Samyak's Nook

✨ Starting Again

I've been running circles around bearblog.dev for quite some time. More than 5-6 months, if my memory serves me right. I liked the concept but immediately discarded the idea because it was too simple for my liking.

I tried making a portfolio website on Notion. But, then again, Notion's recently been going through a lot of changes (which will only be accelerated by their API release), and I've been too used to seeing Notion pages for the last two years or so. There's wasn't much that I could do to change the look and feel drastically, I figured (and I obviously didn't want to pay $12/mo for Super either).

But I've been lately discovering quite a few blogs of some Twitter gods such as Paul Graham, Derek Sivers and Naval Ravikant and I was amazed at how simple they were. Perhaps, the simplicity was for a reason.

Simplicity helps you to move away from the distracting elements and focus on things that matter. It emphasizes the written word more than any other stock image. It emphasizes the content more than the affiliate links.

Not that any of this is wrong, but it's not something I wanted to do. I didn't write for more views or ad commission. I'm happy if my posts are read by 5 considerate folks who could discuss the topic v/s having 100 superficial ones (the latter's what happened, for the most part, sed lyf).

After a lot of deliberation, I've finally decided to go for this Indie product. And boy, why didn't I do it earlier!

Herman doesn't show it in his example blog, but there's a lot of customization that can be done in the look and feel of the blog. I discovered this only when I made an account and saw the magic of injectable CSS. Moreover, the pages load snappily. A semi-decent-looking but functional dashboard invigorated the terminal kiddo in me. There are some more features in the roadmap. I'm a simple man. What more could I ask for?

Moreover, the platform is reminiscent of an old internet — the hard-to-reach internet, which fascinated me so much for most of my childhood, before it became commonplace. Away from the clutter of the endless feeds of shallow, often polarizing content. Brimming with some of the most game-changing ideas and, of course, Miniclip games! It still is that way, but much more muddled with other junk. Okay, I'll carry forward my internet rant in the posts which follow.

I'll also post interesting tech bits, some things that I'm proud of, opinions you never asked for, cool book recommendations, mind-blowing ideas from all over, and God knows what else. Because I don't really know.

I'll keep posting on Medium the best of my work. I'm using Notion for a ton of other stuff. This is perhaps where I'll write the most from now, for now.

For now, you can't really subscribe via email because that functionality is still being developed. However, you can follow me via RSS. So cool!

You can (raise a) "toast" one's post on this platform, which is an anonymous, frictionless way of showing appreciation for someone's writing. Liked this concept very much. Try toasting this post to see things in action. 🙃

#blogging #fun #random