Why a blog?

Long ago, the internet consisted of a wide variety of custom websites with bespoke layouts that people would post all sorts of content on. But, sadly, that has all been replaced by the tragic uniformity of social media, where every post lives in an identically structured world, and you are spoon fed engaging content via automatically generated "for you" pages.

I used to post all my photos on Instagram, and it worked pretty well for a while! But, in Facebook Meta's eternal quest for engagement, Instagram deprioritized posts in favor of stories. Why? Well...

• Photos posted as stories disappear after 24 hours
• Photos posted as posts just sit around until someone views them

With posts, you could check every other week and you wouldn't miss an update from a friend, provided that you scrolled far enough. With stories, however, you'd better log in every day, otherwise you might miss something! And if you did that, your friends would hate you! You don't hate your friends do you? Well then, you'd better log in more! Engage with the content! Also click ads maybe!

Eventually it got to the point where posts were sufficiently low-priority that most people no longer even look at them. If you try to, you'll find that the posts feed consists almost entirely of sponsored content and suggested content from random influencers.

Intended content focus

I thought it might be fun to post some of my photos, projects, and any other mildly interesting things I encounter onto the internet! Since I also currently live in Japan, I thought might make this blog even more interesting.

About the site itself

The content is generated using Astro, and contains such exciting features as a full screen photo viewing mode! The design is inspired by the appearance of late-90s educational software, most notably Microsoft Encarta and Microsoft Bookshelf. I have always had a bit of a soft spot for the warm tones used by those apps!