Hello, I'm Wyatt Ward. Welcome to my small site.
Hello, I'm Wyatt Ward. Welcome to my small site.
I've not been too active in sharing my discoveries/things I've learned with the wider world, so this site (and particularly the blog) are part of an attempt to fix that by giving me somewhere to do my write-ups on whatever strikes my fancy.
I do this in the hope that it helps someone, gives a small insight into what I'm learning, or maybe even explains a little about how my brain works.
While I expect it to largely remain technical, I am not going to restrict myself to that. If I feel like writing about something, I'm going to do so. That often means technology, but not necessarily always.
I also think I might be helpful to others if I start writing about stuff I had to find out for myself– stuff that that wasn't documented already in a guide somewhere, or else was documented by an out-of-date guide that was only somewhat applicable to a specific task at hand.
This site will mostly contain my writings on whatever attracts my interest. I make no guarantees as to the completion of any of my blog posts, but I will guarantee that they were one hundred percent hand-crafted (by me) with no computer intervention (or AI generation). I bring this up solely because it seems we may be on track for generated content meant to manipulate people becoming the norm rather than the exception, with human-to-human connections growing ever more fleeting.
I can't really hope to change that on my own, but I will do everything that is within my power to ensure that my site remains a genuine and heartfelt place, where I can hopefully share my thoughts with others and assure them of my authenticity.
Of course, you'll have to trust me on that - but hopefully you'll be able to put that trust in me as you come to know more about me while exploring the site.
I bear no inherent hostility towards the concept of AI because I think it can potentially be used in helpful ways... but I also mourn the consequences that I feel it is likely to bring with it, both in the short and long term.
This site is written so that it will display adequately on many devices and browsers while requiring minimal processing power or RAM. Sure, I could have used Bootstrap or any number of other CSS or Javascript frameworks, but performance would suffer and the page would also stand out less. I have tried to keep the site's CSS and HTML as pragmatic as possible, while also attempting to achieve acceptable results on a wide variety of rendering engines.
It has been tested in browsers going back to Lynx, Internet Explorer 6, and Dillo. This is good news for all of the two people who still use IE6 for anything, although there you may have trouble with HTTPS certificate validation. Were I hosting the site myself, it would be available via both HTTP and HTTPS, thus avoiding the issue. I suspect it will work properly in IE 5 as well, but I have not had a chance to test that out yet.
So, regardless of how you feel about "Web 1.0," please keep in mind my goals when designing this site. Remember that my priority was to make this site fast, lightweight, readable, and compatible. If you have suggestions on how I can improve readability or usability, do not hesitate to let me know.
I love Javascript, and think it's fun sometimes, but I'd much rather have a page that's easily accessible to everyone, regardless of their computing power and living situation. Since there is no reason my site should need Javascript, I see no reason to introduce it as a requirement.
I have added a light and dark mode, implemented entirely using symbolic links. No need for Javascript, cookies, or server side page processing! The only difference is which CSS file is symlinked to. The light CSS hides the light mode button, and the dark CSS hides the dark mode button.
If you want to contact me, my e-mail address can be found on my GitLab or GitHub account pages and in this site's git commit history. It's not listed here because of spambots; sorry. If you have questions, comments, or even want to hire me, don't hesitate to get in touch!
I have had to add additional clutter to this page to inform you that there is now an RSS feed available for my blog, should you wish to be notified when I post something.
Of course, should you use https://www.seamonkey-project.org/ as your web browser (like I do), you can find my RSS feed like you always have via the RSS auto-discovery feature, via the orange RSS icon in your URL bar.
This clutter is necessary because Mozilla, Google et al. no longer seem to care about blog post discovery/notifications. Nor do they seem to care about helping individuals to self-publish outside of their centralized infrastructure and software-as-service sites/"apps." They do not even appear to care for user freedoms; they would rather you read whatever Google's search algorithm (formerly, Google Plus), Twitter's post feed, Facebook's "wall", or Mozilla's own Pocket might deem more fit to shove under your nose for your obedient consumption.
Because algorithm-based media discovery has never not worked out. No, sir. You shouldn't read this article, nor this Pew research writeup. Certainly, critiques of echo chambers are right out, too. You should learn to stop worrying and love being told what to think. Except you should listen to me, of course. You should believe me 100% because I am never wrong or biased about anything, ever. Anyone who may say otherwise is probably a dirty, rotten, filthy anarchist or something. Maybe even a socialist! Thank God there are corporations out there to protect us from these vile monsters, whom you should absolutely never give a fair chance to explain themselves. And you certainly should never or consider their sentimental merits, either. Just keep clicking your Youtube recommendations. Keep your head down, do your patriotic duty, consume, like, and subscribe.
Oh, and I guess Mozilla will probably also claim RSS was such a huge maintenance burden, or something. And cite telemetry data showing no one used it, despite the people who know about RSS being smart enoughto turn that off for the sake of their "privacy" that Mozilla claims to care so deeply about. Maintenance burden is usually what Mozilla employees cite whenever they remove or lobotomize one of the ever-fewer remaining functionalities I may have liked in Mozilla's product that distinguished it from Chrome and all of the Chrome-clones out there.
No idea what RSS is? Not to worry. Wikipedia has a decent explanation.