A New Look for This Site
Starting today, I’ve upgraded this web site to use newer software and style, and to feature some more information on the front page. I hope it makes this site look a little more current.
For almost a decade, I’ve been building my personal web site using Jekyll, a framework to build static web pages based on themes and templates. I then upload them to an Amazon S3 bucket and update an Amazon CloudFront distribution. (I work for Amazon Web Services, but I pay the company’s normal rates as a customer. My opinions are not necessarily those of AWS.) I use a similar setup for the official site of Personal Finance for People in Tech, my first book, whose second edition is now in post-production.
Until today, I’ve used Jekyll Bootstrap (JB) as this site’s scaffolding. Based on the popular Bootstrap (formerly Twitter Bootstrap) framework, JB had served me well, although on desktop browsers, it looked too compact for me and it looked dated. After a little digging, I found that JB hadn’t been modified in over 6 years; its named successor, Ruhoh, has been idle for nearly 8 years. I’m grateful to Jade Dominguez, an author of both frameworks, for his efforts, but it was clearly time to find something new.
Jekyll itself remains maintained, so I upgraded all my packages and went on the hunt for a new framework. I found Minimal Mistakes, an attractive and modern theme by Michael Rose of Buffalo. It makes a better use of all screen sizes, from my phone up to my work-from-home megamonitor. I’m very thankful to Michael for his great and continuing work on Minimal Mistakes. In addition, Thom Milkovic uploaded a beautiful photo of Seattle from Kerry Park and made it available for use freely for both commercial and non-commercial purposes; kudos to Thom for his gorgeous, freely-available photo. In addition, thanks to my friend Sabreen Lakhani, who took the photo that I’m now using as a headshot on article pages. You can see more of her work on her site, Lens of Lakhani.
My primary non-work project at the moment is the second edition of Personal Finance for People in Tech, which I’m planning to release in e-book, print, and audiobook formats. I’ll continue to publish articles about subjects I find interesting on an occasional basis; in the future, they’ll look much nicer. Hope you enjoy the new style!