WJ.4: Evolution History of Personal Blogs

History of Personal Blog Evolution#

My friends who are familiar with me know that I write more than I speak. Many people believe that words have more power and emotion than written text, but I don't think so. Emotion is about genuine involvement and is unrelated to the medium of expression. In this weekly issue, I want to talk about the evolution of my personal blog.

Phase 1: Wordpress

In the first half of 2014, I started learning programming and wanted to build a personal website to host the articles I wrote on QQ Space. I wrote a lot of things on QQ Space when I was in primary and secondary school. Later, I found the domain name ursb.me because my roommates often used to argue with each other, saying "Are you s*?" and it turned out that this domain name actually existed. Therefore, this domain name composed of four meaningful letters is precious to me.

After submitting the domain name for record, I set up a "virtual space" to build a personal website (yes, it was called virtual space at that time, which was actually sharing a server with others, and users only had permissions for a certain directory). The first version of the blog used the Wordpress framework, and I spent a lot of time tinkering with various plugins, but after six months, I didn't write a single article.

Wordpress

Phase 2: Hexo

After reflecting on it, I realized that I couldn't continue like this. So in 2015, I simplified things and switched to Hexo + GitHub Pages to deploy my blog. During that time, I wrote a lot of content almost every week. However, my enthusiasm for tinkering did not diminish. I still installed many website analysis and commenting plugins. The fast loading speed of this static webpage was not as good as expected. Despite all the efforts, when I looked at the site analysis, I realized that there were no comments or readers at all. The page views were pitifully low, and most of the page views were from myself. Nevertheless, I persisted in updating because even if no one read it, the key was to record my thoughts.

For the specific experience from 2014 to 2016, you can refer to From WordPress to Hexo: ursb.me - Personal Blog Tinkering Notes (PS. This article is outdated and the technical solution was changed in 2017)

Phase 3: Typecho

Until 2017, the commenting plugin I used, "Duoshuo," stopped its service. After that, I switched to the inconvenient NetEase Cloud Comment, but it also stopped its service after only two months. If I used a foreign service, it would affect readers' ability to comment. After thinking it over, I found a lightweight dynamic framework called Typecho to build a new blog, which is now Airing's Hut.

Airing's Hut

I didn't migrate nearly a hundred articles from the old blog to the new one, and they only exist locally. The goal of the new blog is no longer to flood with posts but to output my own thoughts on top of recording. Therefore, the update frequency is very slow, with updates only every 1-2 months. It became even slower after I started working because the technical solutions I wrote for work couldn't be published on the blog.

The comment section of the technical articles on the new blog is very quiet, but the page views are actually similar to or even higher than those of non-technical articles. Maybe developers just like to freeload. Sometimes when I search for Flutter issues, I find that the first article in the search results is the one I wrote. It gives me a sense of accomplishment.

Phase 4: Typecho + Hugo

However, non-technical articles do not require such high rigor. Controlling the quality of posts may reduce output and the frequency of recording, losing the purpose of recording itself. Therefore, I recently started a weekly newsletter project (see WJ.1: Opening, Why Write a Weekly Newsletter for details) and hope to use output to drive input. So I simply used Hugo to create a static webpage to store the files for the newsletter and also synchronized it to my public account:

Airing Weekly

The personal homepage I redesigned a few days ago, Hi, folks | Airing, now points to both my newly built Airing Weekly and Airing's Hut.

ursb.me

When building Airing Weekly, I used Hugo and some PaaS. I forgot about the time and spent until after 1 am on weekdays. It was during this tinkering process that I realized how interesting web front-end development can be. Looking back, the original intention of this tinkering coincides with the reason why I chose this profession!

Weekly Recommendations#

Technology: Decoding Web Browser Principles#

Four articles on the Chrome Developers website explain the principles of web browsers with vivid illustrations and clear explanations. They are worth studying.

Technology: Styles that Trigger Reflow/Repaint/Composite#

Last week, I came across a report called "CSS Triggers" which lists the styles that trigger reflow, repaint, and composite in major browser engines (Blink, Gecko, WebKit, EdgeHTML).

Here, you can see that different engines handle different styles differently:

Novel: "Malice"#

Last Sunday, I reread "Malice," and even on the second read, I was amazed by its unique writing style and unexpected plot twists.

Without giving away any spoilers, let me summarize the innovative aspects of the writing style:

Epistolary First-Person Narrative: Incorporating a large amount of detail and psychological descriptions, it creates a strong sense of immersion. The entire reasoning closely follows what we, as readers, have seen in the previous texts, and delivers a final blow that leaves us immersed in the plot even after being struck down.
Cross-Letter Plot Advancement: The plot is driven by the alternating letters, and each transition connects to the content at the end of the previous letter, so it doesn't feel abrupt. However, each letter contains significant plot twists within reasonable premises, keeping the suspense high and constantly arousing the reader's curiosity.
Murder is Not the Goal, but the Means: Clever readers can quickly deduce the murderer, even as early as a quarter of the way through. However, the core of this story lies in deducing the motive for the murder. First catching the murderer and then deducing the motive is not common in detective novels. It is mixed with the suspect's cunning schemes, making the victim's death not an "end" but a "beginning."

Documentary: "The Saitama Serial Killer Case"#

Before watching it, I never thought that a documentary could be more thrilling and have more twists and turns than a movie or novel. But precisely because it is a documentary, I have more empathy for the victims' experiences and more anger towards the helplessness of reality. It is because it is a documentary that I admire journalists like the author, who wholeheartedly dedicate themselves to their careers and pursue justice in the dark reality.

Anime: "Spy x Family"#

Recently, I've been recommending "Spy x Family" to everyone I meet. The set-up of the family of three characters is three-dimensional and each has their own charm. The conflicts between their identities, when mixed together, produce a magical effect that is light-hearted, humorous, and heartwarming.

Super Cute

Further reading: 【Film Review】Spy x Family: A Duet of Daily Life and Non-Daily Life

Pioneers' Thoughts#

The three key points of the pioneers' thoughts in the 1970s are:

Amplify Imagination - Alan Kay
Augment Intellect - Douglas Engelbart
Expand our Thoughts far beyond text on paper - Ted Nelson

I also value the first two points, but I don't have much feeling about the third point. It should mean that we should understand that knowledge can be obtained beyond books.

If I were to write three points:

Knowledge
Sensitivity
Imagination