Welcome
My name is Tristan. I'm a nerd from the age of Semantic HTML, CSS, and <script> tags.
Why is this site so ugly?
Remember the old web? I miss it. There's a certain beauty in well-structured, clear, readable web pages that focus on the content and not just existing as a demonstration of pretty colors and typefaces. This lack of design is really good design in a very real way: it's better for everyone, including me: rather than maintaining a whole bunch of code and scripts, all I have to do to change my web site is make some content and sprinkle it with a few easy markup HTML tags.
I've tried every way of making a web site under the sun, starting with plain HTML in like 1997, then 9-grid table-based resizing fancy image-driven designs in Macromedia Fireworks, to Wordpress blogs with custom themes, to static site generators and server-side custom builds, and finally fancy Javascript-heavy design demonstrations that were mostly basic HTML and CSS (but still fancy).
I'm tired of thinking so hard about how to make a web site.
It's a web site. It's supposed to be easy, quick to publish, fun, and flexible. I've spent months tweaking "my next redesign" before ever actually publishing a site. I've made personal sites I never finished because they were trying too hard to be something they're not.
Whelp. I made this in 45 minutes by hand. And I think it's the best web site I've ever made. Mostly because I know I will actually update it, because it's easy and fun and I don't have to think about it.
Tell me what you think on Mastodon.