I’ve never really enjoyed web-dev. It always felt like too much like a chore. Sure, I learned some basic HTML with everyone else in my middle/high school, but after that, no efforts were made to apply those skills to my own space on the web. No attempts were made to stay up-to-date as the use of CSS became commonplace, nor PHP or JavaScript. This was not just a choice out of laziness; not knowing anything about web-dev also meant that, when well-meaning friends came looking for help with their own websites, I could honestly say I had no idea how to help them. If making my own website seemed unappealing to me, I certainly wanted no part in someone else’s.

This lack of knowledge and competence always left me with a bitter taste in my mouth, though. “I could learn this stuff if I wanted to,” I’d tell myself. “I just have better things to do with my time.” Given the direction tech seems to be going, though, and my chosen profession, it seemed like I was maybe doing myself a disservice by not picking up at least a little of this stuff. Surely I should at least be able to make a tolerable looking website.

The time finally came that I had no choice. Word came from on high that I had to make some sort of professional website (read: my advisor made me do it). Grudgingly, I spent a quick afternoon getting the gist of CSS and digging up what I deemed an inoffensive template, registered a domain name, and voila: I was on the web. It was gross, though. I wasn’t proud of the final product. It was pretty awful to work with, too. Adding “posts” was a tedious process, and there wasn’t really a way to handle archiving or indexing elegantly. It was very much a hack job done under pressure.

For years since then, I’ve sworn to myself that I would take another stab at it, but this time do it right. Well, here we are. This go-round, I’m fiddling with Jekyll and Octopress. After suffering a lot last time trying to make my own, beautiful theme for my website, I am conceding aesthetical defeat and going with a nice looking template out of the box. The perk is, Jeykll makes this pretty freakin’ easy. The notion of static webpages appeals to me, too, so bonus points there. I haven’t looked at Ruby is God knows how long, but hey, maybe this will be a fun excuse to brush up a little, too.

For now, though, welcome to the new digs! It’s going to take me a while to get a handle on things and make this my own, but I’m already enjoying myself immensely. Hope to see you around.