I call this a “blog”, but I keep using the term I used many years ago only out of convenience. I’d rather call it “a public repository of thoughts and ideas” —sometimes, even private thoughts masquerading publicly as something else. But then I’d have to explain it every time. “Blog” is good enough and everyone feels comfortable with it.

Over the years (23 years!), this repo has had many visitors, at times many fans, but a loyal audience of one, and, at this point, an intended audience of two.

This doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate you, visitor! Actually, you may be reading one of my posts because I pointed you here, in the middle of a discussion or a debate we held elsewhere —one of the benefits of keeping a repository of thoughts and ideas is I can take my time to write things down once and reuse them just by sharing a link.

In this context, resilience is my tech stack’s most important property —resilience against tech changes, my ability to keep paying for hosting or to invest time in babysitting it.

The source is plain files in markdown. Assets like images and videos are stored next to the associated content (same folder). I can read my posts using cd and cat, or any file manager, if I want to.

Output is plain files at plain paths. Permalinks depend only on the post’s frontmatter.

Migration is just a copy. Hosting requirements are minimal and commoditized.

This doesn’t mean the result has to be ugly or rough. On the contrary.

I pay a lot of attention to details a typical site doesn’t (and, tbf, shouldn’t), and some are not even visible to the typical visitor. I constantly keep tweaking, fixing and optimizing small things.

I think of the process as a craft. Maybe one day, someone will look at this site and say “they don’t make sites like they used to any more”. :-)