Tiny Wren
It’s obvious to say that the world shrank during the Covid lockdowns. For a Product Manager and recovering Engineer / Team Leader, it meant working from home and pottering around the house talking to plants far more than is probably healthy.
An aspect I didn’t expect was how much my technical inspiration had changed. In the before times, I would hunt the web, write loads on Twitter, post on blogs, make little scripts/sites and share them. Heck, I even used to chat on IRC groups. Covid somehow changed that. The world became a scarier place — harder to engage with, harder to read about, harder to interact with. Just… less nice, overall.
I’d also become slightly jaded with web technologies. There are probably a few reasons for this. After years of developing mobile apps, it’s easy to fall out of the loop with current web tech. I’m sure there are still wonderful places online, but I’d lost the joy of building simple websites. I found it baffling how many modern sites had become slower, harder to use, and oddly complex to get back into. Plus, I became more hesitant to run projects on the open web — especially with all the security concerns that come with it. These days, setting up a VM and installing WordPress just to play around with stuff, just isn't right.
So I became more obsessed with my small little world. The world on my LAN — where I could play with hacky things, learn, and tinker freely. A space to explore without worrying about Covid, or the outside world. My digital potting shed.
This might sound a little desperate. Or dull. Or maybe you’re picturing a bloke slowly retreating from society. Don’t despair though. I actually found the opposite to be true — and strangely, this little dive into my offline world inspired me more than I expected. So much, in fact, that it felt right to write some of it down. Which I guess... brings me here.
So what did this foray into my digital shed result in? A few things I’ll no doubt be posting about soon:
So, in the coming “insert time frame”, I’ll probably post a bit more about all of that.
16/04/2025
My name is Andy, I build Apps and things for a living in the UK. This blog is where I’ll share a few thoughts and topics around tech, links I find interesting, and the occasional side project I create from time to time.
I love wrens. Their lovely round little bodies. Their oddly loud song. The absolute joy of seeing them bob around the garden between flower pots.
Perhaps a Tweet of the Day puts it best:
"[Their song] is the extrovert side of a normally introverted bird."
I’m a bit of an introverted bird myself — with a slightly round body.
I'm not a professional web developer, but I like to dabble. Here were my main requirements when choosing a platform:
I want to control where I host my stuff. I want to own it — and be able to move it around if I choose to.
In the past, I’ve used WordPress or some kind of Ruby-based platform. Frankly, it was a pain to maintain and a security nightmare.
These days, I don't want the hassle. I'm happy to skip more complex features (like comments or search) if it means less maintenance.
I despise slow, confusing, cumbersome websites that take forever to load. I want both the server and the site itself — HTML, JS, CSS — to be lightning fast.
I suck at JavaScript, and I want to keep it that way.
This is a blog, not a fancy web app. I don’t want to fight JS just to render something that HTML and CSS were built to handle.
No WYSIWYG editors, thanks. I deal with enough of those at work in messy internal wikis.
Markdown is simple to use for me.
Here’s what I ended up with:
Thats enough for now, I will at some point add some way to contact me. But in good time I think.
15/04/2025