You Can’t Stop Me From Buying URLs
My growing network of single-serving sites
It occurs to me after posting about Akinterest that some of y’all might be, as the kids say, unfamiliar with my game. The “game” of course being a 23-year-old habit1 of buying domains2, and making single-serving websites with silly names and full brand identities for literally any idea that pops into my head. So, at least a partial list seems appropriate to share with you (there are more, but I must decline sharing all of them, for secret reasons).
Behold the Blankenverse!
Akinterest — an occasionally updated digital moodboard
Blankenshop — me, my wife, and our kids write, illustrate, and self-publish picture books, cookbooks, poetry collections, and other paper goods. It’s a mix of hand-drawn illustrations, modern typography, wit, and whimsy. We make things that celebrate creativity, collaboration, and curiosity about the world.
Glyph Page — a spot to ⌘C+⌘V html entities I forget like ☻, ×, and ♫.
Haiku Pickup Lines — under construction (I promise! I’m taking a solo writing retreat weekend next month just to focus on getting the site done, reformatting Volume 1 to a smaller size, and drafting more of Volume 2.)
Magic Singles — a home for the custom Magic: the Gathering tokens and game pieces I’ve been making. I’m working on the webstore under the hood right now and it’s a very outdated splashpage currently.
Poets Live — an aggregate calendar of upcoming live poetry events in and around Greenville, SC, including the monthly Open Mic we’re hosting.
Vessel Company — real identities for fictional brands (which, admittedly, are nearly always restaurant brands because I am hungry). Also, fittingly, I’ve built out a pretty robust rave poster-ish design system for Vessel itself that you can see at vessel.company/id.
What’s Your Webcam? — somebody asks me “What’s your webcam?” on nearly every video call, so here’s the gearlist (with Amazon affiliate links that have netted me a whole $7 since I launched it. Thanks, suckers!)
Despite Big Tech’s desire to make everything a walled garden of attention-capturing algorithmic slop, I love that I can go from random idea to live website in less than a day using primarily free tools. The open web remains a modern marvel.
Before I my web development skills improved to the point I could make my own websites, I used to spin up innumerable Tumblr blogs for a lot of these ideas like Fake Drake Lyrics, Notes to Self (the proto-Twitter! I was ahead of my time!), and the original home of Haiku Pickup Lines.