Hello, I'm Russ, and this is my website. I'm a software engineer who programs for the love of the craft in an age of tech disillusionment. The purpose of this site is to give me a place to publish my thoughts in general and on programming, personal projects, and professional developments.
Publish Date: 2026-06-27
After some reflection, I've decided to scrap the plans to submit to Wiby. To be clear, it's an excellent search engine and I fully believe in its mission. The trouble is that its policy on CSS and Javascript is in conflict with my goals. I would like to enhance this site to be more than just a software blog. Ideally it would showcase interesting features like toy games and widgets, polls, experiments, syntax highlighted source code examples, etc. Most of these features are completely out of reach without modern client-side tooling.
There are more practical reasons, too. Earlier, I was adding the first version of the site's hit counter and I discovered that I wouldn't be able to align the "since date" text and the counter without CSS. Yes, an HTML table could be used for this purpose, but they're not really intended for laying out page elements. Do I really want to use a frowned-upon web technique to layout my site just for Wiby compatibility?
I considered making a Wiby-mode URL parameter for the site which displays the site much like it exists today and submitting that URL to Wiby. On further reflection, though, I think that's wrong-headed. Plus, it's against Wiby's policy which explicitly states: "Don't submit a page which serves primarily as a portal to other bloated websites."
The part of Wiby's mission that I really like is where personal/non-corporate sites are featured. I want to be part of the movement to take back the web for regular, everyday people like me and you.
So, where should I submit? Here's a short list I'm considering:
Bam. The site spec has been updated. I really like that, by the way: the site spec determines what this site is. We can use it to keep the site on mission. Yes, that's the royal "we".
I guess that's it for now. Despite dropping Wiby support, I really do want to keep a minimalist aesthetic, and I may also make a "90's mode" feature for the site anyway. What personal website would be complete without animated GIFs, custom separator lines, and MIDI background music, after all?
