Adrianna Tan

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

Hi, I’m Adrianna. I’m an old school blogger. I’ve been blogging as a teenager, since before 2003 (various blogspots and self-hosted blogs). In 2003 my brother bought me my domain, Popagandhi.com as a birthday present, and I’ve had it ever since.

I grew up in Singapore, lived there and in Kuala Lumpur, Dubai, Mumbai, and many other places in the world until I moved to San Francisco in 2018.

I have always worked in tech. I’ve done the whole range of tech jobs from being an early stage tech company employee (various Silicon Valley companies) to startup founder, and now, public servant at San Francisco Digital Services, the digital team for the City and County of San Francisco, where I am the director of the product management team.

In my free time, I run, bike, cook, bake, and take film photos.

What's the story behind your blog?

I was always a nerdy, introverted person so the early days of blogging felt like a godsend. I prefer to express myself in writing, rather than in speaking, or in audio or video (true, even today). I read a lot, and still do, and writing is my primary means of self-expression. So that’s probably what got me interested in tech: how to set up a blog, how to host it, how to change it, make it look good, all of those things.

I have been Popagandhi for two decades. The site, its name, and its past renown (it was quite popular in the early 00s) is forever attached to who I am as a person. The story behind the name it not that exciting: at the time, I was listening to a lot of punk music, I liked a band called Propagandhi. I was also just starting to be interested in art, and in travel (to India). So it felt like punk, pop art, India, all in one.

What I write about on Popagandhi has also gone through many iterations. I started when I was in high school, so there was a lot of first queer love anguish and sadness, then there was the travel and ‘seeing the world’ part of my life. Now the content is about photography, bicycles, and my quiet home life. So in a way, the blog has tracked my life through many important seasons. The content reflects that.

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

I’m a pretty spontaneous writer. Sometimes things just pop into my head, and I start and finish and post pretty much instantly. Partly it’s that I have ADHD. It’s hard for me to plan ahead. If I am planning to write something longer, with references, I try to do more planning.

These days, the things I post seem to follow a few patterns: stuff about cycling, interesting photos I’ve taken, longer thoughts about how I did something or more reflective thoughts about my creative processes. In the past I might worry more about ‘what’s the point of this post?’ but lately I’m taking the perspective, in everything that I do, that it’s just fun to blog.)

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

I don’t really need external stimulation to feel creative, most of my struggles to get creative are very much personal. It’s more of ‘can I drop everything and get into a flow state to hyper-focus on something for a bit?’ Sometimes, I can. Not always. When I do start creating things, I don’t need much around me to keep going. Good music does help, but honestly as long as I have a decently fast computer, a desk, I can start writing.

As I’m getting older, I am pickier about having the right tools: I need an ergonomic keyboard and mouse and good chair! That doesn’t help me get more creative as much as it helps me feel more comfortable.)

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

These days, I host most of my domains on porkbun.com. I tend to run static sites, and my static site generator of choice is 11ty, which I love; I used to use Hugo and Jekyll but 11ty is the one that just clicked for me. In fact, learning 11ty is also what got me to relaunch my blog. I use GitHub to check in my code and posts, and Netlify to deploy the site. With this stack, I don’t pay anything other than the annual domain registration renewal fee for Popagandhi.com.)

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

I’ve been thinking about how it feels harder to set up a blog than in the past, where there seemed to be more tools. I guess you can still use blogspot.com or wordpress.com, and that would be my recommendation for anyone who wants a traditional blog. I don’t really like posting content elsewhere, even on sites with more reach; so even though I previously posted on Medium, I’ve since moved a copy of all my posts there onto my own blog.

I would recommend that anyone somewhat technically inclined learn a tool like 11ty. With 11ty and basic CSS (I don’t like using libraries for CSS), you can get a site up and running really fast. The main gap in this would be in content management. If you plan to setup a blog this way for a less technical person, then it can be hard for them to update the site unless you also wire up something like Sanity, Strapi, Decap, or CloudCannon. Pros and cons for all of those. It’s personally too much for a one person blog like mine, so I would just stick to my current setup.

If owning your own content is important to you (and it is to me), then I would recommend learning some skills and rolling your own.)

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 was there when adtech started becoming a thing, and I still have a difficult relationship with it. I have not monetized my blog in any meaningful way. Nor am I interested in it. I understand why some people feel they have to, but in the long run, and I think this is still true, advertising corporate interests don’t care about you as a person, an individual, a creator, and burnout is real. You see this now with YouTube content creators starting to feel like none of what they do matters, like they have to churn out content no matter what, or as if they have to structure their work in certain algorithm-gaming ways in order for the work to matter.

I pay around ten bucks a year or less, for my .com renewal. I don’t pay other fees. Even if I wanted to move off a service like Netlify, I guess I could set up something reasonably cheaply on a VPS.

I think newsletter style subscriptions have been a better model than advertising, but even then that’s not really an option for many people other than the most popular. I’m happy in my little corner of the web, just publishing stuff for myself. I don’t love corporations, so it’s hard for me to imagine being beholden to one (or several). Much better for me this way though I understand why others might want to monetize.)

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

I really love Rachel Smiths’s site. I think the colors and cursor trails brings back a bit of the joy that the old web brought me. And my friend Jason Li!)

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

Jason Li and collaborators have a super fun website called Asian Food Dictionary.

The podcasts I’ve been listening to have been all of Whetstone’s podcasts. Their stuff isn’t just about food but also about deep dives into culture, using food and ingredients as a lens.

I’ve also been cooking my way through SGP Noodles’ recipes (Singapore noodles are not actually from Singapore, so it’s pretty fun ‘in’ joke). Being an immigrant to the United States, what I miss most about home is the food. Pamela’s paid Substack has good recipes for the stuff I love.