This site was created to have my own, tiny little bubble on the internet, being able to express myself about any topics of interest. It’s an interesting mix of my personal profile and blog, all-in-one, but a better classification would be a digital garden.
It acts as the perfect excuse to test out new and exciting technologies, allowing me to learn new things and improve my skills. Of course with this, there’s a constant stream of tweaks/updates being brought forward to improve the experience for you, the end-user. After all, the idea of a finished product is a myth.
Philosophy
Above all else, I want this site to be kind to both the planet, and the reader. In practice, this means:
- Minimising the site’s network payload as much as possible (
8kbbundle size, 100% cleaner than all web pages globally). - Using little to no JS, and prioritising HTML and CSS.
- No analytics/tracking whatsoever.
- Delivering content using the most optimised formats available (
.woff2for fonts,.webpfor imgs).
Additional focuses include:
- Performance: the above measures should help to guarantee quick site loading times, but there should be a habit of continally pursuing optimisations and applying them (
100/100on Google’s PageSpeed Insights). - Simplicity: this should be applied in as many aspects as possible e.g. aesthetic, file structure, used technologies to name a few. Everything should have it’s own specific purpose, with any unnecessary bloat being removed.
- Scalability: upon having a simplistic and solid base, refactoring the application logic to guarantee that the site is able to scale up with the changes of tomorrow is a must, where employing external integrations and libraries can help towards this.
Typography
This site heavily features the Helvetica Neue typeface (for Apple devices at least), where I decided strip away custom fonts to ensure full conformance with the philosophy behind this site. For code blocks and snippets, your selected monospace typeface is used, where this comes with the additional perk of being tailored towards you, the reader.
Technology
- Built and statically generated with Astro.
- Mobile-first responsive styles using TailwindCSS
- Helper functions written using TypeScript for type-safety.
- Content written using MDX, and aggregated using Astro’s Content Collections.
- SPA-like transitions (with no-JS) using Astro’s View Transitions.
- Dynamic OG-image generation for blog posts is powered by Satori and Sharp.
- The syntax highlighting for codeblocks is powered by Shiki.
- Compress is used to compress site assets and markup.
- Hosted on Cloudflare Pages.
- Domain registered with Cloudflare since 2024.
Inspiration
This site wouldn’t be what it is without the exceptional work of individuals such as Paco Coursey and Rauno Freiberg, where I was gobsmacked by the simplistic beauty of their sites, causing me to re-think how I wanted to approach the task of nailing down the design of the site. It was their work that led me to the path of wanting to chase simplicity at all costs, where I’ve had a great amount of fun realising the renewed vision sparked by these individuals.
I’d like to especially thank hasparus with his work on zaduma, and nexxeln with his work on nexxel.dev, where the initial concepts of the site was very much inspired by both of these sites.
I’d also like to give praise to (in no particular order):