Why a website

2026-02-07

A hallmark internet experience when I was in high school was visiting StumbleUpon, a website that served up random, interesting webpages.

It's probably obvious where I am heading with this. StumbleUpon appears to have been bought out and turned into another junk app. The world of interesting websites it rabbitholed into has been replaced.

To echo a now-common lament: the internet is now a much more contained (platforms) and homogenised (algorithms) experience.

I have a strong dislike of social media, in particular its incentives and opaque rules. Being a believer in the democratic utility of transmitting information, though, I see its function and have returned to the platforms in the past year to try grab a fraction of the attention being paid there.

I've been especially unsuccessful at cracking the vertical video game, and getting better at this is one of the big goals for 2026.

This website clearly serves a more boring function - it's essentially an expansive digital business card - and I expect near-zero traffic to this URL. I may not even write here much, if at all.

So why a website?

The advent of AI coding tools has made doing this possible in a way that was previously expensive and lacklustre.

But also it's kind of cool to stake out a little spot on the world wide web that won't be subject to the whims of the global platforms.

For the enjoyment of anyone who stumbles upon it.