Knowember 2026

Following Robert’s and Kev’s leads, here’s my Knowember post.

A photo

I took this recently in Manzanita, one of my favorite spots in Oregon. It’s about two hours from home, and I spend a lot of time out there with my family.

Standard iPhone shot with my usual disclaimer: I don’t know how to camera.

Name or nickname

Sal is a pseudonym. When embarking on this latest blogging effort, I was trying to decide on a name for the site. I landed on Sally Forth, as that felt like an apt description of what I was doing.

Then I thought, hey, I could just take that as my pen name. But it seemed strange to call myself “Sally,” since I’m a standard-issue cisgender dude. Plus, giving myself a fake first and last name felt like crossing a line. I wasn’t going into witness protection. I just wanted a nickname.

So I shortened it to Sal, and off I went.

Where in the world you blog from

Geographically speaking, I write mostly from Portland, Oregon, where I live. Though I enjoy blogging while traveling as well.

Tech-wise, these days I typically write in Neovim over SSH on my homelab. While I usually write from a laptop, at this moment I’m on an iPad using Secure ShellFish as my terminal and SSH client.

What your blog is mostly about

Whatever’s on my mind! It’s often geeky stuff, but I don’t constrain myself. You can check out my tags page for a list of categories.

My pseudonym helps me to write freely and just for fun. If I were writing under my real name, I’d want this blog to be a reflection of my idealized self: wise, knowledgeable, consistent, and measured. Ironically, the fake name lets me write as the real me: sloppy, hasty, and foolish.

Party on. 🤘