Welcome to my hideout! Depending on where you're coming from, you might know me as an enthusiast of wikis, programming languages and the small web.
- I practice human-scale programming.
- I want to embelish all the things.
- I believe in a web for everyone, not just pros.
I was a professional web developer for fifteen years, but started on Geocities like many others, and returned to the old craft after burning out of the industry.
Special interests in no particular order:
- outliners and note-taking apps
- wikis and programming languages
This website started out as a mirror of my homepage, but the plan is to let them diverge in time.
My beliefs
There's magic in the world. Not literal magic, the metaphorical kind. But it's there.
Miracles happen. Not the literal kind. But they do happen.
You get signs from above. Not the real deal. But pay attention and you'll notice the universe speaks to you.
About this site
This site is twice an experiment:
- First, I'm trying to make a stylesheet that supports light and dark modes while mostly relying on the browser's default colors. Inevitably the result is largely monochrome. Note to self: use lots of colorful pictures.
- Second, it tries to cram as much as possible in a single web page, including CSS and SVG artwork. That's to ease maintenance and uploading to restricted hosts. Only the logo / icon is an external file.
I've relaxed the second rule as of March 2025, after adding another page.
Programming
Be consistent.
Be nice.
— Perl style guide
Hot take #1: HTML is a programming language.
Hot take #2: in a world addicted to computers, everyone should have a clue how computers are programmed.
Hot take #3: programming has to serve human needs, and the most important skills involved are social.
If you're going to read one thing about it, read The Little Printf.
That's what I mean by human-scale programming: thousand-line programs with a handful of users that do good work anyway, and matter to someone. Programs you can write with a text editor, no need for a multi-gigabyte IDE. Projects you can manage with a piece of paper instead of enterprise planning software.
There's enough of the latter out there. It's long past time we start righting the balance again.
(For a similar attitude, see the Tomodashi design philosophy).
HTML
HTML is a programming language. There, I said it.
It's a programming language because it lets people tell the computer to do cool stuff. In this case, show all kinds of things on screen. That's not much, you say? So what. It's fun. Meaningful. Often even useful.
So, you can't use HTML to perform computation. Big deal. It's been a long time since computers were all, or even mainly, about computation. Deal with it.
HTML5
I once described HTML5 as an admission by manufacturers that major browsers never truly implemented the previous 4.0 standard. That's a bad thing; as a friend pointed out, web standards are now dictated by Google, and we're even worse off (in this regard) than two decades ago before Firefox came out. But at least we're more honest now about how the web actually works in practice.
Besides, you can use it for example to add graphics right into a web page via SVG.
SVG
I like vector graphics because you can tell the computer, "here's a blue box, there's a red circle and on top of them it says 'geometry' in big letters". I prefer this way of thinking about art; it's not just splotches of color.
I like SVG because you can turn an image description into code much the same way you'd write a web page (in fact it's also a web standard).
Even better, with modern browsers you can embed SVG in HTML, thus making text and art equals on the web.
Tips
SVG supports <title> and <desc> elements. One of each can be placed right at the start of a drawing and/or group of shapes. In embedded SVG, title elements are displayed as tooltips, and descriptions as alt text by browsers that can't render the image.
Small Web
The small web has many faces. Everyone can participate in their own way. Static versus dynamic? GUI versus command line? These are all false dychotomies. People are smart, they can learn. If anything, money is a bigger problem in 2025. Even so, there are plenty of options for hosting a website. So what's important? Community, obviously. That goes without saying. Now let's see what else.
Approaches
The best way to make a website is whatever floats your boat. That said, each way to do it has ups and downs.
Handcrafted pages
Pros:
- The most future-proof and flexible method by far.
- Can be done with only a text editor.
Cons:
- Makes it hard to grow a site and keep up with design trends.
Handcrafting websites requires a modicum of technical knowledge. See: tips.
Static site generators
Pros:
- Makes it easy to manage a bigger website with unified looks.
- Very robust solution: once built, your site stays put.
Cons:
- Requires additional software and bureaucratic overhead.
Static site generators require more technical knowledge, in particular about the command line; they're often called a solution for programmers.
Content management systems
Pros:
- They come with forms, menus and rich text editors.
- Can often be installed with a few clicks.
Cons:
- They run on the server, which raises costs and lowers security.
Content management systems are convenient, but can take control away from the webmaster. They're still a viable choice.
Web design tips
(for handcrafted sites)
- Keep the number of pages low; don't make a new one if you can help it.
- Master the art of the remix: old text is a great starting point for new pages.
- Unsure what to write next? Look for keywords in existing text to expand upon.
- Once popular, splash pages fell out of favor after the demise of Geocities, likely because they dampen web crawlers. But nowadays that can be an advantage.
Also: don't try to manually update a "last modified" date at the top / bottom of the page. You'll forget all the time. That's what wikis are for. Instead, drop hints throughout the text as to when each part was written. Simple references to a year and month or major event help a lot.
Links
- Ytoo.org -
Your gateway to all things retro!
Communities and resource collections:
Voices of the movement: