thoughts on one year
2023-01-08_0
One year ago, I published my first blog. It is surprising to look back and see how far (and little) I've come since then.
The first iteration of this website was in September 2021. I began learning HTML/CSS through w3schools and the result was catastrophic. I recall being very proud of it, until I realized that I was missing any kind of responsiveness.
The next iteration came in October 2021, when I decided to scrap the previous version in an attempt to add responsiveness. The end result was a set of minimal HTML documents. These were extremely functional and responsive, but they lacked any sort of identity. Despite accomplishing my goal of responsive design, I still felt unsatisfied with my work. I was very close to publishing that version on Neocities, but I decided to try again.
In my quest to make something minimal, I ended up making websites that were basic and lazy. Thus, I decided to switch up the colour scheme and design philosophy. My next attempt at webdesign consisted of emulating the gritty designs of websites of my childhood—mirroring the miniscule texts, blueish-grey tones, and flashy futuristic backdrops. In doing so, I ran into the same mistakes of my previous iterations: responsiveness. This is when I finally realized that making a website with character in the modern day is not easy. Back then, when only computers could access the Web and monitors were limited to specific resolutions, one could confidently build websites knowing that their creations would be rendered appropriately. Unfortunately, this is not the case now. Other than the shortcomings in responsive design, I am still proud of this iteration of the website. I attempted something bold and I still look back fondly on the design process of that version.
Then, I went for a completely different look. Instead of the y2k-ish tone the previous iteration had, I tried something modern yet comfy. I had recently finished playing NieR:Automata and was in love with its UI screens. Hisayoshi Kijima, the UI designer, described his design philosophy for the UI as "systematic and sterile, but also beautiful". This phrase struck me as the exact feeling I was looking for. Looking for inspiration, I stumbled upon YoRHa CSS, a replica of the in-game UI for HTML styling. After fine-tuning the stylesheet, I applied it to my HTML documents and was impressed with how clean it looked. This was the first public edition of perfectn0ir. I was very happy with this design for a few months. These feelings began to change when I discovered brutalist websites and continued my CSS experiments.
Alas, we reach the current iteration of the website. I have already discussed much of its design philosophy in a previous blog, so, for the sake of time, I will not discuss it again here. I am still very happy with the identity of my website, but there are a few things I am not so content about. First is the lack of content. In one year I have only published seven blogs. If these blogs were articles with thousands of words each and truly captivating content, I would be proud of that number. But my blogs are not like that. Moving forward, I will try to follow the monthly schedule I advertise. Another issue is the lack of website functionality. I am not referring to a lack of buttons and flashy animations. Instead, I am talking about how two of my five links on my navigation bar still have no content. I will add links to the /sites HTML document over the coming weeks. For the contact document, I am yet to set up PGP encryption. The original plan was to install Void Linux on my main PC and then set up PGP, but schoolwork and other responsibilities made it difficult for me to have the time to properly adjust to a new OS and a completely foreign system. I know I could install a PGP software for Windows 10, but I would rather wait until I can properly do it on Linux. For the time being, please contact me through Neocities comments.
I think that 2023 will be a good year for perfectn0ir. The next few months will most likely end up similar to the majority of 2022, but after May, I will have more time to dedicate towards high quality articles. I currently have the rough draft for three new blogs and ideas for five others. My goal over the coming months will be to have these three blogs either published or close to published.
To conclude this ramble, I encourage you to continue following my writings this coming year. Thank you for reading, and here's to another year of perfectn0ir!