Redesigning this blog

I haven't done anything to this site in 12 years

When I was younger, I used to redesign this website every couple of years. I would fiddle with it constantly trying to improve it. It started out as a fun hobby to share pictures and ideas then slowly morphed into a showcase of my technical and coding skills. I was essentially using the site to say "I know HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, C#, .NET Core, MySQL, Apache, and Linux and this is a working example of that knowledge".

I wasn't saying much else. I want to get back to actually posting stuff that's worth reading.

I have tried to start over a few times since 2014 but abandoned those projects because I got overwhelmed by technical details I could not solve. I have also gotten busy with overtime at work, fixing things around the house, and family obligations. By the time all that stuff is done, I don't feel like creating or solving problems.

I'm going to fix this by going back to basics

Instead of creating a website only to showcase my technical prowess, I'm creating a website to share ideas and photos first and technical prowess second. I don't want implementing a tech stack to be the only reason for creating this blog.

I hope to post photos of lakers I see while walking around Cleveland. I want to write about personal finance. I want to share bits of wisdom I think are hard to learn and nobody really communicates clearly. When I get a chance to travel again, I want to share photos and write about those experiences too.

On the technical side, I want to use this as an exercise in aesthetic and technical minimalism. How little technology can I use and still create a nice looking functional blog? You can go pretty far with basic browser, web server, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript features before you need to start creating anything with a service and database on the backend. I want to see how far I can go before finding that limit.

I'm abandoning old blog entries

I suspect I'm the only person that was looking at them. This blog is just a big internet based mirror for me to stare at and admire. If you came here to read an old blog entry or look at pictures, thank you for taking the time to view them, but I probably won't be able to salvage and repost them.

It's a lot of extra work to adapt all that old stuff while also making progress on the new things I want to try.