The first entry, or: why I built this by hand
Every blog starts with a first post that nobody reads. This is mine.
I put this off for a while because I kept trying to pick the “right” way to build it. A static site generator, or some framework with a hundred dependencies, or one of those hosted platforms that owns your writing and runs ads next to it. I went back and forth for longer than I should have.
Then I remembered the web is mostly just files. A page is HTML, the styling is CSS, and that’s most of it. So that’s what this is: Markdown that gets turned into plain HTML, one small stylesheet, and no JavaScript sent to your browser.
What it’s for
Polymathium is my made-up name for the element of polymathy. I wanted somewhere to keep notes on whatever I’m into at the moment, whether that’s code, math, a book, or an idea I haven’t worked out yet, without pretending each one is a finished essay.
It’ll be rough in places, and that’s fine. A couple of things I’m trying to stick to:
- Write like I’m talking to one person, not an audience.
- Post the unfinished version instead of sitting on it.
- Keep it fast enough to load on a train with bad signal.
On speed
This page is a few kilobytes of text and one stylesheet. There’s no JavaScript and no web fonts to download, so nothing has to load before you can start reading. If your connection can send a text message, it can handle this.
# the whole "deploy pipeline"
npm run new -- "my next thought" # makes a dated markdown file
# ...write...
git commit -am "new post" && git pushThat’s the entire system. If it ever gets more complicated than that, something has gone wrong.
Anyway, welcome. Stick around for a bit.
