12/17/24 - Fiddlin'
Just a bit of fine-tuning this time around. I'm still not entirely sold on the idea of a blog since I don't have much to talk about, but as long as I have my domain I guess I should use it for something. Plus I get to continue messing around with HTML, which is always fun.
I've also been on the Butterfly site recently. It's neat; it has a lot of the same vibes that the ol' Birdsite had in the early days, minus the toxicity of the new management. I'm not sure I quite have the patience or the mindeset for social media anymore, but I guess we'll see.
8/13/24 - OS Changes, First "Redesign"
Part of the reason I've let this sit for so long is because I've been busy at work, but also because I've recently been switching back and forth from linux.
I really like the idea of linux, but it's taken a lot of trial and error to get Mint to a place where I like it. Before now, I'd always install the OS, find a small annoyance, and then run back to Windows only to try again a few weeks later. The recent announcement of Microsoft recall was enough to finally push me over to the linux side.
I think it's finally stuck. Now that I have all of my games working just as well (if not better) and have found workarounds for the programs I really missed, I like how liberating it is. Getting fully settled in also put me in the mood to continue tinkering with the website.
I first learned webdesign back when HTML5 first came out and had defined the special tags - header, section, article, aside, etc - and had primarily used those. Now that I'm tinkering again, however, I find I prefer using div tags with id and class attributes. To my mind, it just makes things significantly easier to organize, and so a rewrite of this already simple site was due.
Some of my fondest memories are messing around with Homestead to create simple websites back in 1999/2000, even though all of that was drag and dropping elements in their website builder. I'm glad that I learned the skillset, even though it never really ended up going anywhere. Yes, my degree program was spent pursuing a hobby. Alas.
That icon at the bottom of the site is partially true, by the way. Notepad++ isn't available on Linux, but I've found Notepad Next to be pretty close.
4/16/24 - The Set Up, Future Plans
I've begun toying with the idea of turning this into a blog. I don't use Facebook or Twitter anymore, and even my use of Mastodon has largely waned. This has had the effect of largely improving my mental health, but at the expense of not really being able to shout into the void anymore, for better or worse.
I love the old internet, by which I mean the internet as it existed back during the 90's. While web design was kind of all over the place, the fact that everyone could carve out their own space that was truly theirs was important, and the strange design choices added to the character and charm of it all. Of course, as we moved through the 2000's corporations started taking everything over, and a combination of social media like Myspace allowing people to build their own spaces for free and webhosting becoming more expensiv led to the death of the personal website.
All of this is a longwinded way to say that while I could certainly install some kind of platform to manage the posts, I do find a certain appeal in doing it myself. Expect things to change slightly as this is built out. I also have a plan for that last button in the navbar.
