27 ms·

Have a personal web site

• bifrost 7y ago
  I've had a personal website online since around 1996. I make sure its offensive and hilarious. This is not a new issue lol.
  • bifrost 7y ago
    http://www.minions.com/ http://www.minions.com/
    • paulkon 7y ago
      I'm gonna print that out and point to it when my friend asks what I do at work all day.
    • saagarjha 7y ago
      Has Illumination Entertainment contacted you at any point to ask for that domain?
      • bifrost 7y ago
        I don't think so, if they have its never been serious contact. I get tons of shady offers all the time, I usually delete them.
• quanticle 7y ago
  “I like to look people up before an interview to try to get to know them a bit. You were a complete ghost online.” Why is this a bad thing?
  • swiftcoder 7y ago
    It's clearly a bad thing if one wasn't intending to be a ghost online. I've run into this same issue as more and more internet interactions moved onto walled garden platforms, and an unfortunately-named programming language from the fruit company destroyed my previous decade of SEO...
  • loteck 7y ago
    Because hiring people is risky and expensive, so (all other things being equal) companies prefer candidates they know more about.
    • markchristian 7y ago
      I was actually saying the opposite: the candidate was telling me that they'd looked up the folks on their interview panel, including me.
    • quanticle 7y ago
      I get that, but the context from the article is that of an interviewee looking up the interviewer and commenting that the interviewer was a "ghost" online. To me, that's somewhat bizarre. What bearing does your interviewer's hobbies have on your perception of whether the company and the role would be a good fit for you?
      • johnchristopher 7y ago
        Where I live, it's expected from candidates to show they looked up the company and have prepared a question regarding a project the company is working on or something else about the company itself. So, you actually end up googling the thing.
        • overcode 7y ago
          That doesn't address the question at all.
  • draugadrotten 7y ago
    It makes one an easy target for negative campaigning. If you have no "real" web pages showing your real self, the first hit will be someone else talking trash about you. Or worse, pretending to be you. A vast and positive online presence is an insurance.
    • Zombiethrowaway 7y ago
      I am a ghost online, and nobody is talk-trashing me. If someone tells me I am a ghost online, I'll smile and says "correct!!". And if the person is interested, I can explain why. Questions are opportunities for meaningful conversation.
    • phito 7y ago
      Why would anyone publicly trashtalk a ghost?
  • kartan 7y ago
    > Why is this a bad thing? It is not. :) I kept myself out of the internet for most of my life. Once I reached my 40s, I decided that I was wise enough to share my experiences in a way that can enrich myself and others. And, I think that it was a good call of judgement. I have never hold extreme opinions (ok, I like Windows) but I didn't have enough knowledge to know how companies will value my writing. Now that I have a career and a long life experience, I feel confident to publish online. I value young people writings, so being young should not be a stopper to have an online presence. But, you need to evaluate how you feel about it and how much you really know what are you doing. So, maybe to be a complete ghost online can be a good sign that people are thoughtful or that they have a less extrovert character and none of them is a bad thing.
• reneherse 7y ago
  I'm a similar "ghost", and with new projects in the works have been contemplating a big update to my own site. Thanks for the inspiration!
• PopeDotNinja 7y ago
  > You should... Except for all the reasons you shouldn't. The biggest reasons is that if putting up a website doesn't feel like a good use of time, it's probably better to just not have one. An alternative way to think about it is this... is it a good business decision to de-prioritize talking to people who don't have a website? I'd be real surprised if the answer was yes.
  • buzzert 7y ago
    One of the benefits not mentioned in the article: it serves as a good personal record of accomplishments or thoughts (similar to a diary). How often does the new year come around and you think to yourself, "where did the year go?"
    • loeg 7y ago
      Once a year?
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • robjan 7y ago
      Why should this be public information, though?
    • astura 7y ago
      So then keep a diary?
  • masswerk 7y ago
    However, the same would apply to community work, etc. A good personal website isn't only about presenting yourself, but also about respecting the viewer/reader, aligning interests, sharing and the promis to do so in a consistent way, and caring about things in general. If this goes with some brilliant content, this should be making a difference.
  • dasil003 7y ago
    > is it a good business decision to de-prioritize talking to people who don't have a website? I'd be real surprised if the answer was yes. I agree absolutely, as the party seeking individuals this would be foolhardy. But even if all hiring managers acknowledge this, it can still pay for individuals to put up a website, because this allows one to frame and refine ones own ideas, and thus catch the fancy of a potential hiring manager or collaborator preemptively, without requiring that person to be in a room with them and ask the right questions at the right time. Think of it as a way to increase serendipity.
• darepublic 7y ago
  Don't see how you could be a ghost online with a name like Mark Christian. There would be a ton of Mark Christian's all vying for attention.
  • markchristian 7y ago
    Life is tough when your first name is just a word. :P
  • paxys 7y ago
    All the more reason that you would be a ghost, since you are now competing with all of them for search result ranking.
• dvt 7y ago
  Completely agree with the article. I think it's very unfortunate that so many think a LinkedIn or StackOverflow profile is a viable replacement for a custom-made website that can portray you in any light you so choose. I've been told several times that I was Googled prior to interviews/meetings and have heard great things about my website, my online presence, my books (I have an "author" card when people Google me), etc. Whatever you do to make you stand out is a boon.
  • Doubl 7y ago
    You have a great website marred only by the crappy ads in the comments there
  • lazyjones 7y ago
    > I think it's very unfortunate that so many think a LinkedIn or StackOverflow profile is a viable replacement for a custom-made website that can portray you in any light you so choose. A logical consequence is that you compete with other vain people online who might choose to stretch the truth a bit more than you do. At which point does telling convincing lies about yourself become a useful skill to have?
    • teddyh 7y ago
      > At which point does telling convincing lies about yourself become a useful skill to have? Since… forever?
• jaabe 7y ago
  Some of the most interesting things online are people writing about things they are passionate about, for the sake of writing about them. At least in my opinion, so it’s fair to say that I agree with the author. I think it’s an equally delightful experience to journal about things though. I do it from time to time, when some subject just needs to get written down, almost as though the journaling is me thinking out loud on something. I could certainly do this in an old fashioned journal, or keep things to myself, but in my experience, I’ve learned a lot about something by having to write about it in a way that anyone could read. Which includes explaining things that are obvious to me, but not to you. I know it’s not for everyone, and I respect that, but if you do think out loud, then do us all a favour and share the things that are most important to you. I think it’ll help keep the internet much more interesting in the age of social media. If we can find it anyway, with google down-prioritising personal blogs.
  • loosetypes 7y ago
    Agreed. I'm a bit jealous of his (Mostly) food truck name ideas, https://writing.markchristian.org/name-ideas/ https://writing.markchristian.org/name-ideas/. Once, in the functional programming rabbit-hole, a coworker advocated for a hypothetical Indian food truck named Haskell's Curry. And when I was studying propositional logic I certainly wouldn't have said no to a side of De Morgan's ColesLaw.
    • bryanrasmussen 7y ago
      I don't know if a Coleslaw food truck service scales.
    • paxys 7y ago
      That is an impressive list
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • andrepd 7y ago
      >25. Buenos Nachos Hmm, where have I possibley seen this before? :)
• numbers 7y ago
  Some people like to be ghosts online but I really do like to post and write about my experiences whenever I can and it is nice to look back and see what I was doing a couple of months or years ago. Personally, a website I can just do whatever on is great and I don't have to be worried about a platform's limitations, requirements, or nuances. Most people prefer simplicity of networks like Twitter, facebook, etc but I really like having my own blog where one blog post is 50 words and another is 1500 words and many other things at the same time. And my individual pages can be anything from experiments to documentation.
• mouzogu 7y ago
  I don't think it's fair to judge a candidate based on their online presence. Some people are very private, or for whatever reasons prefer not to have an online presence. Furthermore, if you judge every candidate by the number of linkedin posts and stackoverflow answers or whatever superficial metric than you will miss out on a lot of talented people. I'm not the type who has an urge to express my opinion or feelings on anything. I've been on Youtube for years and never posted even one comment. Although I always like videos, if I liked them of course.
  • markchristian 7y ago
    Oh, I wasn't looking them up--the candidate told me that they looked me up.
    • hackits 7y ago
      My lawyer looked up my profile online. He loved a lot of games I made.
      • reitzensteinm 7y ago
        Well don't hold back. What are the games :)
        • hackits 7y ago
          Worked on: Operation Flashpoint Virtual Battlespace 2 Virtual Battlespace 3 ARMA ARMA II Side project with Titan Vanguard/Outerra. Then left the game industry. Got married, had kids, and now divorced and getting back into larger projects.
          • pkalinowski 7y ago
            I remember spending hours and hours in Operation Flashpoint demo as a kid. Good times :)
          • dorkwood 7y ago
• RenRav 7y ago
  I would consider being an online ghost as a great compliment with how everything has been lately. There is way too much public information being pumped out for no reason at all.
  • Spare_account 7y ago
    This was my sentiment while reading the article. Two years ago I went through a process of completely stripping away my online presence. I'm now unsearchable by name, name and company, name and home town. The author's reasons for having an online presence don't appeal to me personally. I can practise skills that I will find useful and I can learn, all without publishing evidence of it online.
    • martin_a 7y ago
      > I can practise skills that I will find useful and I can learn, all without publishing evidence of it online. So can and do I. This nickname belongs to a "fake identity" I use online for services where I don't want to be connected with my real name. I got an fitting email address and thought about a first (Martin, obviously) and a family name, too, so I can pass most registrations. Took me about half an hour to set it all up, you should try that too.
    • thjan 7y ago
      How did you achieve that and what about sites like archive.org? Also, have you considered going a "middle path" where you are searchable but no info comes up besides your name and face? With how things seem to be evolving I lean torwards a "grey man" strategy because some day you will be suspicious by not being searchable online. At least that's what I kinda fear.
      • Spare_account 7y ago
        I'm lucky that I share a first and last name with someone who is a successful Social Media influencer, also with a professional photographer, a journalist and and an amateur model (Haha, I wonder if that is enough for an Internet detective to work out my name!). This helps because they all have very searchable content online. I've tried to strike a balance between anonymity and retaining 'placeholder' accounts with my name. I can't rule out a change of heart in the future. I removed all data from facebook manually by using Social Book Posts Manager. Clunky but it works. It took about a week of different sessions to allow it to work through all of my facebook content. My FB account still exists but is effectively private, all the settings are as locked down as I can make them. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-book-post-manager/ljfidlkcmdmmibngdfikhffffdmphjae https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-book-post-m... I deleted all my tweets manually and set my account to private where possible. I stripped my LinkedIn profile back to basics manually because I didn't really use it anyway. I don't need it, I have a job I'm happy with that pays the mortgage, I don't feel the need to network myself. I removed the content from my website (<firstname><lastname>.co.uk). I left it displaying my domain registrar's holding page because I figured Google would down-rate that. It appears to have worked because it never appears in search results for either or both of my names. My domain is a .co.uk so I've taken advantage of Nominet's anonymity service and no details are visible via public WHOIS. I haven't asked Archive.org to remove the archived versions of my site, if someone knows about it, they could look there. At present I don't actually have any publicly accessible storage to place the robots.txt so I keep procrastinating about it. I submitted a removal request to 192.com which is a site that publishes UK telephone directory data. They honour removal requests. I occasionally google myself (especially from new devices and new locations/IP addresses to see if Google is presenting different results for different searchers) to check.
• sebastiangraef 7y ago
  Curated online presence > no online presence > bad online presence imho. That includes personal website and social media.
• alexbecker 7y ago
  I've had some interesting conversations sparked by my personal website (linked in profile). Friendships, even. I don't blog as much as I like to, I'm embarrassed by some of the content at times, but overall I'm pleased with it.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• exlurker 7y ago
  In addition, there should be a search site that only indexes personal web sites.
  • O_H_E 7y ago
    I was just thinking yesterday of asking HN if people here would be interested in that. PS: I am not qualified to write such thing any time soon.
  • mxuribe 7y ago
    As much as i would like this...taken to a logical conclusion, not sure if it would help. Walk with me a bit, and see if this makes any sense (or not)... 1. A new search engine appears and focuses on "personal presence" sites - however a personal presence would be defined. 2. Google, bing, etc. begin crawling this new search engine, and its index of sites. 3. Users by default simply use google, bing, etc. to search for people...but how would google, bing, and other search engines resolve the conflicts of "which is the correct John Doe site?" between the results they've captured (such as on silos/walled gardens) vs results from this new personal site search engine? Well, if its google, i suppose they'll use some signal like relevance. And, as i recall google uses link authority (big boys pointing to YOU gives you authority, which leads to "relevance" in the eyes of google)...which would suck because the big boy silos likely have a bit more "authority" by way of quantity of links, no? Unless i'm missing something, having another search engine - focused on personal sites - may not help the layperson find your personal site any more than current environment. Please someone correct me if my logic is flawed here, because my scenario is quite depressing. (Let me caveat that I'm very much a proud supporter of personal websites, and would love having a new/additional "personal site-focused" search engine...I'm just not hopeful that it helps much.)
• jzzskijj 7y ago
  In Finland it is illegal to google for applicant's online presence, because of the possibility of judging the candidate because of misidentification. You have to have applicant's permission to that. And I am glad, because one of my name doubles isn't very representative person according to their online presence.
  • fiblye 7y ago
    How is this law enforced? It seems like you could google them and discard their application for other reasons.
    • lobotryas 7y ago
      Even bigger question: how is it tracked what application was discarded and why? Sounds like a well-intentioned eurocratic nightmare.
    • rzzzt 7y ago
      This also holds for eg. age and sex discrimination - find out who they are, reject them for something else. Not being able to easily enforce a law doesn't mean one should break it.
    • ghobs91 7y ago
      Sounds like another lip-service law that European countries like to enact and then rely on the honor system for enforcement.
  • Matty1992 7y ago
    I have the opposite problem, I share the name with someone else working in the tech field who is academically and professionally my senior. I frequently get emails and phone calls from recruiters offering positions with a salary up to 200k more than I'm expecting at my level because they think I teach at Stanford
    • thirdsun 7y ago
      Did you ever try to bullshit your way into one of these positions? Obviously it's a bad idea, but I'm only half joking since it might be an interesting experiment to see how people rate and value you if their mind may have already been made up.
• k_sze 7y ago
  Out of curiosity: do you draft on paper or do you go straight to the text editor?
• franky47 7y ago
  The author mentions learning how to properly format metadata to have links unfurl nicely in Slack and other social media platforms. Are there any debugging tools that let you see what an URL would look like on all platforms at once, without having to post it everywhere and deal with caches when you have to change the content ?
  • paxys 7y ago
    Unlikely because these platforms themselves control how the content is displayed, and this will likely change often.
• drmpeg 7y ago
  For me, the best part of having a personal web site is the ability to link to it for content. http://www.w6rz.net/gameofthrones_season8_episode3.png http://www.w6rz.net/gameofthrones_season8_episode3.png
• craigds 7y ago
  Something about this comments page plays the Trogdor the Burninator song (in the premii HN app on Android). I've never had that happen before, anyone else experiencing it?
  • drmpeg 7y ago
    It's from a comment with a link to this web site. http://www.minions.com/ http://www.minions.com/
    • icebraining 7y ago
      Yeah, seems like the app is prefetching links.
• egrer8014 7y ago
  I wouldn't expect a younger person to have a personal website, given that it's almost impossible to come up with a domain name that's not taken. For instance, my real name is also Mark Christian. What am I going to do, register markchristian1.org? theothermarkchristian.org? Might as well not have a website at that point.
  • baroffoos 7y ago
    No it isn't. There were like 100000 new tlds added. Basically any name you can think of is available on one of the tlds. Also most personal websites don't use the authors name as the domain name. Most dev blogs I have seen have some strange name but have their real name in the text of the website so it will show up when searched.
  • pacifika 7y ago
    As long as you sign your name to blogposts you’d be fine on a domain such as yeehaw.baby
  • Veen 7y ago
    The domain is irrelevant, provided you own it. Choose whatever you like from the remaining .coms or the hundreds of new TLDs. If your name is in the content and you're smart about meta descriptions and title tags, the domain isn't an issue for a personal site.
• mxcrossb 7y ago
  Over a decade ago, I had a website. But it seems to me that Facebook killed that urge. As people are now moving off of Facebook, it does make sense for personal websites to return. But people will return with a new perspective. I’ve done the same, and made one via github about a year or two ago. But it is very different than my older sites. I feel like I have less room to express personal thoughts or design ideas. Everything is more scripted, sanitized, and is trying to sell me to employers.
• joelrunyon 7y ago
  I actually started startablog.com to help people with this. We'll actually set up someone's wordpress site for free. We've done several hundred and we're hoping to help 10,000 people make the move. People keep moving to privatized networks and there's nothing that beats owning [yourname].com
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• pacifika 7y ago
  People are going to look for your name so you can influence the results that come up through a personal website.
• davesque 7y ago
  IMHO, a personal website that is super out of date looks worse than one that doesn't exist. My website is a good example of this (being out of date). So I recently removed it from my resume.
  • 0x54D5 7y ago
    Mine is just screenshots of projects I've worked on and links to my LinkedIn and Github. It doesn't need to look like Geocities circa 1998.
  • dan-robertson 7y ago
    It seems the opposite is true in academia where most academics have a personal website but the normal style is best described as “mid 1990s”.
    • davesque 7y ago
      By out of date, I meant lacking any recent content.
• _hardwaregeek 7y ago
  I don't judge a person's technical skill through this metric (or at least I make an attempt not to), but it's rather noticeable when someone has nothing going on online. A blank GitHub, no website, no projects, etc. For an employed person, eh, whatever, maybe they just have a life. But for a student? I'll admit I get a little suspicious. I'm not saying students should have a huge roster of projects and crazy extracurriculars. But something like a simple GitHub projects site or more than 50 commits in a year goes a long way to making yourself seem like an active, competent developer. I can count the number of people I've met with semi-active GitHubs at my school on one hand. That's not exactly a vote of confidence for my school's CS program.
  • 0x54D5 7y ago
    In my experience the percentage of students in my CS program that even had the technical expertise to even know how to use Git didn't even approach 50% by the junior year. So it's not a surprise that by senior year most haven't even gotten there yet. I hope teachers force students to host their projects online as a way of learning but too few do that.
  • stormbeard 7y ago
    I don't see why a student should be measured differently when the developers with full-time jobs are excused with "maybe they just have a life". Some students have jobs outside of school or obligations/hobbies that take precedence over coding projects. I just think everyone should be held to the same bar, even students.
    • paxys 7y ago
      I'm not going to judge someone for having other obligations/jobs/hobbies or whatever else, but if I find a candidate with lots of great blog posts and GitHub projects/contributions in the area I'm hiring them for, I'm definitely going to factor that into my hiring decision vs someone who has none of those.
      • scottishfiction 7y ago
• allergytesting 7y ago
  If you are looking for the best Allergy test clinics in Singapore, you are at right place. Dr. Tan & Partners (DTAP) Clinic is a leading allergy treatment clinic offering test and treatment for a wide range of allergy related issues like food, eczema and skin allergy. Book your appointment today at: https://allergytest.sg/ https://allergytest.sg/
• sascha_sl 7y ago
  "how to design web sites that respect the notch on iPhone X and friends" i'm a notch disrespecter
  • DonHopkins 7y ago
    So is Microsoft and are many people, after all of his homophobic, transphobic, and racist remarks. https://mashable.com/article/minecraft-removes-notch-references/ https://mashable.com/article/minecraft-removes-notch-referen... https://twitter.com/Nya_Flrs/status/881522593353809920/photo/1 https://twitter.com/Nya_Flrs/status/881522593353809920/photo... https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/minecraft-notch-transphobic-tweets/#gs.8ttsl6 https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/minecraft-notch-transpho... https://www.theroot.com/minecraft-creator-goes-full-white-privilege-denying-whi-1820904201 https://www.theroot.com/minecraft-creator-goes-full-white-pr... https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/minecraft-creator-excluded-from-anniversary-due-to-comments-and-opinions-exclusive-1203200050/ https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/minecraft-creator-exclu...
    • xncYCa 7y ago
      The evidence presented in those links is pretty poor. Especially: https://www.theroot.com/minecraft-creator-goes-full-white-privilege-denying-whi-1820904201 https://www.theroot.com/minecraft-creator-goes-full-white-pr... WTF, you cannot say that it's OK to be white? Seems to me that there are racists on Twitter, but it's not Notch.
      • zimpenfish 7y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_OK_to_be_white https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_OK_to_be_white > The slogan has been spread by Fox News host Tucker Carlson, and racist groups including neo-Nazis and white supremacists. > A report by the ADL states that the phrase itself has a history within the white supremacist movement going back to 2001 when it was used as the title of a song by a white power music group called Aggressive Force as well as fliers with the phrase being spotted in 2005 and the slogan being used by a member of the United Klans of America. Sure, you can say it's ok to be white but perhaps if you pick a fairly well known white supremacist dog whistle, you should expect people to (fairly) tar you with the same brush.
• lazyasciiart 7y ago
  This is an uncompelling piece. I believe the core argument is that you should have a personal website a) because the author was unsettled by his own lack of an online presence and b) a side benefit is that he has somewhere to use tech that is interesting to him but not something he can do at work. There's also an offhand comment buried in there about writing practice being good, and an audience making it easier to stick to. There's not even a real attempt to turn this into a persuasive piece - it's like it started as a post "why I like having a personal website" and then got a new title and intro paragraph. I'd like to see an attempt to explain why the two major points apply to "everyone" - or perhaps the first one wasn't even intended to be an argument, just background?
• zubairq 7y ago
  Having run NemCv, which was the largest research on job hunting ever done in the Nordics this is spot on saying that you need a personal web site. Our data was taken from over 16000 candidates who were looking for and found jobs in the nordics. What we found was that having a website wasn’t enough, it has to show your professional side and helps you to get the job interview when 100s of candidates have gone for the same position , and can help the employer decide when there are a few candidates they need to choose from to offer the job to
• stakhanov 7y ago
  A lot of commentary around recent development on the web kind of falls into a common theme of "Wouldn't it be cool if there was a way to do WWW like it was 1997 again?" The thing that makes a personal webpage now different from a personal webpage in 1997 is this: Back then you could expect to immediately rank #1 on your own name, and you would even have a decent chance of ranking for some keywords related to content that you put up. Nowadays, if you're unlucky and you have a name that's somewhat common, or even just a single other person exists with a strong online footprint that has the same name as you, then you won't even rank for your own name any more. If you want any of your actual content to rank, then the chances of making that happen are even slimmer. More eyeballs on the internet means greater incentives to put content online that will get noticed, which means that commercial interests will throw money and resources at making that happen which a personal side project can't compete with. More content online means search engines get to be pickier about what they show to users. The cost/benefit calculation has changed dramatically, especially around how much content you have to put up and how frequently you have to put up content, because search engines heavily penalize content for being old or stale even when content ages well when it's good and even when you actually write on stuff that you are a real authority on and even when the web is desperately in need of less of the "sponsored" kind of content and more of the "independent & authoritative" kind of content. So in order to truly solve the problem of making it worthwhile again for people to have personal websites, one first needs to solve the discovery problem. I think somebody should invent a search engine to do that. I think that when people put up personal webpages now, they should adopt a "fediverse" technology stack to turn their personal webpages into a social-media-like experience that allows for an alternative vector of discovery next to keyword search. I think that policymakers should reverse the current trend wherein they put liabilities on website owners & operators that a private person doing a personal webpage can't possibly shoulder. So, in conclusion: Bring back some of the goodness of the WWW of 1997 again. I'm all for it. But the technology community has a loooong way to go, before that can become a reality.
  • raffomania 7y ago
    You make it sound like a big audience is the only thing that matters. The linked post talks about a personal website as a digital identity. Giving people a link so they can find you online is a good reason to have a website, even today. Besides that, making your own website is rewarding in many other ways - Being creative, getting thoughts out of your head, pinning down certain arguments you tend to repeat, etc.
• henrik_w 7y ago
  I've been blogging for 7 years using Wordpress (hosted, with my name as the domain name). It's been a great experience, and I wish I had started earlier. I don't feel any pressure to blog every week or every month, but over the years the content has built up anyway. At an interview recently, I was asked several questions (e.g. What makes a great programmer, What are the most important lessons you have learnt) for which I could point to blog posts I had written. I've written about my experience blogging here: https://henrikwarne.com/2017/11/26/6-years-of-thoughts-on-programming/ https://henrikwarne.com/2017/11/26/6-years-of-thoughts-on-pr...
• mooreds 7y ago
  Couldn't agree more. A place on the internet that you own and can write your thoughts down is very valuable. Yes, there are other services that you can leverage (medium, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, stack overflow, to name a few, depending on your content and desired reach) but your content there will alwybe subject to the whims of others. Big companies aren't always going to have your best interest at heart. It's a bit of a pain to set up, but as the article states, you get your own space. Writing is one of the ways I learn best, and any writing I do is highly leveragable and can be used by folks far into the future. With your own site, you also have, again as the article states, a place to do low risk but still meaningful technical exploration. I have had my own site for almost 20 years and look forward to having it for 20 more. Also, see this post from Dion Almaer about bringing content back to his site vs a third party service: https://blog.almaer.com/almaer-com-reopens-for-business/ https://blog.almaer.com/almaer-com-reopens-for-business/
  • dmuth 7y ago
    This is the comment I came here for. It's always a good idea to have your own spot on the Internet that you have control over, and can write about whatever you like. My website is my username DOT org, for anyone who is curious.
• neilv 7y ago
  I started running a vanity domain name around 2000, for email and Web, and have a few thoughts based on that... Hosting chronology something like: home Linux box on ADSL, 2 different shared hosters, 1U in a colo facility, back to earlier shared hoster. For my real-name vanity domain, I went with a `.org`, since I didn't want to be a `.com` in personal life, though today I'd prefer `.net`. (The longer story behind this is that, early in dotcoms, I very quickly got tired of being at social parties of grad students, with MBA students always wanting to talk to me for startup reasons. Also, CS departments and culture were changing due to the gold rush. Going "non-profit" was an idealistic youth reaction.) The reasons I keep the vanity domain and hosting include: (1) I'm not signing over rights to some snooping companies to snoop on my email, nor will I implicitly endorse that practice. (IMHO, the current practice of corporate snooping on everyone's private communications is a bad for society. All this time, we techies have been shirking our responsibility to advise people about what they're signing away, and why that's an undesirable direction. I haven't done my part, but I'll try not to make it worse.) (2) The vanity domain name gives me flexibility for where&how I host, and doesn't lock me into anyone. (Though I'll remain loyal to a hoster who's worked well, even if that means my site is not a showcase for a currently popular service. I've done novel things on AWS professionally, and I shouldn't have to prove anything with my quaint little personal site.) (3) I've run the canonical Web pages for various niche open source projects, and there's never been an obviously good third-party permanent home for them. (I did almost move those projects to a `git`-centric third-party service, fairly recently, but then my first choice service was acquired by a very different corporate culture, and this also raised the question of how my second choice is going to change (due to competition, or presumably being courted for acquisition). Moving is a lot of trouble to go to, for a situation that might make me want to move again soon after that, so I stick with my ancient site design and hoster.) I have mixed feelings about the Web site's dated visual design, and I think this is a consideration for anyone who makes a Web presence that will last for years... Mine has looked almost identical for ages, and now feels personally "genuine" to me, compared to better but generic modern looks. While the look stayed the same, the implementation has moved from `table`, to CSS that mimiced the `table` look, to CSS that's responsive while still respecting user's preferred font size. In parallel, there was also a move from HTML4-ish, to XHTML, to HTML5. Along the way, I dropped some unnecessary features that were flashy when I did them, like code syntax coloring (for which I rigged up Emacs into site generation). I suppose a dated-looking site filters out job opportunities from people who insist that one's personal Web site showcase their best frontend practices. It could stand another look, at tweaks or makeover or complete rethinking, but I'd rather invest unpaid time in contributing to an open source project or techie community, than futzing around with the vanity domain. You might keep updating your own site, but at some point you might have better things to do, so try to leave it in a style you won't mind being frozen at for years.
• mapcars 7y ago
  >“You were a complete ghost online.”, they said Okay, so what? Is it a blogger or promoter position? Otherwise, why should you have any visible online presence? The whole thing is about one guy who decided to make a personal website and how he made it, that's fine. But why call it "You should have a personal website" without any reasoning/examples for others? I don't get it.
  • Sujan 7y ago
    Read the article the whole article. The author was the interviewer, and the comment came from a candidate that wanted to research his interviewer as preparation for the interview. The reasoning why he thinks one should have a personal website follows in the paragraphs "Practice" and "Learning".
    • mapcars 7y ago
      >the comment came from a candidate that wanted to research his interviewer as preparation for the interview That's weird as well, I would never research the interviewer (as well as I never got to know the interviewer prior the interview) but instead abouth the company, business, technologies and things like that. About practice and learning you don't have to have a website, there are many ways to keep your memories and skills up to date.
  • jrootabega 7y ago
    Because others will. It's an arms race.
    • jrootabega 7y ago
      Thousands of years ago your ancestors may have asked why they should adapt their teeth to be able to survive on either meat or plants. And it would have been a good question. Nevertheless...
    • jmull 7y ago
      You may want to know: an arms race in what war? Put another way: - Who thinks it's a meritorious thing that someone screws around on Facebook, twitter, or personal blogs all the time? - Who specially wants to work for/with the people who do? Not that it's a bad thing. But why is it a good thing? And why should we think the people who do think it is a good thing are significant?
• lpman 7y ago
  Somehow related (pretty good in my opinion): https://www.troyhunt.com/the-ghost-who-codes-how-anonymity-is/ https://www.troyhunt.com/the-ghost-who-codes-how-anonymity-i...
• twhb 7y ago
  What are people’s thoughts on an ideal personal domain name? firstlast.com seems the obvious choice, but it gets pompous when used for things you’re the author of but not the subject of, like “andrewredford.com/my-js-library” or “andrewredford.com/notepad”. fml.com (initials), if you can score a good TLD? flast.com? Create an unrelated but brand-able name like vegandev.com?
  • janvdberg 7y ago
    I think I get the best of both worlds. Because my domain name is a numeronym of my name. So yes, it is my name (in a sense) and personal, but if you don't know me or care it can be anything. Also, it is really short, which I like. (j11g.com).
  • keerthiko 7y ago
    I don't think there's an ideal, but your tld is a big part of your brand in the long-run. I don't think it has to be based around your name, but basing it on your universal online handle is also a pretty good way to go about it.
  • dspillett 7y ago
    > firstlast.com seems the obvious choice, but it gets pompous I'm not sure why that would be seen as pompous. It is your site, why not have it associated with your name? I'm lucky enough to have got <last>.<tld> many years ago as my surname isn't that common (though common enough that <last>.com was already gone). Not that I currently have anything hosted on it (I had a personal site with photos and such, but that long since fell to bit rot as life got busy) but it is still handy for email. I have plans to resurrect it for a small amount of "about me" stuff (on <first>.<last>.<tld> maybe aliased as <first>.<middle>.<last>.<tld> to) and to hang some techie/professional projects off (<project>.<last>.<tld>) when I get of my lazy arse and actually implement some of them instead of just thinking about it all. Unfortunately, for most people <last>.<tld> is very much no longer an option though. For many <first><last>.<tld> is most likely already gone too. If not to an actual person using the domain, or holding it for future use, then to someone who wants to sell it to you with a 900% markup. > Create an unrelated but brand-able name This works. It doesn't even need to be meaningful given that most of the time people aren't really aware of URLs the way they used to be, and many brand names are not meaningful beyond being brand names anyway. Your content matters much more than the name, as long as the name isn't in some way inappropriate to the content. Heck, if you don't need the name for branding purposes just pick a couple of random words from the dictionary until you find a pair/triplet/other that scans nicely, and use that.
• keerthiko 7y ago
  The saddest part about personal websites now is that if someone googles your name, your presence on social media sites, an about page of a project or company you worked for, or any news outlet article where your name is mentioned will rank first and ahead of any personal website. I understand if one's full name combination is too common to show every personal website, but I feel like if a unique name is googled, or there's one or two decidedly well known person(s) of that name, and that person has authored a personal site, search engines should prioritize that on the first page, if not the very first result(s). Try googling for John Carmack, Barack Obama, or (op) Mark Christian. What's the SEO required to get your personal page to be the first result on a search engine?
  • clan 7y ago
    Not true. I can give the counter point. When you Google the name of my better half you get a "fact card" with reference to her website. The first "regular" search result is again her website. The second result is her Facebook page. As the algorithm is hidden it is hard to say why. But should I guess then I think embedded microdata is an important weight (https://schema.org https://schema.org). For the record: She has no Wikipedia page (as most notable people would have) which typically rank very high.
  • quickthrower2 7y ago
    You don't need the SEO for your name in particular. Here is why: 1. People who know you have your url. 2. People you meet have a business card or SMS from you with the URL 3. People searching for you can find you on social media, but most social media allows you to link to the site. 4. People searching for the keywords you use in your posts will find you if they are unique enough.
    • coldtea 7y ago
      Even people with the url will usually just search, not use the url. Even less so if it's on a business card (even if it's a QR code).
      • 7y ago
• gargs 7y ago
  In the same vein, I consider it a dark pattern when companies don’t have a a public email for recruitment purposes. Ideally, every opening should have an associated email answered by a real person. It’s kind of rich to expect candidates to upload custom cover letters, CVs, samples of work, but only expect them to receive template replies. Some companies even state that replies are not guaranteed.
• caprese 7y ago
  Fascinating how I agree with the headline and disagree with the article completely. Personal websites are a lot easier to control and chronicle what you want them to. They also help with SEO and also community building if you desire that. When I didn't desire that, I was very content being a "need to know senior engineer" behind the scenes. I gamed my third-party recruiters to do all the work for me and we all made money.
• tarasmatsyk 7y ago
  Agree with the article, it does not cost too much effort and gives you online presence. I am using gohugo + netlify, tried gatsby, jekyll as well. If you are interested how to setup a personal web-site - I've an article for you: https://medium.com/@tarasmatsyk/how-to-kick-off-a-blog-in-2-hours-4bb142922185 https://medium.com/@tarasmatsyk/how-to-kick-off-a-blog-in-2-...
• caymanjim 7y ago
  I don't want a personal web site. I've had a handful of them in the past, and I've thrown together a couple shitty blogs over the years, but there are three big reasons why I don't anymore: I'm not that interesting; I don't have anything to show off; and inevitably it'll either become a chore or go out of date. Like everyone, I harbor fantasies about how interesting I am, and if I run into you at the pub, I'll talk your ear off about the places I've been and the things I've done, but if I'm objective about it, none of it is particularly praiseworthy, and it's hardly going to make me stand out to a potential employer. Any attempt to dramatize my life or skills is going to reek of pomposity, even the rare bits that are somewhat unique. I'm not a designer. I'm not a visual person. Any attempt to fashionably describe myself is going to backfire. My resume is a good overview of my skills and experience, but if I try to turn that into an online portfolio, it's not going to be any more impressive. If I don't keep it up to date, and remodel it constantly to keep up with contemporary fashions, it's going to make me look old and out of touch. I have an exceedingly common first and last name, so I'm hard for employers to find online. I'm happy about this. I don't want employers scrutinizing my social media presence, as benign as it is. I would never give a potential employer any of my online IDs if they asked. If you've got something to say or show and you want your own home page, go for it. I don't think most people actually have enough interesting content to warrant it, though, and I'm pretty sure that I don't.
  • wccrawford 7y ago
    I actually feel the opposite. People do seem to be interested in the stuff I do, but the idea of creating a blog to brag about it is pretty horrifying to me. Instead, I just send pictures of the stuff to those closest to me via SMS or other social networks, and call it a day. I don't need the whole world to know about my personal interests. If I decide to try to make money from any of those hobbies, then I would start a blog or portfolio for that, but that'd be business, not personal.
  • DEADBEEFC0FFEE 7y ago
    So true. The vast majority of the web must surely be out of date, uninteresting, and not worth keeping.
  • 7y ago
• noobcode 7y ago
  I started my own online journey as codingbbq which is my alias. I wanted to write articles and have my share of online presence, without connecting to my actual identity. If I wish to look for job or apply to a company, I can always share my website with them. http://codingbbq.github.io http://codingbbq.github.io
• sara123123 7y ago
  Lol very funny dog dance Just try to control your laugh https://dai.ly/x770n1f https://dai.ly/x770n1f Even these birds have love in their hearts See how this Turkey saved the life of his friends https://dai.ly/x770n4q https://dai.ly/x770n4q
• known 7y ago
  Always post anonymously on Internet. Nobody wants you to succeed.
• shortformblog 7y ago
  Mark wrote a great article for my newsletter a couple of months ago and I found his passion really showed through. I think a big part of it is that he's put so much work into his own site. We need more of this! Especially in 2019.
  • markchristian 7y ago
    Aw, thanks Ernie! <3
• edpichler 7y ago
  I think you are just lazy, and there is no problem with that. Anyway, laziness is a sin, and some philosophers classify this sin as "the loss of taste for life", which is not good for you.
  • Intermernet 7y ago
    Sins are a social construct. Laziness is a state of being that many people aspire to, but few can realistically achieve without serious detriment.
    • grayed-down 7y ago
      Oh no! Not all sins are a "social construct". But I do agree with the rest of your post. True laziness with a degree of comfort and lack of anxiety is quite difficult.
      • dragonwriter 7y ago
        > Not all sins are a "social construct". Yes, even those sins where the social construction of them as sins has some social utility are social constructs.
  • sctb 7y ago
    We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19786422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19786422 and marked it off-topic.
• throwawaymanbot 7y ago
  I believe this is important. Mark Z. and the gang are Rich enough, they dont need or deserve your content anymore. It appalls me that there is a desert of content for a few years everywhere online as interesting blogs went dark as everyone posted on Facebook or Google+. The Internet was always more interesting when people took the time (and it will take some of your time) to put their own content online on their own site. The internet and Society in general needs the diversity more than ever right now.
• qubyte 7y ago
  I don't think everyone must have a website, but I do think many more people would if they realised that the cost and difficulty of setting one up are much lower than they used to be. A personal site can be about pretty much whatever you want, and look how you want it to look. It doesn't need to be a sales pitch, or on topic all the time. It doesn't need to come top in google when you search for your name. You get to decide why you're building it and who your target readers are (if any).
• walkingolof 7y ago
  If you wanted to start one, what would be the easiest way of doing so, preferably an all static site. ?
  • Etheryte 7y ago
    As a developer, a very natural choice would be Github Pages and Jekyll [1]. If you're not a fan of having your whole site out in the public like that, you can also use Jekyll locally. I'm sure there's other similar static site generators, but Jekyll is pretty widely used and in my opinion easy to get started with. [1] https://jekyllrb.com/docs/github-pages/ https://jekyllrb.com/docs/github-pages/
    • markchristian 7y ago
      Yep, Jekyll is what I use, and I quite like it. I'm not hosted on GitHub pages though.
  • mpak_ 7y ago
    GitHub Pages
• rcarmo 7y ago
  I've been reading the comments for a few hours, and am actually amazed that this is still at the top of HN, so here goes: I've kept a blog (https://taoofmac.com https://taoofmac.com) for over 15 years, and I've derived satisfaction from it on three main counts: I like to write in general (and keep notes, and the site actually started out as a Wiki of notes covering my migration to the Mac), I like to tweak the code behind it (although new releases are now years apart), and I like the (little) correspondence that comes from people who tackled the same issues (sometimes with different solutions). As to exposure, it was great fun in the pre-iOS days and when Mac blogs were all the rage. But professionally (and this is the bit where I think some pushback is needed) I get exactly _zero_ benefits from it, because: - What I write about technically has (by design) nearly zero import on my work, skills or career aspirations - LinkedIn has become the de facto "show off" (cess)pool, and although I write a few opinion pieces now and then and post them there (and on Medium), the novelty value has largely worn off In fact, my online presence has, if anything, been a nuisance in my career moves--my currently being at Microsoft and keeping a Mac-related blog is often commented upon, for instance, and many recruiters who approach me via that route usually think I'm a developer (I also have http://carmo.io http://carmo.io, but that has essentially zero visibility).
  • mikeg8 7y ago
    Just checked out your site and wanted to say I really like the visual design. Not sure if you do all your own CSS but it has a great feel/balance on desktop. Well done
    • rcarmo 7y ago
      Thanks! On Tao, I decided to go with a Jekyll theme as a base and then proceeded to rip out most of it, starting with the typography, and added lazy loading to make it a better experience on mobile - and the iPad. The portfolio site is based on a minimalist skeleton CSS. I tend to rely on proven grid/layout bases and tweak the rest to my satisfaction (sometimes obsessively).
• theNJR 7y ago
  I’ve been writing on my personal site [0] since 2006. Most of it is bad. The early goal was to rank first for my name on google. That worked until an actor with my same name emerged. A few of my articles have made it to the front page here on HN. The traffic spike and follow on views from peoples newsletters and twitter is fun to see. But nothing material has ever come from it. I still enjoy writing on my site. When I’m in a mood where I write twice a week some of it even gets good. Then there will be periods of months where I stop. I tell myself if there was a consistent audience coming back for more I would write more. But that is undeniably the wrong answer to the personal site chicken-egg problem. I suppose this thread is now pushing our personal sites. [0]https://www.nicholasjrobinson.com https://www.nicholasjrobinson.com
• _pmf_ 7y ago
  I think GitHub profile maintenance as a service would be quite a business model for body leasing type of consultancies (that cater a particular industry sector) ... for individuals, it would not be very sustainable. Actually, a lot of work maintained by consultancies is half finished non production shovelware, so they probably already do this themselves.
• ArtWomb 7y ago
  Terrific thread! Am enjoying reading about personal experiences around "building your brand." In fact, I believe this is so important you should fight your instinct to keep things "pure." And go ahead and contract professional services if you are serious. Hire professional developers, writers, graphics, video, and stylists if necessary ;) For certain folks just coming up this is de rigeur. If you are a young writer / director trying to break into advertising to gain experience before conquering Hollywood. You need a killer demo reel. Same for a recent MFA grad living in Brooklyn seeking Manhattan gallery representation. An Instagram that tells a visual narrative is way more powerful than a series of unconnected shots. Furthermore, learning to take a single piece of content. Such as an onstage presentation or demo. And slice and dice it into bite sized content tailored to specific platforms. It is one method for extending your reach 10x. It's the "attention arbitrage" in Gary Vee's Content Model ;) https://www.slideshare.net/vaynerchuk/the-garyvee-content-model-107343659 https://www.slideshare.net/vaynerchuk/the-garyvee-content-mo... And it's why "free tiers" such as Github Pages, App Engine and 1MB are so important in our community. Not only does it level the playing field. It offsets the risks for experimentation and self-discovery. "Man, sometimes it takes a long time to sound like yourself" --Miles Davis
• CIPHERSTONE 7y ago
  Like almost everyone I've done the blogging thing on blogging platforms, on hosted traditional sites, on github with jekyll, etc. At some point I always get tired of dealing with it, question why I am even posting something, and what the whole point of it is. Essentially what I want is a journal, and as my vanity continues be killed, I'm sure I'll eventually go to using an actual paper journal. Right now I am one step away, I've been using gopher to blog on SDF.org. A huge reduction in audience, and since it is text based, its about as simple as you can get.
• Zigurd 7y ago
  With a name like Zigurd, SEO isn't a problem. Nor was registering the .com. A very simple site that points to Amazon and other places with information in context is useful. Google Sites is free and simple, and it is no longer sucky looking and retro. It took longer to do the "do you own this url" dance with Hover's DNS tab for the url than it did to create the site.
• qwtel 7y ago
  I agree and I just so happen to have built a Jekyll theme for personal sites that’s kinda good for hackers & nerds and is available here: https://hydejack.com/ https://hydejack.com/ (it’s based on the Hyde Jekyll theme)
• shurcooL 7y ago
  For more reasons why this might be a good idea, see https://indieweb.org/why https://indieweb.org/why.
• Vordimous 7y ago
  Wonderful article, RSS needs to make a comeback. Especially among friends and family who love to make large posts about important topics. I try to tell them to build a blog and then just link to articles that they write. Your article and others inspired me to finally just put together a system to make it easier to start blogging. I just mimic a social media platform, but since everything is committed to a repository using the JAMstack it could easily be converted to a full website. Any feedback would be wonderful. https://your-media.netlify.com/post/make-your-own-media/ https://your-media.netlify.com/post/make-your-own-media/ I will also mention that https://www.stackbit.com/ https://www.stackbit.com/ is doing basically the same thing but more from a “Make life easier for Website designers” perspective.
• yoz-y 7y ago
  A side note: Author mentions <sidebar> but as far as I know (and after searching for it too) this element does not actually exist. Modern browsers fallback to <div> rendering for anything they don't know but it's not exactly semantic web either.
  • aasasd 7y ago
    There's the ‘aside’: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/aside https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/as...
    • yoz-y 7y ago
      I use <aside> on my side which is I was intrigued by the mention of <sidebar>. The author also uses <sidebar> on the site rather than the usual <aside id/class="sidebar">.
  • markchristian 7y ago
    I actually meant to use <nav> — just a silly mistake. I've corrected the article since.
    • Theodores 7y ago
      Hi Mark For accessibility your sidebar could be a <header> containing a <nav> with the links in that. This <header> can precede the <main> content. The title for the links should be in the <nav> so it outlines properly and the heading for the <header> or the <nav> doesn't need to be <h1>. <h1> is best kept just for the article, not anything else. If the <header> containing the <nav> precedes the <main> you can style it to look like a sidebar. Why bother? Well, try it and then see how the page opens with Firefox Reader Mode. You should see the difference, the reader can jump past the header 'landmark' to the article. If you want to go fully HTML5... The newsletter signup could be in an <aside> rather than a <div>. Then with the article, it is nice to see use of <figure>, I have no evidence but I believe Google likes that. You can also try breaking down the article into <section> sized chunks, with the <h2> headings at the top of each <section>. This should compartmentalise each 'section' into a way that search engines might prefer. Amongst the <section>s the <aside> for the newsletter can slot in, outlining nicely. Ideally the newsletter <aside> also has a heading. Footnotes. If you change 'name' to 'id' then you will get top scores on validation. Nobody will ever notice or care, but you don't want validation errors do you? Also check out this: https://codepen.io/SitePoint/pen/QbMgvY https://codepen.io/SitePoint/pen/QbMgvY Really cool footnotes using CSS counters. Why bother? Well, you have taken HTML5 so far and not much is needed to go exemplary. In a world where everyone is up to speed on web technologies few get the actual HTML right. You might not know the latest funky web technology but it is always useful to point out how HTML5 could be done using the full vocabulary instead of just <div> mumblings.
• el_cujo 7y ago
  I could see how having a personal website that is basically just your resume could be helpful. If you're a web dev in particular, this kind of thing is essential. However, I don't think having a personal blog is a good idea for everyone. If your posts are all extremely boring and about mundane tasks, then you end up looking very self-involved. Being too funny can come off wrong as well, making you seem crass or like someone who can't be counted on to take things seriously. God forbid you talk about politics or complain about the person who cut you off in traffic. I'm not saying that having a personal blog is bad, by all means make one and complain about politics, but if you make a website/blog for the sole purpose of helping you get a job, I'd think twice about the kind of content you'd going to put out and how that would reflect to future employers. Having no presence online really doesn't strike me as a bad thing at all.
• PorterDuff 7y ago
  I'm going to have to throw myself in the camp of those who don't have much interest in publishing a page or blog. I suspect that it would either be ignored or result in protestors setting up outside of my house. If a strong urge to write presented itself, I rather like the idea of self-publishing either a novel or a non-fiction book on something I know a reasonable amount about. It not only would force a certain discipline to writing and study for the author, but would serve as my tiny push towards encourage long-form reading again as opposed to the modern urge to read things that fit on a computer screen (like I'm doing here of course).
• mgranados 7y ago
  Have a personal web site and a blog! Great idea, will work on it :)
• mtw 7y ago
  Another reason to have a personal web site is that it allows you to define your digital identity. If you don't, other people or worse, corporations, can easily publish documents, texts, tweets or something else that will make you look in a certain way. You don't have to post amazing pictures or publish Paul Graham essays, publish once a year and having the link in your email footer is enough to establish to others who you are
• treve 7y ago
  Now all browsers have removed the RSS feed button, here's his! https://writing.markchristian.org/feed.xml https://writing.markchristian.org/feed.xml
• docker_up 7y ago
  I have no identity online, except for Facebook and Linkedin. Linkedin is the only one that is public. I don't even have a photo. I've been careful since about 1997 to always ensure that I don't attribute myself to anything I've written. Even accounts like this I'm always careful to write things that won't identify me ever, unless I did it completely on purpose (a blog post for my employer, etc). I learned very early on that the things that get written are forever, and I didn't want something I wrote 20 years ago to come back to haunt me. I rejected a handful of candidates for things they wrote on Twitter (ex. "old people should give up their right to vote because they don't matter anymore", "SF is a piece of shit and everyone that lives there is a piece of shit").
  • sosodev 7y ago
    I don't think many people will write something that reflects them negatively when it's long form content.
    • docker_up 7y ago
      That's why Twitter is such a giant-killer.
• ausjke 7y ago
  if there is a native markdown driven, login supported, file-based(no database), online editor supported blog platform that transforms both code and markdown to html5, I will start tech blogging right away. drupal and wordpress users for years and I keep looking for a simpler solution, no not the static site generators which has no online editor and no login support either. I plan build one with python/flask, then I will have my personal site.
• Dig1t 7y ago
  What font does he use on this website? I can't find it in the source, but it looks really nice.
  • bradley_taunt 7y ago
    For the main paragraph content it's "Helvetica Neue". For the main headings it's "Arial Rounded mt bold".
• nojvek 7y ago
  I put up a very simple bio page at https://nojvek.com https://nojvek.com a while back and that gets me decent inquiries here and there. I don’t think I can blog regularly with 2000+ word articles. That’s awesome but it makes me feel I should rather be writing 2000 words of code and building something. Just me.
• pknerd 7y ago
  Technical blogging isn't all about all about showing off. I write because I want to share what I am up to hence share in the form of articles. That's the other thing that I got leads as well.
• CM30 7y ago
  A personal site is certainly something I've considered a few times. I do like the idea of a space for your own work away from corporate platforms, and having something that comes up when you search for your own name to show potential employers/contacts. However, I've then always considered against it because: 1. I'm never happy with anything simple, so any new project like this would inevitably become ten times more complicated than it arguably needs to be. Before too long, it'd end up being a tech demo for the ten new programming languages I was interested in learning that week. May as well put the effort into things with an audience. 2. I genuinely like having some semblance of privacy, and think fondly about the old days when people were encouraged not to share so much information about themselves online. It's why I basically have no pictures of myself on any social media platform, have only about two, maybe three voice recordings online ever, etc. Also feels a bit safer, especially given the ease in which mobs/witch hunts seem to developer over 'controversial' comments and political views. Having a personal sites seem like it'd lose that, and increase the level of risk in general.
• parliament32 7y ago
  Content aside, this is a great minimalistic blog without the usual trackers/bloat -- it's rare to uBlock blocking 0 assets. Seems to be built with Jekyll https://jekyllrb.com/ https://jekyllrb.com/
• b3b0p 7y ago
  This somehow reminded me of John Carmack's .plan files [0]. [0] https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive
• MichealHunt 7y ago
  I never had any good job because of my bad records, until this professional hacker, Arthur Vitali magically made all my bad records disappear within 48 hours. I thought it was too good to be true until he actually did it. Now I have a great job, all thanks to Arthur. If you need help, contact Arthur on EMAIL- quickarturhack ATgmail,com WHATSAPP- + 380683017209 He also helped a friend of mine hack an entire cellphone and also helped boost his credit scores to over 700 from 420. He offers many other services, I can't mention them all here.
• raindropm 7y ago
  Once I remember a coloring app developer, calling for artists to be featured in their app. Requirement: Portfolio and Instagram profile with a considerable amount of followers. I mean, it's perfectly understandable. Who will want to feature unknown artist in their app — but you know what, screw it.