New and Improved

Welcome to the latest iteration of my personal site! Writing on the internet is tremendously easy in concept, but very difficult in execution. There are myriad ways to present words on your screen and sometimes I find myself enjoying fiddling around with the options more than actually typing words.¹

I migrated this from the previous incarnation on tumblr not because I dislike tumblr per se, but because I agree with Jonathan Poritsky. There really is no reason not to publish under one’s own name if one can help it. Medium, tumblr, and – ugh – facebook are all fine, but they don’t really care about your content like you do. They care that your content helps their site flourish.

“Look what amazing content folks are producing for tumblr/medium/facebook/ “

So this is my latest attempt to eliminate the fiddly parts of blogging. My first effort was leaving blogger for a self-hosted wordpress blog. Then I left that for a tumblr account, thinking that relinquishing the CMS would allow me to focus on writing things. I then realized that it only made me more frustrated because my “writing” mostly consisted of re-tumbles, pictures, and only the occasional post.

I mean, what the hell was I even doing, even?

Well, honestly I was mostly playing with the software, and having fun with web design. This latest incarnation is build on Jekyll, a static site generator written in ruby. I’m a bit late to the static-blogging revolution, but that’s not anything surprising.

Speaking of, I don’t find it surprising that static-blogging is popular, as it really is an extension of the decade-long return to simplicity in design we’ve seen. From iPhones, to sports team logos, to Microsoft, simplicity is exalted. Why? Well because we realized that just because we could stuff our pictures, logos, documents, websites and the like with over-complicated design – it didn’t necessarily make it better.²

For example:

The right one from the early 1990’s is so much simpler. Let’s not even mention the uniforms the blue logo accompanied.

Blogging platforms allow you to put every web innovation of the last 20 years on your personal page about your dog. You don’t need a rotating spotlight highlighting your latest post about Max pooping but dammit if it isn’t right there and so tempting to add.

My favorite feature of static site generators is the lack of features. I am forced to really consider the style. Because I can’t simply drag and drop colors and fonts, I don’t glitter it up so quickly, and run off for a shiny new feature.

That isn’t to say I won’t try.

Here’s to the new site.