About the author #

I’m a software developer based in the Philippines. I like inventing stuff. I like seeing new things come from my work.

Editor #

I use Neovim with NVChad as my editor. I don’t need a lot, I only write Python, and some JS and CSS for my day job. In the past, I’ve used VSCode and Emacs. VSCode is nice but I hate that there are times where I’ll need a mouse to use it. I’m looking into getting back to using VSCode.

Emacs was nice, it was really customizable but it was just clunky. I’ll oftentimes get random slowdowns even on an unconfigured Emacs.

Tech #

I like Python, it’s the first programming language I learned. I build all prototype stuff in Python. I also like CSS. I’m not good at it but I appreciate good CSS.

Apart from Python, I’ve tried to study C, and Go. Though, no big projects.

Reaching me #

For inquiries, collaboration, contact me on my email: earlsiachongco@<email.com> replace <email.com> with gmail.com.

About this site #

This site contains notes, thoughts, images and code by me (unless specified otherwise. Also, memes are excempted to this rule). The articles I write are mainly for my own reference. From time to time, I aim to reach an audience. It’s also an excuse for me to call myself a writer.

Design #

I wanted this website to capture what it feels like to walk in the park.

To me, a park is an ideal environment to socialize, discover new things or just look around. I want the visitors of this site to feel that way. I want to show interesting stuff to make it fun to look around.

Why run a personal website #

Running a website feels the same as owning a house. Probably.

A house has to be maintained, but since you own the house, you can do whatever you want with it. This site is my own place in the internet. It’s my own land in the pangea that is the internet.

I don’t think there’s an alternative to having your own website. I still use Facebook to connect with friends but my thoughts mainly go here. I think it’s safer to host content this way and my content is not limited to one platform. I also like that I am not limited to what customizations I can do.

It’s also just so good to tell people you have your own webiste, I feel like Tony Stark when I tell someone, ‘oh I’m not really active on Facebook, but I’m active on my website’. In reality, the receiving end probably thinks I’m the kind of person who writes my own Wikipedia page, this feeling is probably heightened by the fact that they didn’t ask.

The technology of this blog #

This is a static site is rendered by Hugo, hosted on Github Pages. It’s written in plain CSS, and HTML. I have also installed staticCMS in my local copy of this website.

Previously, this site used the Jekyll theme Ananke. I customized it to fit a shorts section to the site. Today, it’s using letter, a theme made by me for this site. By having my own theme, I am able to design and customize every part of this website.

CMS #

When I first started this blog, if I wanted to get my thoughts into the blog, there were bottlenecks, one is that there’s no fast way to just type and publish a post. In Facebook, and Twitter, you’re just one URL/bookmark away, and a button press to publish a new post. I found that I can run StaticCMS on my copy of this website to get the same, fast, user experience.

I’ve setup hugo serve with a cron job to run on startup so that everytime I have a thought I want to publish, I can just open localhost:1313/admin to open StaticCMS. I think it’s awesome.