Colophon

Design

The main visual inspiration for my site comes from the receipt camera photobooths that were becoming popular in Korean cafes around the time the time I registered this domain. To achieve the look, I have the source code bleeding through the background, and for the images at the top of each page, I run the files through this simple dithering tool with the "Black & White" palette and "Stucki" algorithm toggled on. I've tried to restrict myself to a monochrome colour scheme, but as an homage to the early web, I've kept my hyperlinks a bright shade of "internet blue."

Code

Originally, my whole site was written using just HTML and CSS, but eventually it became my experimentation ground for teaching myself TSX. At first, using it sort of felt like a betrayal of my indie web roots, but switching from static to dynamic allowed me to start using things like components (which have been extremely useful and time-saving) and allow me to access external APIs, like the Curius reading list I have displayed on my homepage (an idea I stole from Ben Neo).

Background

The inspiration to build a personal site goes back a bit further. I had an English teacher in elementary school who knew HTML and CSS. As an enthusiastic, young purveyor of GeoCities and AngelFire anime fansites, I was eager to learn a bit myself. And so my very first encounter with HTML was during lunch hours with her and one of my childhood friends.

In the years after, I used bits of CSS to customize my deviantART journal layouts and Tumblr themes growing up, but it wasn't until years later, after I joined Are.na, that I entertained learning it again properly. Through Are.na got exposed very early on to people like Laurel Schwulst and Elliot Cost, and seeing their sites and digital experimentations reignited the same curiosity I had as a young child.

All this was happening right around the time of COVID, and so with a lot of spare time at my work desk in rural Japan, I started to teach myself bit by bit. I've since become a big advocate for personal websites. I've taught a bunch of my friends and family, run camps teaching elementary students how to code, and have made friends with people all over the world through the indie web community.