Hi everyone,
Thank you for visiting my website,
I’ve spent the past year and a half playing on and off with this space experimenting with things. I was a bit tired of the previous one as it was super hard to update. No CMS. No system. I needed to add each new element manually by declaring precise coordinates. Not update-motivating at all! But, I have to say, 100% hand-made, pure CSS craft enjoyment. I learnt a lot. If it’s your first time visiting this page, you can have a look to the previous one here.
Anyways, along with the lack of adaptability, I also felt I wanted to start sharing again more of the things I’m doing. Since I stoped posting on Instagram back then in 2020 (tired of its dynamics and policies) I’vent found a space or rhythm I feel comfortable with. So, that’s why I decided to try it here, rebuild this website, recycle some design decisions and experiment with it as multiple: an archive, a portfolio, my internet home, a space to log my processes, encounters, thoughts and more.
With my portfolio, I’ve experienced super frustrating and time consuming to share potential collaborators, clients or funding programs specific bag of projects. And because my practices are usually entangle, big sections of projects didn’t really feel confortable to share. Some projects include book making and web design, in some books I did the printing, in others, just the design. Some are client work, some are personal.
There is no solution that could fits all, but many times I ended up making specific PDFs that would align with certain application. Of course, most of them didn’t pass, and all the energy put on that particular PDF didn’t feel worth it. I ended up with another PDF, and hours and hours of document crafting, plus tons of file copies. Same images copied over and over between documents.
That’s why, I want this website to be an archive and a tool that allows me to make portfolios. A flexible system that shares in particular contexts works related with certain criteria. This might not be the endgame solution, but at least an enjoyable process of making, where I wouldn’t be doing another pdf but rather a tool, which brings me more joy and excitement.
I’ll write more about it soon as I haven’t implemented the web to print aspect…
From previous experiences, it was clear that I needed some automation process but I did’t want this to be an app, my challenge was to keep the process and website as resilient and lighter as possible. I want that the result will be static files, that have some JavaScript sparkles for magic interactions.
Some years ago, I was introduced to Pelican a not so popular any more static site generator written in Python, that on the era of JavaScript transformers are rare gems, and I thought myself, why not? Let’s give it a try, it may be a good option. I know Pelican is used in pages like: The low-tech magazine(not anymore they migrated to HUGO), but also Varia, if you, reader, know more examples leave them in the log section please.
Pelican takes content written in markdown down files and using Jinja templates creates a static page. This workflow, similar to other CMS flows, allows you to focus on creating the content rather than the page itself. And for me, a way more motivating reason to make updates a bit more regularly. However, the key difference of the static file systems are that rather than dynamically generated a web file every time a user visits the page, it creates it a single time, reducing the computation/energy cost of both server and client side per visit.
More details and source code to come…
[markdown file]--->[pandoc]--->[pelican]--->[jinja]--->[website]I got inspired by many sites, blogs, homie websites and portfolios of wonderful people all over. Here a ever growing list in no particular order: Ritual dust, Martin, Laurel Schwulst, Brendan Howell, Elliot, Nico Chilla, Polina Lobanova, Alberto, Sunday Sites, Emma, Daniel, A website is a room, Artefactos Nativos, Em Reed, Tiger Dingsun…
Ant that is it for the moment,
this letter will transform over time, sections will be edited,
links will me broken…
Thanks again for visiting and don’t forget, I’m not using cookies, trackers or anything similar, so consider to leave an intentional trace that shows me there is actual people behind the screen and not just scraping robots pinging my server, leave me a note in the Guest Book Yard
Warmly,
Camilo
2019 | Part of “Notas sobre comic abstracto” (Abstract Comic Notes) by Gerardo Vilches (ESP)