People and Blogs: RMF

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

My name's rmf. My legal name's not terribly hard to find, but I like to keep it lightly buried just so my 2006 blog isn't the first thing you find when you search for my name. I'm a native of the Netherlands, where I reside. I live in a small city with my partner; she's an archaeologist and I'm a botanist, though I currently teach museum anthropology classes. I went from doing science, to teaching science, to teaching culture. I've never believed in restricting a whole human life to one field of study, so I'm having a blast.

My computer skills have always been self-taught. While I was in middle school I fiddled with Microsoft Paint and from there on I got to grips with ever more advanced graphic software (currently GIMP and Inkscape). In high school I liked to make videos with my friends which I edited in Windows Movie Maker, which lead to an ongoing on-and-off hobby of video editing (in Kdenlive). In 2002, I set up a WYSIWYG website which lead to me learning HTML and later CSS and, later still, PHP. Right now I do some graphics stuff for my job in education, such as making instruction sheets, posters and some other small-time stuff, but really, pretty much all my computing is done in my free time, for fun. I think that's a blessing - I don't have to work with anything I don't want to work with and do everything I do for the love of the game.

Beside that I make soap which is part hobby, part side job. I enjoy tinkering with technology, so I have lots of esoteric hifi equipment, some old games consoles, old calculators... if it can be tinkered with, I like it. I enjoy writing prose and poetry and have recently been getting into fermenting and pickling, though I am subordinate to my partner in that. She's the head of pickling and fermenting, I take care of the old electronics; she draws and paints, I write; and then at the end of the day, we cook together.

What's the story behind your blog?

I started my website in 2002 and by 2003 I had a little update box to briefly communicate whatever I was doing with the site. That update box turned into a shoutbox of my random thoughts and as those got a bit longer and rantier every time, in October 2005 I turned it into a blog. Blogging was the thing to do at the time and so, at age sixteen, I figured I had enough to say to warrant a stab at the practice.

It was all coded by hand: no CMS or JavaScript, just handwritten HTML with the appearance of a blog. It was all over the shop, subjectwise. A fair amount of it had to do with palaeontology and/or me being an epic atheist - ups and downs. It was simply named 'blog' and it changed over the years with the design of the site but all in all, it was very simple. No RSS, no comments, just static HTML pages updated manually. The surprising thing to me is that I had an audience - I got somewhat regular emails about my posts.

I blogged until 2009. I did that classic thing of writing fewer and fewer posts and finally announcing a newer, better blog hosted at Blogger. I wrote a grand total of 4 posts for it, stopped for a year, and finally took it down. I lost interest and so, it petered out.

Cut to 2026, I'm reading a few more blogs than I had been for the past several years and I start to get the blogging bug again. Or perhaps the bug was dormant and now reawakening. I'd been considering it for a while but specifically, funnily enough, after reading your article about stopping the People & Blogs series, I got inspired to pick up the pen again.

Over the last decade I've written on and off for a couple of magazines and I had a regular column in a local newspaper for a while. I think my intrusive blogging thoughts started when that column went away - I like to write, it's something of a compulsive thing, and while the newspaper let me write practically whatever I wanted, it still had some constraints such as length, a certain form, and at the end of the day, some amount of harmlessness. It had to be a column - it could make the readers think, but not too much or about controversial things.

So the blog suddenly popped into my head as a perfect fit. Whatever topic I want, whatever length, whatever form. And so in 2026, I picked up blogging again. I did write a CMS and some code for an RSS feed - other than that, I tried to keep the form of the blog as close to the original as possible.

And again, to my surprise, there are people reading this blog. I'm clueless as to how they're finding it, buried in a subsection of my site as it is, but I'm getting emails again. A grand total of two people suggested I give the blog a name, which I did. It's now called 'bakelite & roses', a name I explain at baccyflap.com/prs/blog/2026/?m=03#1773065697.

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

My inspiration comes from whatever happens to me. So far I've written about umbrellas, tamagotchi, deadly accidents, CD collections and some other stuff - that's the most liberating thing to me, getting to write whatever the hell I want. I like it to be interesting, to have some novel (to me) observations in it, but other than that, it's just whatever occurs to me. It's comparable to the columns I used to write in that sense - I write them quick, maybe give them a quick read later on, and then just post. I'll often read them to my partner who will usually describe them as 'cute', which is good enough for me.

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

I write wherever. Back when I had deadlines I'd slack off right until the final hour and then just use whatever's to hand. I've written a few on my phone but I suppose I mostly write on my laptop, just because it's faster. I'll do it at home, on the go, at work, wherever inspiration strikes.

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

My site's hosted on a buddy's server. He runs a small IT company so he takes care of the domain too - it's an old arrangement and we're sticking with it. I pay him, he pays the bills.

The blog itself is written in PHP - when I restarted in 2026 I finally wrote a backend, still pretty primitive but it makes my life a bit easier and crucially, it enabled me to provide an RSS feed. I type a post into a dirt simple little CMS and hit 'post' to add the post to a JSON file, which the RSS feed also pulls from. I may provide the source code at some point, when it's not as hokey as it is now.

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

Well, I started it in January, which is pretty close to today, so I think I'm all good. I guess, looking back at my old posts, I do sometimes cringe at them. I added a disclaimer to those posts, just to distance myself from the bad ones. But I didn't remove them - they still reflect who I was at the time and in some weird way, who I am now. I wouldn't be honouring teen me by removing any of it and looking back I guess I could say I'd wish I'd written better stuff... but you know what, that's what I wanted to write at the time and as confident as I was of my own intellect at the time, so I am now about the public's capacity to contextualise these posts. There are wonderful, thoughtful posts in there, but also some dubious stuff, and some garbage. So short answer: I think it's perfect, wouldn't change a thing.

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 pay my buddy €100 a year to cover his costs and so he can write me a bill which is good for his company. It generates precisely nothing, which is how I like it. People can do whatever they want with their blogs but for me, it's just a bit of fun in my free time. No Patreons and Ko-fis for me - I know everyone wants to turn every aspect of their lives into a revenue stream these days, but for me, it's just a way to reach out.

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

Of all blogs, the one I've been reading for the longest (22 years!) is Pharyngula. Out of all the 'new atheist' types, PZ Myers is one of the few who did not turn out to be a dirtbag. He stuck to his progressive guns and has as sharp a pen as ever. For the sheer dedication of the author it's worth a read, whether the range of topics is up your street or not.

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

I'm currently working on a podcast, a bit of a personal project that has been taking more of my time than I thought it would. Currently in the outline stage, it'll take some time before I can finally start recording. It is driving home to me that making a podcast is, at the best of times, an effortless thing that very few people know how to do well. I honestly don't like most podcasts but one I've been enjoying, one of those podcasts that springs up on you and just keeps on giving, is Bread & Bananas, a podcast about Kampung Gelam, an old neighbourhood of Singapore, made and presented by three inhabitants of said neighbourhood. And if you're wondering why on Earth this would be a topic of interest to anyone outside that neighbourhood... well, just give it a listen. It's chill, it's thoughtful, it'll surprise you. Six episodes so far, a new one every couple of months.