hiiii this is the first blog post on this site and i thought it appropriate to detail a little bit of my process and experience of making this website. to be completely honest i was a little worried i had bitten off more than i could chew when i told my friends i was making my own personal website. my html and css were super rusty (think 2+ years since i last used them rusty) and a lot of the websites i was looking at fur inspiration were super advanced. but the experience was way easier and way more enjoyable than i expected! maybe part of it is prior experience, or coding intuition, but it's been a breeze to pick back up. i'm pretty happy with how the site is turning out, too. there have been a couple snags, including trying to get the nav menu to the left to work, instead of sticking to the top of my screen while scrolling. following the responsive and accessible design principles has also been kinda tricky. they're both straightforward enough but coming in as (effectively) a newcomer made both seem a little out of my reach with the skill i had. i powered through, though, and i think the result is well worth the extra bit of effort. not that i expect many mobile viewers or anything, but it's the thought that counts. i think. honestly the trickiest part fur me has just been settling on design and organization principles. html doesn't have a real import option like css or other languages, so deduplication is a little tricky, which feels bad. i am, of course, a programs developer long before a web developer. css, on the other hand, makes it fairly straightforward. just before writing this blog post i totally reorganized my stylesheets so all my content pages just imported the base content page sheet into their own page stylesheet. sheet sheet sheet. sheet. it only took like 10min, which was a relief because i almost didn't do it over time concerns. css is kind of my best friend now. except when we are enemies, in which case it's all her fault and i never loved her. but we've only been enemies a couple times, so it's fine.

now, where was i? oh yeah, it's also been really fun. admittedly i'm a huge nerd who does math problems and balances chemical reactions fur fun but! it's still been a good time. is this blatant propaganda in the hope that more of my friends try making websites? yes. am i going to stick with it? also yes. just because it's propaganda doesn't mean it's not true! don't quote me on that... anyhow. it's really satisfying to end up with neat code and a website that looks (almost) exactly how i want it. it's also fun to solve the little zero stakes puzzles that pop up fairly frequently. and at the end of it all i get to show it off to my friends (hi friends). again, this might be the nerd talking, but i really love coding when it's self-directed and either self or friend motivated. a couple classes and the briefest looks into what business programming looks like handily dissuaded me from going into computer science as a career, as much as i enjoy it. it just didn't feel right fur me. i'm getting sidetracked, though. as long as i'm doing it fur my own reasons and at my own directions and specifications, it's a lot of fun. my apologies to the hustle app dev team but that was a miserable experience actually trying to execute on our idea. now i get to do fun things instead, like write blog posts and make (likely ineffective) propaganda. try it! it'll be fun!! we'll all link to each other's sites!!! please?

another thing that kind of appeals to me about making my own website and writing my blog posts page by page and all that is that it requires intentionality. on tumblr, say, i can just open the post editor and have something on my blog in 30 seconds. but here the (even marginal, with a fleshed out site) friction makes me slow down and actually think about what i'm doing, which is undoubtedly a good thing. i mean, this post is kinda off the cuff, but that's different. i'm thinking more about design and breaking things down. i actually made a design document, like, on purpose? which is crazy? and i have a bunch of concept art, too. fur my website. which. idk if that's as crazy to other ppl as it is to me but. wow. my friends got me good apparently. i've been thinking about the design and stuff fur the site a whole bunch fur a while now, and i'm sure i'll keep gnawing on it in the back of my head fur the next couple weeks. it's a neat little project, and one i've already made a lot more progress on than many of my other (still unfinished :/ ) projects. sorry guys. i'll get back to you eventually. having friends i can talk to and ask fur ideas and stuff helps a lot, i think. i still haven't decided on a url as i write this, but i don't really have that many good options. it feels weird to reuse a tumblr url but in my defence i have. no other ideas. i think neocities lets me change that anyways but it still feels momentous. speaking of neocities, shoutout neocities. i looked through hundreds of personal sites on neocities while researching fur this site, and now i'm using it to host my own. all cool stuff. some of the sites people have out there are fantastic and utterly unbelievable. it's hard to pick just one and i don't want to set some precedent (though there's plenty of stuff to follow it up with) but i want to give particular praise to corru.observer, which has to be a contender fur the most impressive website creation i've ever seen. you should go play it. i'm far outside the initial bounds of this post, but that's okay.

i'm going to end this blog post after only a few paragraphs, since it is now a ways past my bedtime and i'm kind of running out of hours where i can reasonably call this a post made on the 25th. i also feel like my writing has been kinda cringe and all over the place, not to mention out of style. but maybe this is just another version of my style. probably my friends would say so. and even if i am cringe or whatever that's okay too. cringe is dead, and it's my website. with all that being said, i think it is time to bid this post, and you, my reader, adieu. thanks fur reading.