This site is somewhat of a pet personal project, which is slowly emerging, like an amoeba trying to evolve legs in a world already crawling with colourful and complex beings.
I could of course have a website or blog without building it from the ground up, or use LLMs to help me code everything, but in part the building and learning involved in this project is what I am after. It may be slow and clunky, but I am learning how to build something that is uniquely my own, and that is in my opinion one of the most satisfying things a person can do.
I have been pondering the concept of digital minimalism for a number of years. This term was popularized by author and professor Cal Newport in his book of the same name. The term has gained popularity in online circles as people have growing desires to repair their relationship with digital technologies.
The social media companies who control much of the online landscape make money off of our attention, tracking our information and actions to sell advertisements. This arrangment is actually a bit disgusting if you take a step back and look at it.
I have long struggled with a quasi-addiction associated with online content, particularly that on YouTube. I have gained copious amounts of valuable information, but unfortunately also frittered away countless hours of my precious time.
In part, this site is a project to redirect my time spent online from consuming to creating, and building something which I am interested in, and may allow me to bring value to others, if I am lucky. Digital Minimalism is all about using technology in ways that serve you, not the other way around, and I hope this website will be one way I make that intentional change in my life.
Over the last few years, I have also had a growing interest in technological tinkerings as a hobby, starting with setting up an old Dell laptop as a Minecraft server, and incorporating some other interesting homelabbing technologies onto it.
I have also dabbled on and off with learning some coding, and customization of my stuff has become really interesting to me. As I write this, I am awaiting an ebay purchase of another computer which I plan to use for some other fun technological projects to grow my skills and keep working on this interest.
Since I have always wanted to create a website [at least since I aqcuired this web domain], I thought I could comine those desires and interests to begin creating a website and learning the basics of webdesign. I am taking it slow, starting with very fundamental concepts. But who knows where this project could lead!
The catalyst for this project was my stumbling upon what is often known as the "indie web". That term seems to be used in a few slightly different ways, and I'm not entirely sure what is all behind these words, but I will use them in the way I see fit at risk of innacuracy.
What I am calling the indie web is a type of website created by individuals as a way to interact on the web outside of the corporate social internet. These sites are often ecclectic in their design, vary widely, and link to one another in various ways [such as webrings] to create a sense of interconnectedness, collaborate, and share interesting stuff.
The site Neocities is the place that I started my exploration of this part of the internet. I was inspired by how connected I felt to the humanity of each individual site creator, in stark contrast to formulaic profiles one might find on mainstream social media sites.
The site that I modelled this one most closely off of is found at godteeth.com [I do not claim responsibility for any content found on said site]. This simple blog and webpage, whose layout and structure I emulated in this first version of my site, proved to me that this very human feeling I was chasing can be achieved with very little up front technical work. I thank "godteeth" or whatever the creator of that site calls themselves, for pushing me to begin this one.
I intend this site to be a journal of sorts, a place to spark conversations and develop my thoughts. A place to tinker around with web technologies, and slowly build up and understand a technological ecosystem.
Importantly, I want to create an experience -- I hope that visitors to this site will be able to lose themself clicking through pages, and feel a genuine sense of connection to who I am as a person, and what I'm thinking, feeling, and getting myself into. In addition, I hope to also create ample opportunities for visitors to get launched elsewhere on the internet into another rabbit whole of curiosity and learning. You have likely already noticed that I'm a bit of a Wikipedia fanboy. There will likely be many a wikipedia link in my site. In addition, I hope to compile cool media, sites, and resources for people to explore when they visit my site.
Finally, I hope this site inspires others to live a more authentic life. To not hesistate to explore what is interesting to them, and collaborate to build a better, more curious, kinder world.