Blog.init()

I always find starting these kinds of things awkward.

Doing a write-up on a project, or a post-mortem, is easy in comparison to an initial blog post.

I haven’t written a blog regularly in a long time. I don’t really know what I’ll end up writing about the most, but my intention is to produce more music and a better software portfolio this year, so I’m sure this blog will chronicle that.

Another thing you might be interested in, reader, is the process I went through of building this very site.

Software Choices

I knew I needed a few things if I were going to build a personal site - a hosting platform, a hostname, a static site generator, and a design.

Hosting platform

Deciding on Github Pages for hosting was a no brainer. I already needed to build a new github profile because my old account was so full of dust it was activating my allergies (looking at you 60+ unfinished projects from the last 10 years).

Github pages are free and don’t require a ton of setup on my part.

Hostname

I logged in to my old Namecheap account and promptly changed the password. I knew I would probably have to pay much more for my old domain than I did in 2019, but to my surprise it was taken already. More on that later.

I bought spacepanda.live for a ridiculously cheap ~$5. [x]

Static Site Generator

I staunchly believe in using the simplest tool that can accomplish a goal. It made no sense to me to spin up a database and fullstack framework for this website. Nor did it make much sense to me to pull in React or Vue.js or whatever the new re-renderer is these days. Even though I’ve set a goal for myself to get familiar with frontend dev again, any one of those options would cost way more in time and money than in necessary for a portfolio website.

To be honest, I had never used Jekyll before. The last time I tried to do this I believe I found a clojure powered static site generator. I think I’ve learned my lesson with combining both a language I’m not very strong in and a new project. Jekyll is, as I understand it, the boring choice here. I’m in my thirties, all in on boring choices.

Struggles

Every project inevitably has its struggles, and this one was no different. I ran into some hurdles installing jekyll from the gem, I believe some of their documentation is behind whatever gem I ended up installing. Lots of missing packages like this:

➜ Code jekyll
<internal:/usr/lib/ruby/3.0.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb>:85:in `require': cannot load such file -- json (LoadError)
	from 

but with some gem install commands and admittedly some help from the oracle (ChatGPT) I made it through to a default page.

My next struggles were as a backend developer trying to trudge through css, which I feel deserve their own section:

Design

My design idea was influenced by the fact that I have been throwing a concert series inspired by NPR’s Tiny Desk series, and I already had some gorgeous atmospheric photos to use for this site. I figured throwing a nice looking picture in the background of the site and designing everything around that would be easy. Obviously I was wrong.

Theme

My first hurdle in this regard was the theme. I figured it would be simple to find a theme which provided what I was seeing in my head. Most of them weren’t really close to this at all, but I found minimal mistakes. It seemed like it could handle what I was asking it to do.

I think the real hurdle was getting my scss file to load. It was in the correct place to get loaded, but I was doing the theme css imports at the bottom of the file (as it suggests in their documentation). I realized, through trial and error, that that import was simply overwriting the css I was trying to change. facepalm

In the end I managed to get my image to show in the background, and then I had the long process of trying colors and overlays so I could see the text on top of it.

In the end I don’t hate what I’ve made. I think it’s obvious I am not a UI/UX designer, but this site will suit my purposes just fine. I think I’ve also learned a little more css than I knew yesterday, and I’m happy about that.

Conclusion

Welcome to a chaotic place where we occasionally make software and occasionally make music, but always make a mess.

In fact, I already have an idea for my next blog post. Remember how I mentioned my old domain was already taken? I did some investigation and spacepanda.club points to a strange php form. I didn’t find much but there was a signup form and a login, which I assume hides the other content. It looks shady as hell. I tried to sign up but it failed. I did find reference to a json file with some interesting domain names there, which might be something to go off of.

Find out next time on… SPACE PANDA