Writing
Most posts are drafted longhand. I Just prefer it that way. Writing longhand forces me to slow down and to think a little more about what I want to say and how. Alas, still not enough thinking is going on seeing how regularly I need to edit a post after I published it.
It may also take a while between the moment I draft a post, the moment I type it on the computer and the moment I finally publish it. Don’t be surprised at all by the delays, or by the delay between the date indicated on the post and its actual publication date on the blog: I often bundle the publication of multiple posts at the same time that have been wrritten much earlier.
I prefer writing using a fountain pen but most of the time I use either a cheap Bic pen or mechanical pencil.
- Unlike a fountain pen, the Bic never leaks and it’s also sturdy: I can drop it without any worries.
- Unlike a wooden pencil, the Bic mechanical pencil doesn’t require constant sharpening so I don’t have to deal with pencil shavings. I don’t even need to carry a sharpener, and no eraser is required either since it includes its own.
- Both are dirt cheap, they cost mere cents and, unlike with a fountain pen, I’ve never seen anyone trying to steal them.
- Finally, both the ballpoint and the pencil work great on cheap paper very much unlike a fountain pen. I prefer using cheap paper (I use the back of letters, invoice, whatever I can get my hands on) so I don’t waste good paper for drafting.
Publishing
I wanted to make this website to be as quick to load as possible, even for people with limited bandwidth. I also wanted the website to be privacy-respecting.
- It’s as static website, meaning that there is no javascript, no PHP, no script at all used to display content, menus or anything. and no script used to track you. The website is simple HTML pages with very little CSS, for the formatting. A bit like many websites used to be back in the 90s… when I created my very first website by hand.
- I don’t write this website by hand anymore, though. I use Hugo, a static website generator which is a script but one that runs on my computer only to create the pages I upload to the server for you to see.
- The blog is hosted by monarobase, a small French company that offers great services and provides an over-the-top customer support. At a very fair price.
- For the theme, I use a modified version of the x-min theme.
- Posts are formated in Markdown using the VScodium text editor.
What about privacy?
Since I refuse to display ads and since the website doesn’t run any script (including tracking scripts), I have no way of tracking you. I don’t know who you are, I don’t even know if you are reading my post or not, unless you so chose to tell me.
Images
To keep the site light, I use very few images and they all are heavily compressed using the AVIF file format.
To make my life easier, I use a script (that only runs on my computer, not on the website) to automate that image compression process miwing ImageMagick and ffmepg. Those were not easy to learn, but they’re incredibly powerful.
In the oldest posts you will notice that images are looking very different than more recent ones. When I started, I tried using an old compression technique called dithering that reduced their size a lot but also made them vaguely look like those photos printed in the very old newspapers. It was odd but also kinda funny. BTW, I stole that idea from LOW←TECH MAGAZINE. After I learned about the Avif file format, I switched.
Hardware
All the software mentioned should run fine on any computer.
That being said, my PC is a HP ProDesk 400 G6 Mini that runs GNU/Linux Mint. It works flawlessly, very silently and does everything I want it to do and, more importantly, does nothing I don’t want it to do: there is no telemetry, no tracking, no ads, no spying on me.
Last edited: 2026, Mar. 06.
Published: 2024 Jan 01