v13

Today I launched an update to my website! I’m not entirely sure which version I’m on at this point but I’ve been calling it v13 whilst I’ve been working on it and so that’s what we’ll stick with for now.

The goal here was to merge the about and index pages into one since they’re always the same thing anyways and this now saves you a click if you want to learn about me. I also wanted to take things way less seriously—I go through stages of wanting my website to look cool vs. just explain who I am and I think this version captures my scattershot interests better? Also also I wanted to elevate some hidden things, like my essays, which I think stand the test of time a bit.

I heard a lot of feedback from the last version about how folks couldn’t change the theme and so I added the first two simple light/dark modes for now—with more coming soon!—so I simply deleted all the CSS and started again. In the future I’ll play with adding different themes now that everything is nice and variable-ized.

There’s still some polish needed here and there, like the /projects pages and the design of things at smaller sizes (this redesign was a reminder that margins at smaller sizes just do not exist and so it’s hard to be visually playful there).

Perhaps my favorite change is the essays page, giving each entry a lovely woodcut/metal engraving that riffs on the theme. Not every post is handmade but I swore a cursed blood-oath to myself back in 2014 not to delete anything from my website ever again, so I have to live with all the essays, even though some of them are kind of embarrassing at this point. But I am a big believer that a blog should be embarrassing! That’s like half the point of a blog, to be wrong about things ruthlessly, over and over again, to stumble in front of a crowd of strangers and hope that they at least smile at your attempt.

Anyway, that’s about it! I reckon this version will stick around for the rest of the year as I can see a million different ways I can keep busy with polishing things and adding animations and playing with the view transitions API. But we’ll see.

YEAH WE WILL SEE, WON’T WE? DON’T YOU DARE THREATEN ME. I WILL REDESIGN MY WEBSITE AGAIN TODAY JUST TO SPITE YOU. YOU THINK THIS IS A JOKE, DON’T YOU? HUH? HUH???

Wait, where are you goin—