Hello, World

Welcome. This is the first post on my new site — and a good excuse to say what it's for. It is also a test of the Markdown renderer, so expect a few sample elements below.

Why a personal site

Social platforms come and go. A site you own is different: it's yours, it loads fast, and nobody decides what you get to read next. After years of renting space on other people's feeds, I wanted one place that stays simple and stays mine.

This little blog is built with plain PHP and a handful of Markdown files. No build step, no framework, no tracking. If it's fast and readable, it works.

What to expect

Here's a quick rundown of what you'll find here, mostly unordered to keep it honest:

• Short notes on software and the web.
• Thoughts on money, saving, and independence.
  • Building things on a budget.
  • Staying out of debt, slowly.
• The occasional write-up of something I've built.

If you prefer a numbered path, here is the same idea as an ordered list:

1. Read the short notes first.
2. Then dig into the longer write-ups.
3. Save the money posts for a rainy afternoon.

A small design note

The whole site is monochrome — black, white, and grey, nothing else. It's a deliberate choice:

When there are no accent colors to hide behind, the writing has to carry the page. I find that a pleasant constraint.

That quote is the whole design brief, really.

The sample image

Below is a test image. It's plain and grey on purpose — the point is to check that images render, load, and stay inside their column:

A little code

Inline code should look like this: php -S localhost:8000 starts the built-in server. And here is a fenced block:

<?php
// a small function from this very site
function ia_hello($name) {
    return "Hello, " . ucfirst($name) . "!";
}
echo ia_hello('world');

Renderer checklist

The table below lists each element and where it stands. It now carries a wide set of columns on purpose — a good excuse to test that a Markdown table wider than a phone screen can still be read by scrolling sideways instead of squashing every cell.

Scroll the table sideways on a narrow screen — if you can reach the last column without the page itself sliding, the shortcut works.

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Stay in touch

You can follow along with the RSS feed. If you'd rather write to me directly, the contact page has the details, and Wikipedia has never once let me down.

Thanks for reading — more soon.