For information about me, visit About Sri
About the Site
This website is an open journal and personal knowledge management system (PKMS).
The site is organized around four main menu sections.
1. Journal
Dated blog posts reporting on my activities and related thoughts. There's two sections:
2. Expeditions, Etc.
This section consists of four subcategories, collecting the "active work" since starting this website in 2022.
Expeditions
Exploration-focused experiments, prototypes, and collected materials (equivalent to "projects")
Artifacts
Treasures, curiosities, and interesting lore collected through an Expedition. (jumble of "working notes", "prototypes", and "deliverables")
Tools
Utilities, recipes, etc that help with Expeditions both future and past.
Releases
The good standalone works that I think can provide immediate utility, packaged for ease of use.
3. Concepts
This is a currated reference library of methodologies, patterns, taxonomies, and conceptual models that help me understand and manipulate the world. This is my wheel house!
There are several subcategories here:
Memo
Notes about specific experiences, products, or people that caught my interest.
Topic
General research on a particular topic that I'm exploring.
Review
Opinionated reviews on specific experiences or products.
4. Tropes
I've made-up a lot of terms over the years throughout my writing. I've started collecting their definitions to help readers explore them more deeply and for use as a glossary of recurring terminology. While a lot of it is rather subjective and attuned to my own needs, I try to explain the ideas for a general audience.
In addition to tropes, there are three other subcategories:
Exemplar
Opinionated examples of stuff that I think is truly well-designed and great.
Picklejar
Ideas that pop into my head that I think are great, but am forced to save for later.
Squirk
Like tropes, but extremely specific to me and the way I think.
Data Collection Policy
This website does not collect or process personal data. However, <iframe> embeds for video players (e.g. YouTube) will insert trackers. I'm in the process of replacing them with static images. I've outlined more specifics in a privacy policy.
Colophon
Tech Stack
I'm using Eleventy, a static site generator that converts Markdown documents into HTML with powerful templating. I like it way more than Hugo and Jekyll.
I've added a lot of custom Javascript extensions to it for stuff like
- indexed collections on the main category pages like the dated /journal and alphabetized /trope pages.
- last updated pages on the home page and a longer listing on recent updates
- shortcodes for TufteCSS and text layout utilities that otherwise suck to format by hand (e.g. like TermTable on this page which converts a list into a table)
- syndication is handled with I autopost to Mastodon and BlueSky with Robb Knight's EchoFeed application. To generate the feed, I'm using a Nunjucks template for Atom feeds pieced together from scrap on the Internet.
- command interface to help with creating files in the right places in Visual Studio Code.
Hosting
I'm using Opalstack (affiliate link), a really great developer-oriented host at a fair price. It's the improved spiritual successor to WebFaction. I use rsync to push all the static files generated by Eleventy up to a static nginx server there.
Typography
I'm now using Google Fonts, having selected Merriweather as my replacement serif and Roboto for the sans-serif (replacing Proxima Nova Condensed).
The custom theme is based on TufteCSS, with additional navigational elements.
Stock Media
Social Media Icons from freepik.com. GitHub and Discord logos are sourced from their company media kits. Mastodon logo Jin Nguyen, AGPL, via Wikimedia Commons.
Contact
back to main index