Okay, this is the first real post, though you'll probably see both at the same time.
It is what it is.
Spent the last hour and change working on setting up this site, "a repo for my thoughts." Got it pretty looking with the basic navigation setup and everything.
I'm pretty sure it all works. I'll probably do some more messing around with it in the future, but I wanted to get something decent out there.
Quick rundown, I think the last time I worked with web development was legitimately in elementary school in the early 2000s? So, not going to lie, I followed a litany of tutorials on how to use Zola (which is just the static site engine I'm using; ultimately it just makes things easier to work with once I get all the config set up) and I snagged the style.css info from some other sites I dig, so here we are.
I'm only like 25% sure I understand what's happening on the back end, but I'm learning as I go, which is the point here.
My big goal, to steal the verbiage from cyberspace.online, is to carve out a quiet corner of the internet, like it was supposed to be, while also learning about how this stuff works. Back in the aughts and early tens, I heard quite a few times that it's worth getting a locale on the web to put all your stuff so folks can find you, so this is that. I'd waffled on setting something like this up, I had a fiction writing "blog" through Wordpress that I wasn't super happy with, a Squarespace website (which was something? I don't even remember what I put there), and I've been posting some of my research on GitLab, but again, it felt a little cluttered and not exactly what I wanted.
After a Veronica Explains video popped up on my YouTube feed where she described her static site, I thought it may be worth just pulling the trigger and figuring it out myself, so this is that. I didn't do exactly what she did, but it works, and as I understand it, I can migrate if I need to.
The intent long term is to just throw stuff on here. No promises on what it'll be (I'm about to start my PhD work, I'm a bit of a privacy/security nerd, I'm futzing my way around Arch Linux, I'm road tripping soon, etc.), so the plan is just to drop whatever on here and we'll get what we get. I like to learn new things, so that stuff will probably find its way here at some point.
I think I'm going to figure out how to set up an RSS feed here if you want notifications or whatever, but I'm not planning on being invasive or anything, so if you want to read what's next, just keep an eye on the page. If folks want, I can see if I can figure out some kind of commenting/feedback mechanism, but it's not super high up on the list of things to do. I kinda prefer shouting into the void for now. I may set up an email you can ping, but again, we'll see.
So yeah, hey. What's up? Thanks for reading.
Much love, Austyn.