Colophon
The tools and small decisions behind this website.
A place of my own
This is where I keep my writing, projects, books, and things worth coming back to. It grows one page at a time. The changelog keeps track of those changes; this page describes how it all fits together.
Built with
The site runs on Astro, starting from Chris Williams's Astro Cactus theme. I've adapted the layout and added collections for books, bookmarks, friends, and projects. Tailwind CSS handles the styling, with TypeScript for the interactive parts.
Pages are generated as static HTML when the site is built and hosted on Vercel. The source lives on GitHub.
Content, kept in files
Posts and notes are written in Markdown, with MDX available when a piece needs components. Books, bookmarks, friends, the build log, and the changelog live in YAML files. Everything is versioned alongside the code, so editing a description or adding a book is a small file change.
Type and colour
The pages use your device's system monospace fonts, a narrow reading column, and an orange accent. Light is the default theme. Friend cards add a little more colour, while longer pieces keep the focus on the text.
The generated sharing images use Roboto Mono, bundled with the project.
Images and link previews
Cloudinary serves images including friend portraits and book covers. Blog posts and notes get individual sharing images, generated at build time with Satori and converted to PNG with Sharp.
Finding and following
Pagefind builds a search index from the published posts and notes. Searches run in your browser. Readings and Bookmarks also have their own search, topic filters, and sorting, with selections saved in shareable URLs.
If you prefer a feed reader, subscribe to the blog RSS feed or the notes RSS feed.
Analytics
The site uses Hardal, Umami Cloud, and Google Analytics 4 for measurement, plus Google Tag Manager for managing tracking tags.