The Habit

Day 200. This website exists because two things happened the same week. The Iran war started, and I wanted to see whether a tax accountant who didn’t know how to code could build one.

Everyone was talking about vibe-coding and I wanted to try something. On the day the strikes began, I spent hours on World Monitor, refreshing the global situation board like it owed me money. It even monitors the pizza places around the Pentagon, on the theory that if they’re suddenly swamped late at night, something’s about to go down. My close friends were worried (probably still are). World Monitor was useful, but it wasn’t built around the questions I had or the things I’d already read.

I’m not sure Four Fingers News is any more useful, but I’ve learned a lot building it. I run it myself, with help from a process I mostly understand.

Some parts work better than others. The visitor counter froze at 39 in July and stayed there until I noticed in August. Nobody wrote in. The Iran cost tracker is still carrying numbers from July. I’ll fix it later. My wife keeps reminding me this is a choice and nobody asked me to do it (I’m aware).

I knew the Iran war, or whatever we’re calling it, wasn’t going to be over in “days” or “weeks,” but honestly I didn’t expect to hit Day 200.

— T.