What Are the Wizard Zines Mentioned on jvns.ca?

Updated

Wizard Zines are computer zines that Julia Evans publishes, separate from her blog at jvns.ca. The blog itself only points readers to them: the homepage says "I publish computer zines at Wizard Zines," and one recent post announces a new zine, The Secret Rules of the Terminal (June 2025). If you want the zines, go to Wizard Zines; if you want the ongoing writing, stay on the blog.

How the two publications relate

jvns.ca and Wizard Zines are two distinct venues run by the same author:

jvns.ca (blog) Wizard Zines
What it is A personal blog with posts organized by category A publisher of computer zines
How you get it Read on the site; a weekly digest of blog posts is available by subscription Not described on the blog page beyond the link to Wizard Zines
Example content Technical notes such as "Learning a few things about running SQLite" or "Notes on switching to Helix from vim" The Secret Rules of the Terminal

The blog's role is to announce and link to zines, not to host them. A zine release appears as a normal blog post — the June 2025 entry "New zine: The Secret Rules of the Terminal" is listed alongside technical posts in the Uncategorized category.

What the blog tells you about the zines

From the page evidence, the zine-related information is limited but concrete:

  • Publisher: Wizard Zines is named as the place where Julia Evans publishes computer zines.
  • Subject matter: The one named example, The Secret Rules of the Terminal, suggests zines cover practical computing topics in the same spirit as the blog's command-line and tooling posts.
  • Announcements: New zines get a blog post, so the most recent 10 posts list is a reasonable place to spot them.

The blog page does not state zine pricing, formats, or purchase or access details. Those specifics would need to come from Wizard Zines itself.

How to find zines and related posts

  1. Start at the blog homepage. The intro paragraph names Wizard Zines and links to it; follow that link for the zine catalog.
  2. Scan the most recent posts. Zine announcements appear there — for example, the June 2025 post for The Secret Rules of the Terminal.
  3. Browse by category. The homepage organizes every post by category, so terminal- and command-line-related posts cluster together with zine announcements.
  4. Subscribe to the weekly digest if you want new posts, including zine releases, delivered regularly.

A practical expectation: the blog is where you learn a zine exists and what it covers; Wizard Zines is where you act on it.