my website is one binary
                      ----------------------------

     a.k.a. this one weird trick that inspires me to program creatively

i have struggled for years to figure out a website framework that feels good
to me. i tried all of the classics, including but limited to:
- ghost
- hugo
- jekyll
- sr.ht + tarball
- manual html editing

i have very high and unusual standards, and none of the above felt correct to me.
more importantly, none of the above excited me.

i have uncovered the secret. i have discovered my path. a website that feels good.

but first, the search.


                              mY vALuES
                            -------------               

i place an extremely high value on systems that i am capable of understanding
and trivially maintaining front-to-back as a single individual. i like human-
friendly code that is optimized for readability, and i like extremely fast
feedback loops. i like fun and cleverness and being cute too.

the first recommendation people always get is "hugo." for those who aren't in
the know, hugo is a "static website generator" - aka, it is a program that takes
templates & markdown as input and compiles HTML that you may deploy wherever you'd
like.

people normally couple a static site generator (SSG) framework with some hosting
platform for an ez-pz pretty reliable & fast blog. or so they say.

one of my core values is maintainability. this is true of most everything that
i own. from my framework laptop to my bicycle, i like to be able to get my hands
dirty when things break down, and i will always prefer tools and platforms that
treat users as capable and curious. i make a lot of unconventional sacrifices
and people think it's weird - but the truth is that i _hate_ maintaining things.
i'm extremely bad at it. but when something of mine breaks, i _need_ to be able
to dig in myself, because god knows i'm not responsible enough to go through the
painfully long feedback loop of having someone else help me. (i am so averse to
this in my personal life that i will simply let my broken things stay broken if
i cannot trivially fix them myself)

hence another core value of mine - reliability. i need the thing to work today,
and i need the thing to work in ten years. i spend a lot of time choosing my
things, and i refuse to depend on anyone else to ensure that they continue to
work. i don't care if your company went under, my car will keep working. i don't
care if you end-of-life'd the product, my laptop takes generic components that i
can insert myself. you get the point.

so, when people say "just build your blog with hugo and host it on github pages
bruh!" i am naturally very skeptical. here are some of the dependencies that
hugo + github pages come with:

- github pages, the service
  (it must remain up)
- github pages, the product
  (it must remain viable)
- hugo, the project
  (it has 1,200 dependencies that require constant updates)
- hugo, the community
  (they must document the code)
  (i cannot read it all myself)
  (i have limited time and interest)
- hugo, the plugin ecosystem
  (if you rely on any of their plugins)
- hugo, the binary
  (it must