joy cometh with the morning

Brighton Bloggers

Photo of some cool graffiti

I found this list of Brighton bloggers linked to (I think it was via this site about druglarking on Web Curios) and because I have a weakness for going through lists of things, I went through all of them to find which ones were still going. My criteria for "still going" was that they'd published something this year (though I did this last year and I'm only just publishing now so some may have fallen off since).

The List

Adactio

It's Clearleft cofounder Jeremy Keith, a blogger of the old school, in that his is a blog I already read. He's also someone I sometimes see irl as I sometimes go along to Irish folk nights where he plays. Mostly about web development or going to web development events etc.

Andrew Sleigh

Another person I have met IRL: many years ago Andrew used to run the Mini Maker Faire that took place in the Dome, and now he seems to do all sorts of interesting bits and bobs.

Cogapp

I was hemming and hawing over whether to include this because it's on Medium to which I am inherently resistant, and it's a company blog but it's not content marketing, it's Interesting Stuff They're Doing and that qualifies to me.

Rowan Stanfield

Our first Blogger blog (a lot of the now-abandoned ones were); a personal blog, this isn't super-active, but it seems like it gets used for Big Stuff—sometimes sad, sometimes sweet.

Clagnut

Funny name! It's another Clearleft cofounder (doesn't look like the third one made it to this list) and similarly it's about web development or going to web development events.

De-Scribed

The latest post is about moving to another platform but the blogging continues over here. A really good trad-style blog: here is an interesting thing I read, made, did, etc.

Ellie & Co

Is this one content marketing? I don't know. This is the person who wrote Secret Brighton, though, and I quite like that.

Ian Ozsvald

This is a Classic Tech Blog: talking about going to Python conferences, making a contribution to the pandas library, etc. Great stuff.

GeekLAN

Another Classic Tech Blog, if you are interested in the details of this guy updating operating systems.

Hove In The Past

For those who don't want to go to Facebook for pictures of old Hove.

Jane Dallaway

A personal blog, mostly nice pictures of walks etc, thoroughly delightful.

Nobody's Friend

A right-wing politics blogger of the old-school who somehow keeps going (though at nowhere near the volume he used to keep up)

Pittabread's Blog

Another personal blog of the "here are some thoughts I had" variety.

Portslade In The Past

Another history blog, this one about Portslade.

Richard Dallaway

Looks like the husband of Jane, above! Lots of small interesting thoughts and links etc.

Rifa

A bit business-y but there's enough personal and local in here that I'll allow it.

Roundhillrob's Blog

This guy doesn't have any kids but he sure does have

Simon Willison's Weblog

It's one of the guys who created Lanyrd and he now makes Datasette! Posts a lot of interesting stuff about LLMs.

So, Zo

It's a sewing blog!

Tara Hanks

A lot of stuff about Marilyn Monroe? It looks like she's written books on the topic and the blog seems to be a public notebook kinda thing

The Artist's Notebook

A cool artists; I think I remember this guy being mentioned by Bobsy from Mindless Ones

Tom Hume

Appears to have become a yearnotesposter at this point, something that happened to a few of the folk who fell off; this guy still going though.

Wordridden

Personal blog from a freelance translator—oh, it's Jeremy's wife, that's quite a neat tail to the list, then!

That's 23 of 260. Less than 10%. I had to look through all of those 260 and there are a few trends I spotted:

There are some topics that seem to have completely gone. Politics blogs were not a major presence on this specific list anyway, but having been around for the fag-end of the UK politics blogosphere, I'm pretty confident in saying most of the energy there went to Twitter. Parenting blogs seem to be gone—possibly a function of children growing up, possibly that parenting content moved elsewhere.

Most of the people who have stayed tend to be ones for whom it makes sense: where the blogs relate to the persons' work somehow, they often serve a thinking-out-loud function, or making ideas and tools available to others who might be interested.

Anyway: this was fun and interesting! A bit sad to see how many were gone, but there are still plenty other people with blogs or newsletters who live in Brighton but aren't on that list. (I can think of at least five!)

Bonus Interesting Ones

Brighton Bits

Not actually still active by my criteria but I was still following it

Brighton Twitter Social Meetup

Honestly it's just funny to me to remember a time when "being on Twitter" was a good enough reason for people to meet up

Jimmy's Scrapbook

One child's 'online scrapbook' last updated when he was 10 (he'd now be 24).

Jo Jenner Drawings

No particular reason for this one other than I found the drawings very charming

Meeting My Family

Someone who was researching their family, who lived in Brighton, in public.