A wall covered with posters and graffiti. Image Anthony Nelzin-Santos. — Marseille (FR), 2026.07.

Confused energy

Should i redesign my blog?¹ Should i switch back to pocket notebooks from A5 notebooks?² Should i buy and restore a thirteenth typewriter?¹ Should i repaint our bedroom?² Should i sell my Apple Watch Ultra?¹ Should i reinstall my balcony’s irrigation system?¹ In isolation, these are all good questions. Trouble is, they all came in the span of a week.

It’s been years since i had so much energy, but this is a confused and confusing sort of energy. I want to do a million things at once, knowing full well that i’ll end up regretting some — if not most — of them. But if i try not to do them, i feel a deep sense of malaise and ennui³.

This flurry of activity might be tiring, but it’s never tiresome — and i’d rather be tired than bored. I need to rest, but i can’t bear being idle. I guess being productively unproductive is my way of relaxing. I just wish i knew how to pace myself, how to do one thing after the other, how to enjoy it all.

At least you get a redesign out of this. Something broke in the relationship between hardware and software. Thanks to rounded corners, notches, holes, and other clever engineering tricks, screens have never been bigger. Unfortunately, it doesn’t mean that we got much more usable screen real estate. The user interface chrome has become more prominent, to the point that it had to turn ‘glassy’ to be less conspicuous.

The browser viewport is no longer a rectangle, and to make matters worse, it isn’t even a safe area any more. Part of the user interface chrome can now float over the website, which makes it harder to design in layers, because it’s harder to tell the website apart from the browser. The sheet of ‘digital paper’ i’ve been using for years was fighting with the chrome — and ultimately lost.

Which is to say: i went back to a full-bleed design. I’ve pushed my “the footer is the header” philosophy to the limit by designing the biggest footer you’ve ever seen. It now does sextuple duty as the about page, the colophon, the legal notice, the blogroll, the archive, and the navigation. The header, if you can call it that, only contains the dispatch’s metadata, as a nod to the teleprinters of yore.

The design is flatter, but not entirely flat. Pictures are still rendered as pasted-on prints, and i’ve added a ‘paper’ map on the locations page. After auditioning more than a dozen typefaces, i’ve replaced my still very much beloved DJR Forma Mono with the delightfully funky OH No Vulf Mono. It’s definitely inspired by the IBM Selectric typewriters, but it has enough of its own personality to avoid being a pastiche (or being as bland as IBM Plex Mono).

Now if you’ll excuse me, i need to go walk a few kilometres. Or else i fear what this confused energy will bring.

About the Z1NZ0L1N dispatch system

Z1NZ0L1N is a dispatch system operated by Anthony Nelzin-Santos, transmitting from the field since January 2025. This document describes the operator, the protocol’s naming convention, its transmission history, its field office, and how it’s funded.

Operator

Anthony Nelzin-Santos is a writer at heart, teacher by instinct, flâneur by habit. He’s known to wander in search of old shopfronts, to spend an inordinate amount of time curating his music library, to craft pocket notebooks with vintage roadmaps, to keep a collection of half-repaired typewriters and half-empty fountain pens, to wear jeans and hiking shoes all year round, to watch his plants grow, to roam around with the heaviest long-tail bike on the planet, and to acquire more books than can be read. He’s married to the only person willing to put up with all of it.

Naming convention

“Zinzolin” is a shade of purple between lavender-field blue and crushed-blackberry red. The medieval Italians traced it to jujube fruits (giuggiolino). The Mozarabs, were they still around to argue the point, would insist on sesame seeds (djoudjolân) instead. The operator chose it because it’s his favourite colour — partly because it sounds like his name.

Transmission history

The operator was born before the world wide web was invented, but grew up surrounded by computers. He launched his first website in 2000, started his first blog in 2004, recorded his first podcast in 2005, and uploaded his first video in 2006. He went pro in 2008. In 2025, after years spent transmitting in French, the frequency switched to English.

Funding

Z1NZ0L1N is proudly ad-free. The operator covers hosting and the domain name — roughly €120 a year — out of pocket. The best way to support his efforts is to subscribe to the RSS feed and share your favourite dispatches with your friends. That being said, if you ever feel like sending one, a cup of coffee is always welcome.

Tools

Notebooks: handmade. Ink: purple, one of many. Pen: a fountain pen, often a Lamy Safari, also one of many. Backup: a Leuchtturm1917 Drehgriffel Nr. 1 ballpoint, a Uniball Zento Signature rollerball, or a Caran d’Ache 849 mechanical pencil. Notes when the notebook’s out of reach: Bloom. Computer: MacBook Air. Mechanical keyboard: more than one. Writing: Lettera, formerly Ulysses. Coding: BBEdit. Proofing: Antidote. Publication: Hugo.