Who am I?

I am a programming and tech hobbyist, musician, and guy who loves his hobbies. While my main focus is programming, that interest expands into other adjacent areas like computer security, privacy, and freedom of technology. I am also interested in lifting, playing guitar, listening to music, socializing, and learning. Check out my about me page for more info.

Why did I make this site?

Journaling is a powerful tool to help collect one's thoughts on a certain subject. By expressing things in language, it makes them easier to understand. If you are having an internal debate, write it down. Now you understand your stance.

They say teaching others is the greatest way to expand your own knowledge on a subject. This is called 'The Protege Effect'. Einstein also famously said "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." I am hoping that sharing my knowledge on topics that I find interesting may improve my own understanding while also spreading these ideas to others.

Human Content

While I don't believe in the Dead Internet Theory, I think that much of the media we consume today is the output of LLMs, mostly as a result of people who don't care enough to create quality content. I am definitely not the only person who is tired of the constant stream of LLM bullshit that is poisoning many of the resources that we use for learning and entertainment, and believe that others share my resentment towards uncreative, recycled content. If you would like to read more about my personal stance on LLMs check this out.

How did I create this site?

I am a huge fan of programming simplicity. There is a difference between something being simple and easy. C is simple. C is not easy. I am very much against the trend towards bloatware and inefficiency in computing. Why build faster processors when you are going to build slower software? I am going for the low-hanging fruit by picking on web developers but they are the primary culprits of this issue. Web developers create their own job security by making their stack as complicated as possible with as many forms of abstraction as they can get their hands on. With a new web framework coming out every other day, we flock towards immature, inefficient, and complex software. I understand there will always be better ways to do things, and support frameworks that emphasize simplicity and performance. I'm looking at htmx. But maybe I just can't handle the harder stuff. Topic for another day.

The tech stack I used for this site is Zola, a static site generator, written in Rust. NGINX, as a reverse proxy for handling SSL certificates and all of the stuff that I don't know that my web server should have. I could have used Hugo for this and I have tried that, but I was having some trouble building a site that I liked, which is definitely an issue on my end and not that of the framework.