The Case for Digital Minimalism
Our senses are overburdened with digital events to process; I feel it is better to have fewer, and so, I have designed my site to address the issue. Not intentionally, really; I just wrote a paginator in Hugo and liked it so much I decided that my entire site would just be one paginator.
Lately I’ve been feeling that, like many others in my discipline, I’ve caught a rather horrible case of keeping up with the joneses. For the longest time, I stressed about how I would assemble my new personal site, asking questions like:
- Which static site generator? Hugo? Gatsby?
- Which CSS framework? Bootstrap? Pure? Bulma?
- Should I write it using Flask, Django, RoR so I can track users, run fun experiments, and host endpoints for APIs and Chatbots?
Then I asked myself: Why do I want a personal site?
My answer was, really: to store a repository of notes and texts, primarily for personal use (but publicly accessible,) and with the ability to share a fast-loading, minimalistic view for others.
And so, I’ve gone and done it. I’ve stripped out everything I didn’t need: slow-loading JavaScript, fonts, assets, and complex css. The colors and fonts are chosen to be easy on the eyes, and so I don’t have to worry about how fonts will appear. Everything about the design is here to eliminate my need to endlessly tinker and tweak, allowing me to focus on what I deem is truly valuable:
- Writing about things I enjoy.
- Writing about things that are important.
- Writing about technology that I use.
And so, this site is to be a rolling-release blog packed to the gills with personal notes, articles, etc. I hope you find my public repository of knowledge useful.