New Website!

Let me start with this: Welcome! This site has been in the works for a while. It was hard. Knowing what you want to be seen as, what you represent took a fair bit of self-reflection. I had a lot of fun and learnt a ton along the way.

Personal websites are on the rise this year, and that’s a blessing and a curse. More inspiration means more creative energy, but also more points of comparison and higher standards.

So, here are the motivations behind this website.

Balancing the fun and the functional

I love computer graphics and WebGL, and have been playing with them for a while, but there was a problem: Written content. So far, I’ve not seen a graphics-rich site that also offers a pleasant reading experience and good progressive enhancement. (If you have, send me links on Twitter)

This was my loose list of requirements:

• It works without JavaScript (including the hamburger menu!)
• I can play around with 3D graphics
• There’s a dark mode
• It respects your motion preferences
• Recognisable and colourful branding
• Fun!

So far I think these have been met, but feel free to let me know if you think otherwise.

Owning your platform

Content ownership is the crux of the argument for personal websites. I’d like to think that’s why people are moving away from Medium, they want to own their community and their platform. Or it could just be the terrible mobile experience, there’s that too.

I plan to use this shiny new site to write about this more, but in short:

(•_•)
<)   )╯ Always
/    \

\(•_•)
(    (>  Own
/    \

(•_•)
<)   )>  Your Platform
/    \

Hat tip to Sean Blanda for this.

Spreading the word

I’m a talker. I never miss a good discussion and pre-2020 would stay past late at a pub when in the middle of a great conversation. You already see the problem there. Late in a crowded, dark place with David Hasselhoff blaring on speakers isn’t ideal for good thinking.

As a personal website, I want to use this to pause, refine, and structure thoughts and opinions. Try to, you know, help move the needle. Does “Inspire change” sound cliché? Yes, moving along…

There’s also a practical benefit. It’s much better to send a link to an article as opposed to re-writing the same answers when they come up randomly in Slack channels. I have 7 channels open right now, thanks for asking. That’s too many.

Relevant & long-term content

Our industry moves at a crazy pace. It’s one of the reasons that prevented me from writing more in the past. There was a seemingly-endless number of articles that I could write, wanted to write, but knew would be irrelevant in a year.

Now I want to focus on evergreen posts that should remain relevant for at least 3 years after publication. Think of All the Domains as opposed to “How to do x in Angular v2.” I give you permission to hold me accountable to this longevity statement. Please don’t create automatic reminders for that though.

Closing remarks

Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you feel like it, I would love any kind of feedback that could help improve this.

Stay tuned for more.

Alvin