Welcome to my Website!™
2025-09-23 under construction today...
Parts of the site
For the time being, please do not link to any pages of my site except this the front page; this site is very much unfinished and things may move about from time to time.
- hacks - various software I've made, and some JavaScript things. There's not much there yet.
- reviews - reviews of books and video games and things. Currently empty.
Coming soon?
- Music section - music reviews etc. Maybe my own compositions too.
- Infodumps section - I explain things that I'm really interested in.
- Computer stuff section - information about my computer setup.
Also I've no idea how to sensibly provide "news" for my website - probably use RSS or something - but that's a problem for later. As you can see, there's not much to talk about yet.
About me
TODO
About the site
Hosting - This site is hosted for free by the ever-so-spiffy folks at Neocities. You should go there and make your own website too!
Why - I am making this site because I want an online presence that is more permanent and open than social media. Most social media sites require a modern browser for people to access them; a simple, carefully-designed website is far more accessible. Many social media sites require you to create an account to view the content; however, anyone can access this site.
Design - I want this site to be usable by as many people as possible, so I will try to stick to the following principles:
- Actually compatable with any browser - Every now and then I test my website in obscure browsers such as Links and Kristall (text-based; no JavaScript), Mothra and NetSurf (no or limited JavaScript support), and IceCat (only allows Free JavaScript). The aim is to make everything as accessible as is possible.
- No unnecessary JavaScript - Some browsers such as Mothra do not have any JavaScript support, so as a principle, if I should be able to do something without using JavaScript, I will. There are pages on my website that feature JavaScript, but these will be marked as such.
- LibreJS-compliance - There is a browser plugin called LibreJS, which is included in the GNU IceCat browser (archive). For more information, read Richard Stallman's article "The JavaScript Trap" (archive). I personally can't go about my life without running nonfree JavaScript; the least I can do is to avoid writing any myself.
How - Here are all the tools I use to make my website.
- Void GNU/Linux - my operating system. I could tolerate any of the free Unix-like operating systems, but I use this one because it has up-to-date packages and its repository is managed well. Chimera Linux and FreeBSD would probably be fine too, but I'm perfectly happy on Void for now.
- VIM - the terminal-based text editor. It's just a really fast text editor which has syntax highlighting; that's all I need it for. I also tried EMACS but I didn't like it.
- xfwk - a web framework written by me. Adds a couple of custom HTML tags that speed things up.
- Neocities command-line tool - once I've compiled my site using xfwk, I can use a single command to publish it.
- Firefox Web Browser - the primary browser I use for testing my site. I use the BetterFox user.js configuration, which improves security. Zen Browser is great too, but the interface isn't quite what I like.
