I wanted a place to write about what I’m working on and what’s happening in my life. Sometimes that means explaining a coding project; other times it might be a realisation or a rant. Putting those thoughts into words helps, even if nobody else reads them.

The blog is mostly for me. I’d like to look back at the ups and downs, see where I’ve made progress, and reflect on mistakes that are easier to understand with some distance. If you’re here reading it, you’re welcome too.

It’s intended to be anonymous, although anyone who knows me could probably work out who I am without much effort. I’m not too concerned about that. Just don’t be weird about it.

Building the site

I built this from scratch and had a lot of fun getting Supabase and Astro working together. Astro has been particularly nice to work with. I’d give it a 9/10.

I kept the design simple, with a macOS-style interface and a folder of journal entries. I wanted something clean and functional that still felt personal, so navigating the blog is much like opening files on a desktop.

There were a few problems along the way. I initially used Preact for interactivity, but ran into Cannot read properties of undefined (reading '__H') errors and eventually switched to vanilla JavaScript.

The contact form took some work too. Getting Postmark and nodemailer set up involved authentication problems and debugging API tokens. Separately, I ran into npm install conflicts and GitHub permission errors that required several resets and configuration changes.

I also wanted transitions between pages without full reloads. It took some tweaking, but I got Astro’s view transitions working.

What I’ll write about

Coding will be part of this, along with personal growth and life in general. I want somewhere to keep track of my progress without limiting myself to development updates. Random thoughts, reflections, and the occasional rant all have a place here.

For now, the site is running and I’ve written the first entry. I’m interested to see what it looks like when I have more to look back on.