Blog Questions Challenge

Came across this challenge recently and thought it’d be fun to start this chain in my network, so here goes.

Why did you start blogging in the first place?

I was fascinated with the idea of having a personal space on the internet. Early on when I started programming and getting active on the internet, I saw a couple of highly personalized websites from some smart folks and that led me on a mission to set up a website of mine. Next thing I know, I had a barebones html/css makeshift page up and running.

At some point, I got interested in how a shell works, so I read various articles about how they are implemented. Once I had a fair bit of understanding of what it was, I simply thought why not write an article about it and publish it on my website? And I did. Over time, some folks reached out to me over email and otherwise asking me about the post and the website, and that sort of got the ball rolling.

What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it? Have you blogged on other platforms before?

Not counting the makeshift CSS/HTML page I first had because it wasn’t suited for blogging, my first actual blog started off with Jekyll because it had the lowest barrier to entry for a static website generator back then and was quite popular. Coupled with Github, getting the site up and running took me under an hour.

Sometime in 2022, I wrote a static site generator and moved from Jekyll to kizai for this site. I realized Jekyll offers so much that I don’t really need and so I made the switch in order to simplify my setup. I also moved from Github Pages to Netlify, and later to Cloudflare sometime last year.

I’ve tried Wordpress in the past but used it to share warez links(a story for another time perhaps) and some old design stuff I used to do when I was in high school. But it never really stuck with me. There was also a time when I tried to experiment with ghost but abandoned that pursuit relatively quickly.

How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?

I use Obsidian for ideation. Whenever I have an idea for a blog post, I create a page for it in Obsidian and jot down my thoughts there. Obsidian has a mobile app that has good sync functionality. This lets me jot down ideas anytime—while traveling, reading, or even at the gym..

Once I feel I have enough substance, I move to my blogging setup. I create a new markdown file in my local repository for my site, and start structuring the first draft. I use (neo)vim for writing, and have a light monochrome theme I created for writing specifically. I keep the draft for a post in a separate branch so I can write multiple posts concurrently, if I’m feeling particularly passionate about writing. This has been working well for me so far.

When do you feel most inspired to write?

I generally like to write on weekends especially during the mornings with a cup of tea/coffee. And if the topic I’m writing about is engrossing enough, I might continue writing till late evening.

Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?

I don’t publish immediately, far from it. Once I’m done with the draft, and given that I host my site on Github, I raise a PR and ask some folks to review it if it’s a post that would benefit from a review. For instance, a technical post or a travelogue with a friend who can take a look at the post and point out any inaccuracies in my recollections.

Many of my ideas simmer for years before I write about them. I have many ideas for posts that start with “X years of doing Y”. I have this notion of spending time on something and then writing about an experience. For instance, I have a post on budgeting that I have in ideation phase now for roughly 5 years which I wanted to only publish when I’ve personally done budgeting for 5 years at least. I feel skin in the game is important and that age gives credibility to an experience.

What’s your favorite post on your blog?

I don’t have any favorites, but If I had to pick one, I would pick Build a Container Image from Scratch because I spent lots of time on it to get it right and was quite happy how it came out in the end.

Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?

For me, redesigns are inevitable. I have spent countless hours fiddling around with CSS trying to get that perfect design only to make further tweaks a few days later. I’ve written about my design philosophy for this blog in the past if you’re interested. Specifically, though, I’m focused on improving the typography on the site, so much so that I just made some typographical changes while I was writing this post, but I’m still not content.

Besides redesign, I have some plans for extending kizai with new features for convenience and for supporting new content on the site for instance, having support for private posts, and using YAML for data sourcing (markdown tables are an abomination). I also have some plans to tweak the reading page to add more metadata in order to get more insights into the reading I’m doing.

Finally, I’ve been planning to add a /cooking page for a long time now. Even though I don’t plan to make it accessible from the main site, I would like to use it for sharing recipes and other cooking-related “nuggets” of information that I want to share.

Who’s next?

Aditi, Anirudh, Arpit, Hari and Priyanka—you’re up!

:wq