approach
I created this blog as an antidote to soulless websites, apps, and services on the corporate web that has become an intolerable space benefiting the few. The internet and particularly social media have increasingly become an alien space to me.
Luckily, I have found a collection of small, independent, and personal websites on the indie web that emphasize personality over profits, agency over ads, and decentralization over corporatism. This corner of the internet is fascinating and full of life - the main reason why I wanted to create this site. My own little space.
Similarly to other personal websites on the indie web, I adhere to the following principles:
- The content I am publishing here only belongs to me.
- I share what I want to share with others.
- There are no ads. No analytics are running in the background.
- I do not use AI or any other dehumanizing technology.
note-taking
I use Obsidian quite extensively, and take notes vigorously - the basis of my blog. I write notes in Markdown for which this tool is perfect. The app is basically a front-end to display Markdown files. However, it is also capable to link notes which is its most powerful feature. My collection of notes is a essentially a personalized Wikipedia.
Markdown is a simple, yet powerful file format that is easy to read without the need of specialized software. This means that my files could outlast a software - an approach to digital note-taking that gives ownership back to people.
The act of digital note-taking has unfortunately encouraged grifters and influencers to enter the space. What they call second brain actually sounds as dumb as artificial intelligence. I mostly use Obsidian to organize my knowledge, similarly like tools in a workshop.
I appreciate highly structured systems and approaches to note-taking, it gives me comfort and less anxiety. Obsidian thankfully is flexible enough that it satisfies my needs. I guess I am an architect and not a gardener. I place my notes into many folders, however, I have one catch-all Notes folder where I store notes that are in various stages of intellectual development.
deployment
In the spirit of the principles of the indie web, I fully own the content of my site. Every note is written and edited from my Obsidian vault (my main ‘folder’ and collection of all notes). However, in order to publish this site, I use a static site generator, Quartz, that compiles my content into a website and converts Markdown into HTML.
Code and content is stored on GitHub and every deploy is done through GitHub Actions. This takes a while to set up, but I am in full control.