living Out Loud and Linkage

I have three domains. Two of them are hosted at NameCheap and one at XYZ. All of the blog providers I use host their own images and I don't need anything more than that.

I write almost exclusively in Obsidian. I try to automate my image management as much as possible, using AI to generate alt-text and software like Apple shortcuts, Hazel, Clop and ImageOptim to move and edit pictures.

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

The most difficult thing to figure out was how to automate getting POSSE to work. I use Echofeed and Micro.Blog to do that. It took a lot of headspace to figure out to get everything to go where I wanted to go. I participate in federated social media on Mastodon and Bluesky and cross post there. Since becoming involved in the IndieWeb, I've dropped corporate owned social media out of my life, ditching X, Facebook, Instagram and Threads.

I'm perfectly happy with my setup. The part of blogging i enjoy is the writing. I've spent so many years doing technical, behind the scenes work to earn a living that I don't relish having to fiddle with DNS, or data migration.

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?

I'm a 60 year-old guy with no bills who gets a retirement check and works full time. I drive a 21-year old car. Technology is my hobby and I spend what I want on the things I find interesting or helpful whether it's hardware, software or services. No one should look to me for economy tips. I got some discounts my first year from domain registration services and hosts. This is what I am currently paying:

• OMG.LOL - $20 yr.
• Micro.blog - 120 - yr.
• Scribbles - $20 yr. (discount)
• BearBlog - $60 yr.
• NameCheap - $62 yr (two domains)
• XYZ - $22 yr (one domain)

I could add the $70 yr. for Language Tool and the $57 for Obsidian Sync and my wife would probably count the new macbook, iPad and iPhone I got since I started blogging.

I do not monetize anything. AppAddict gets an insane amount of traffic and the one little affiliate link I have there has generated about 18 months of free service from SetApp for me. I have had some referrals to OMG.LOL too, but my intent is to donate that time for a scholarship for that service. I don't have an issue with people who have pay tiers or "buy me a coffee" buttons. I subscribe to two pay blogs, Kottke and Joan Westenberg I also support six blogs, including this one, as a member of their "dollar a month " clubs.

• Hey Dingus
• Matt Langford
• Flohgro
• Keenan
• Numeric Citizen

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

Over the past year, I've read some of the best writing I've ever encountered and gotten to know a few people who are just wonderful. I think all of them have enough experience to be helpful to anyone who would read abot them in this newsletter.

• R. Scott Jones is currently blogging about the 100-Day Trip around the world that he is on
• Jedda is blogger from the Bay Area who is my partner in Blogroll.Club space where we curate Indy.Web Blogs. She is a rare talent at both writing and photography.
• Brandon actually lives about an hour from me, although we have never met. He is a pop culture and Internet ace who writes in a way that makes you feel like you are already friends.

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

Not everyone needs or wants social media in their life, but if it's something they find value in, I really hope they will ditch Meta and X so as not to support billionaires with shitty ethics. Mastodon and Bluesky bring value to me. I wouldn't be true to form if I didn't suggest a few apps. Please give Obsidian a try if you do much writing. It can be adapted to just about any workflow. Clop is the image optimization tool you didn't know you needed. It's cheap and automated and makes working with images much easier.

One parting thought. Social justice and making a better world for every class of people are at the center of who I am as a person. There is a concerted effort going on all over the world right now to devalue and threaten people who aren't part of the ruling majority. We all have a voice and I ask that anyone who can, use theirs to speak out against injustice, intolerance and bigotry. Do what you can every day to stand in the way of any movement that doesn't value all people.