Why
Strolling throught the web I encountered more and more nice and slick blog of artists and developers.
People having blog often encourage other to go through the same path, such as Marc Weidenbaum in this article.
Having a blog with your projects is also a nice way to quickly show people what you do, it can also act as a kind of "business card".
All my work is very niche for a lot of people, it's easier to answer the classic "what do you do for a living?" by showing stuff online.
I was also looking for a way to learn a bit of HTML / CSS, and to train my english, this was a nice occasion.
Ethics
Coding HTML / CSS (Link to the page with some of the stuff I learned), I learned more and more about the Web Obesity.
It just doesn't make sense to do what I do with a lot of technology.
Using HTML / CSS doesn't feel like a limit, they are just the right tools for the task.
Using more tools (such as javascript) would lead me to add unnecessary stuff (if you have a tool, you'll probably want to use it).
The same can be applied to assets (image, sounds), minimalism and dithering are integral parts of the whole esthetic.
Here are some thought-full articles that inspired me to continue along this path :
tl;dr
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Only HTML / CSS
- Only default font (Arial / Times New, there are few others)
- Compress image
- Keep it easy to maintain
- Self host
As of now I'm using two local fonts : JetBrainMono and Redaction. This choice was made cause the balance personal feel and reading confort / website weight seems positive enough (the font files are less than 100ko).
Haha, guess I like fonts a bit to much, here is the rundown of all the font on the server :
- Bodoni : A very fancy font, gives a magazine vibe
- Bodoni Ornaments : abemojs
- Pixelated Gothic : It's barely readable but come on it's so cool
- Playfair Display, the main font of the website
- Redaction : It was the main font before !
- JetBrainMono :
for the code snippets
- Latin Modern Roman : Another fancy title font
- lettering for the LNDF title is a tweaked version of Times New Roman
How it begins and expanded
It started in a very minimalistic way, the original goal was to only have the "blog" tab, all the website was supposed to be a stream of thought.
But as I continue discovering new blogs, especially those from the Webring, it seems like the next step was to add a project page and a knowledge basis, for my future self and for others.
Formatting knowledge in a way others can understand it is very interesting. For me it's the best way to channel my craving to organize stuff, it's a never ending task, but it seems more fruitful than reorganizing my bedroom every few month.
It's now a natural step in the way I learn things.
I didn't really know where to add this but I try to keep all pages within two mouse clicks, I like website that are easy to wander in.
The flowers and leafs at the bottom of the pages are dithered photos of my herbarium. Nothing fancy but if I have the occasion, I try to pick flowers and leafs here and there. I chose some that I like to decorate this website.
They are not glued or scotched : I slice small slits in the pages of the notebook and slide them in, you can see it especially well with the leaf in the download section.
I like the effect it gives, using .png's alpha layer to make the leaf float on the page.
Actual Hosting and future upgrades
For now I am hosted on Github Pages, using google as the domain provider.
I hope I'll shift on a local server someday, it really doesn't stick with the aforementioned ethics of this website.
But I gotta say Microsoft/Google bring a sort of confort, everything is easy, comitting and pushing on vscode generate the website, everything is automated.
Nonetheless I want to learn some linux and server stuff, I guess it'll be the next big step.
I am hosted on a Virtual Private Server, more info on this knowledge page for the setup.
I write raw html locally on my laptop, and push update to my server with git.
References