The Living Room

About this website

I made my first website when the web ran on PHP and people still gathered in IRC. Too much of the web still runs on PHP and some people still hang out on IRC, but you get the idea. It was a mess of CSS inlined into HTML inlined into PHP. Discovering Wordpress only made it worse. I think it was a collection of jokes, but I don’t remember a single one. This iteration is different, I think.

I have a more solid understanding of what I’m doing and I actually have some content I want to put out there. The posts are written in markdown, that way I don’t have to bother with HTML unless I actually want to change the style (which is all the time). I use Pandoc to compile the posts to HTML, with a heavily adapted template and some partials. Some python code helps me with tagging and article snippets. The setup has some complexity, but a Makefile keeps everything together. I use neocities for hosting. I like neocities because it’s simple.

This site also serves as a great excuse for dipping my toes into Javascript and WebGL. I’ve never used either before, but so far they’re great fun. Also there’s been many additions to CSS since back then, so I’ve been checking them out as well. You can view the Styleguide to see the theme in its full glory.

About me

I’ve always enjoyed math and coding. It’s about understanding, rather than just learning raw data. There is no guess-work, no luck, the only thing that holds you back is your ability to formalize your intentions.

Initially, my attempts were chaotic, I put things together without understanding them. But as my intentions became more refined, so did my skills. Over the years I’ve come to learn and appreciate all kinds of fundamentally different concepts. There’s hardware description languages, object orientation, functional programming, event-based scripting languages and much, much more. There’s tools for everything, and knowing how to use them amplifies my abilities.

I tried to pick up some electrical engineering, after all it’s complementary to embedded coding. “The Art of Electronics” stands proudly on my bookshelf; I didn’t get very far. I once built a synth around an Atari Punk Console, wired to a Baby 8 Sequencer. It sounds awful and I never use it, but it got me into music.

Growing up, I wasn’t into music that much, yet exploring it on my own terms has been a rewarding experience. I like to experiment with sound design on my modular and noodling with expressive patches. I’m not good with keeping rhythm myself, but luckily there’s sequencers for that.

To me, art was the antithesis to coding. When I write code, I have an objective. I take the problem apart into smaller problems until each is small enough to be trivial. When I make art, I explore. I start with a vague idea and then improve on it iteratively. I nudge it to something slightly better. Again and again, until I like it. When I write code, I do it because I like the result. When I make art, I do it because I enjoy the process.

I’ve come to realize that the two are not so different after all. As I become more skilled in making music, I become more methodical. If I want a voice, I already have a good idea on how to patch it. If I want a pad, I know which generative methods to use. My jams start to smear the border between exploration and engineering.

Likewise, I’ve come to enjoy recreational coding as more of an art. I don’t have a plan on what I want it to be when I’m done, just a rough idea. If I have a new idea, I explore it, often it’s better than the original.

To that end I’ve created this website. I don’t know what it will end up as, but right now, I really want to keep nudging it.