spiralnegative

I haven’t posted here in a while, mostly because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with this blog website. Recently, the Indie Web has gained popularity as an escape from algorithm-driven content and AI-generated noise. Another thing that resonated with me was the essay A programmer’s loss of a social identity which put some of the feelings that have been bothering me in the past months (often subconsciously) into words. All of this (and many other things) made me realise I don’t want to give up on this website yet; I just need some inspiration to shape it.

It has been more than 8 months since I’ve become a mother. Like anything amazing in life, having a baby is something that cannot be described with simple words without sounding cliche. That’s why I’ll try explaining it using programming principles and terms, in a semi-humorous manner.

Generative art, sometimes called algorithmic art, is defined by Wikipedia as “art that in whole or in part has been created with the use of an autonomous system (…) [which] can independently determine features of an artwork that would otherwise require decisions made directly by the artist”. Back in my second year at university I studied Grammars for Generative Art which introduced its visual aspect to me. Many years have passed since then and I have only recently started experimenting with it again after browsing /r/generative.

In early 2000s, when I got my first digital camera, I never looked back to the old, basic film cameras that my parents used to take photos with when I was younger. Digital cameras were the only way to get decent photos as mobile phones with cameras were yet to become popular. Things changed a lot since then and taking a photograph has become like a second nature, muscle memory. But I guess I’m too nostalgic and sentimental to be that involved in this new, shiny technology.

It has been a few years since I deactivated my Facebook account and I don’t regret it. People sometimes ask me why - well, I am neither asocial nor friendless. I am just one of those people who don’t use Facebook.

It was high time I started blogging like a hacker. Jekyll, a static site generator in Ruby, was exactly what I needed. It converts raw text files in various formats and generates a complete, static website. All of the content is hosted and version-controlled on GitHub. Basically, I write my posts in Markdown using my test editor of choice, VIm, then I commit and push to Github. Awesome, right?