Building This Blog
You are reading this on a blog I built from scratch. Not because the world needs another blog, but because I wanted to make something that felt like mine.
Why Build It?
There are plenty of ready-made options out there — WordPress, Ghost, Substack, you name it. But I wanted something simple, something I fully own, and something that looks the way I want it to look. No fighting themes, no monthly fees, no platform deciding to change the rules on me.
The result is this: a static site built with Astro, styled in what I am calling “brutalist soft” — rough edges, bold typography, and a grain texture, but still readable and warm. It deploys to Vercel on every push. Writing a post is just creating a markdown file and pushing it to Git.
The Stack
- Astro — static site generator, fast and simple
- Markdown — posts are just
.mdfiles with some frontmatter - Pagefind — search that runs entirely client-side
- Vercel — deploys on push, zero maintenance
- Self-hosted Inter font — because typography matters
No database, no CMS, no backend. If I ignore this site for six months, it will still work.
What Is This Blog About?
A mix of things I care about:
- Challenges — side projects, tech tinkering, things I am building or learning
- Reading — books I have read, mostly sci-fi and fantasy
- Gaming — games I am playing, first impressions, and the occasional deep dive
No schedule, no pressure. Just writing when I have something to say.
What Is Next?
I have a list of polish ideas — dark mode, better mobile navigation, a table of contents for longer posts — but the site works and the core is done. The important thing now is to actually write. The best blog engine in the world is useless without posts.
So here we go.