Small acts of rebellion

I don't know if I've explicitly stated it, but this web site is a small act of rebellion. It rebels against the notion that a relatively complex site needs to be backed by a database. It rebels against the notion that there is no higher purpose that marketing. It rebels against the idea that we should do things for the sake of marketing our personal brand. It rebels against the notion that you will be unloved and shunned if you fail to follow the latest fads in design. It rebels against the mobile-first, mobile-only paradigm.

No, screw all that. I run this web site like this because I enjoy it. Plain and simple. I take heavy inspiration from web design of 1999 to 2002 because it's what I enjoy. I use Perl-based tools to publish the site from simple files on the file system kept under version control because I enjoy it. The only concession towards mobile-anything is the viewport meta tag. There are no marketing concerns here. I did, however, somehow manage to get a high score on Google Page Speed rankings, including accessibility.

Even though I went through the hassle of creating an RSS feed an continue to work on some Neat Things behind the scenes that will make that RSS feed even more useful, I have no expectation that anyone will subscribe. I do this because I enjoy it.

It's okay to do things solely because you enjoy them. Not everything created needs to be useful to be worth doing. It's good to do things without expecting anything specific in return other than the ability to point to something you made and say, "I made this."