My last social media post was almost three years ago; I rarely feel the urge to post anything, perhaps I never learnt to share. Well, except that time in highschool where I obsessively shared (and made) philosophy memes, but that frenzy has long abated.
On the topic of not sharing, I have a long-running ritual of making a new blog every year, just to explore new web technologies. The long-running problem is that these blogs tend not to have any content. One of my attempts at dingansi.ch, with Gatsby and MDX, ended up displaying my poems.
This new blog is made with zola, a really simple static site generator. I have settled on a simpler technology to accentuate the content. Usually I am too pleased with the mastery of a new technology to bother with the content; in fact I wrote an empty blog in Next.js and another in SvelteKit earlier this year. This time, however, only good content can suffice.
Motivation
Blogging, at least in theory, is a win-win for the author and the reader. Good blogs delight readers: there were some nice comments and fan mails for my poems, so readers who have enjoyed my work exists. As for the author, the process of crafting thought into prose clarifies thinking. I have reciprocity in mind too, having read many indie blogs with recommendations and guides that had improved my life.
My experience at work has taught me the value of writing a doc. Rather than answering the same questions again, you multiply yourself by pointing others to the doc where they can understand your point async. A blog appears to be an example of that.
I am also inspired by Cal Newport who is a computer science professor and a best-selling author. There's also Johnathan Bi, a philosophy and computer science graduate who, after a successful startup exit (and a few years in a monastery), now reads philosophy books and makes great introductory videos. As a computer science and philosophy graduate, I too wish to distinguish myself from the more single-minded peers who refuse to assemble a sentence without their favourite funny words like "dyn", "elif", or "instanceof".