konnexus

No presets. Sustainable. Fast, light, agile. A machine. A poem. An aesthetical expression. A floating river. A silent garden. This is is the heart of TxtRacer, my lexiblog system.

nRv, a friend of mine and an electronic music artist, gave me a quite special christmas present: If I would like to, he would compose music for me for whatever the purpose. We were talking about Noisia when I remembered the great soundtracks for WipEout. I found myself wondering, how a sound track - an anthem - for the TxtRacer would sound like and wondered: how would I explain to nRv, what the character of TxtRacer is? So what is the heart of TxtRacer? These lines ought to explain it.

Premises

Perfect fit

You cannot shape the way of your content without shaping the tools to create and provide the content. Or in other words: the tools shape your output by their limits and usability preferences.

TxtRacer is written from scratch. No presets. There is an exception: Markdown, which is 90% what I need, and the rest 10% I hacked. So it's a perfect fit as well.

Sustainable

• TxtRacer embraces longlivity. Therefore it has txt-files as storage, which can be opened and edited in 20 years as easily as today.
• It does not have many features. Therefore code is to be understandible in many years. Therefore it is thought to be robust and long living.
• TxtRacer is not supposed to be fashion.

Fast, light, nimble

TxtRacer performs my way of being productive and shaping things: fast, light, nimble.

One idea. One focus. One way. One solution.

Aim. Focus. Get your hands dirty. Observe. Correct. Be productive. Finish. Enjoy.

TxtRacer runs fast in comparison to other blog systems because of its relatively small but dedicated feature set. It can be adopted fast as there is not much code to be considered while adopting.

Function and art

A racer

• TxtRacer is a racer. It competes with other blog systems in the race of delivering content through the web.
• There is only one man in the cockpit. TxtRacer is not meant to be a collaborating platform. It does not support rights management or the like.

A machine

• TxtRacer runs. It is executed.
• It is a tool. It has to function in the first place. It is a medium to a means rather than a means in itself.
• It performs my will as I told it.
• It is digital, as in every copy is an original. Therefore it multiplies its power with every running copy of itself.
• It uses and is dependent from other machines in order to run and function.

A poem

TxtRacer is written with the same alphabet and the same keyboard as a poem. It is hand crafted. Every line is concidered carefully.

Poetry is code in the first place, as a poet codes cultural meaning through its poem, which we decode through reading the poem.

And so: code is poetry, as the machines decode my code in order to reveal meaning to you, perceiving my content. But it also is to be decoded by other programmers, in order to reveal meaning of its function by reading the programming code.

TxtRacer lives. It is adjusted and constantly reviewed in order to provide the best solution to my actual goals.

Architecture and aesthetics

You experience my content while you use TxtRacer. The way you perceive the content is shaped by the ways and limits of TxtRacer. It is the information architecture and the visual presentation, which I both carefully designed.

While typography, colors and composition can be changed quite easily, the information architecture cannot without changing the programming architecture of TxtRacer. Thererfore TxtRacer is an aesthetical expression, mostly through its architecture.

Holder of ying and yang

TxtRacer is made to be the frame for my lexiblog. The lexiblog is a concept of blogging and building a lexicon at the same time - two components which cannot be disconnected without breaking the idea of how I write and think. In this manner TxtRacer is complex as far as it reflects my complex way of explicit thinking.

The river: the blog

The blog is a constant river of thoughts and ideas, written down and kept in chronological order. Its artefacts are articles, consistng of text, pictures and references.

Each article is always a representation of now. It cannot be seen without the context of time. It reflects my current attention on the one hand, while my surroundings reflect on the article.

• The river is the place of force and energy.
• It changes from being fast and deep, slow and shallow, of high or low density.
• Its direction changes, sometimes fast, sometimes slow.
• The river moves you, it is provocative and not always convincing.
• It is the place to gain drive.

Articles give the concrete stories.

The garden: the lexicon

The lexicon is a garden of topics I care about. They are defined, then then constantly refined and connected by their relation to eachother. Main topics hold all subtopics I care about most.

Topics has a relative long life, although some were more important to me in the past and some others will be in future.

• The garden is the place of piece and quietness.
• It is humble in its nature and a place you want to return to.
• Its changes are nimble, subtle.
• It requires time to explore it, and even more time to see it evolving.
• It is the place to gain deeper understanding.

Topics give the big picture.

The connection of the forces

Each article is referred to topics for to be ordered and easier revealed., whereas topics refer to articles for to be represented in concrete thoughts. Topics would be too abstract without articles, articles would be to diverse and random in order to understand what I care about.

Connections provide greater meaning.