====== Commonplace Log ======

A daily microblog functioning as a gratitude journal, media tracker, and commonplace book.

**Live site:** [[https://log.brennan.day|log.brennan.day]]\\
**Source:** [[https://github.com/brennanbrown/commonplace|github.com/brennanbrown/commonplace]]

===== Concept =====

A commonplace book is a personal notebook for collecting and curating: quotes, observations, media consumed, things worth remembering. This project makes that practice daily and public, with Git commits as the accountability mechanism.

Design goals:
  * Ultra-simple, brutalist — no CSS framework, monospace fonts, ~200 lines of CSS
  * No titles, tags, or images per entry — microblogging format
  * Posts grouped by month
  * Each content type colour-coded with an emoji prefix

===== Data Structure =====

Each daily entry is a Markdown file (''src/posts/YYYY-MM-DD.md'') with YAML frontmatter:

<code yaml>
---
date: 2025-01-02
gratitude: "The silence of early morning before anyone else is awake."

books:
  - title: "The Dispossessed"
    author: "Ursula K. Le Guin"
    status: "reading"
    pages: 102

videos:
  - title: "Static Site Generators Explained"
    creator: "Fireship"
    duration: "12m"

music:
  - title: "Nightswimming"
    artist: "R.E.M."
    album: "Automatic for the People"

locations:
  - name: "Memorial Park Library"

quotes:
  - text: "..."
    source: "..."

notes: "..."
---
</code>

===== Colour System =====

^ Emoji ^ Type ^ Colour (Gruvbox) ^
| 🙏 | Gratitude | Yellow (''#fabd2f'') |
| 📚 | Books | Blue (''#83a598'') |
| 📺 | Videos | Purple (''#d3869b'') |
| 🎵 | Music | Green (''#b8bb26'') |
| 📍 | Locations | Red (''#fb4934'') |
| 💬 | Quotes | Aqua (''#8ec07c'') |
| 📝 | Notes | Orange (''#fe8019'') |

All fields are optional. Each rendered entry shows only the fields present that day.

===== Beeminder Integration =====

[[https://doc.beeminder.com/gitminder|GitMinder]] tracks commits pushed to the GitHub repository. A new commit each day (a new ''.md'' file) satisfies the goal. Miss a day → pay. This removes the friction of deciding whether to write and replaces it with a financial commitment.

===== Technical Notes =====

Built with Eleventy (11ty). See [[guides:eleventy_gotchas|Eleventy Gotchas]] for the timezone, HTML escaping, and collections bugs encountered during development — "simple" projects teach the most.

===== See Also =====
  * [[indieweb:start|IndieWeb Index]]

  * [[guides:eleventy_gotchas|Eleventy Gotchas]]
  * [[indieweb:blogging_workflow|Blogging Workflow]]
  * [[indieweb:principles|IndieWeb Principles — Own Your Data]]
  * [[start|Return to wiki home]]