I’ve had this personal domain for the past 10 years, since I got it for myself as a birthday present in 2010.
Soon after, I set it up to a photo sharing service called Smugmug. I always loved photography and it made sense having a place I could control in more detail than the usual MySpace, Tumblr and Facebook (or Orkut for us back in Brazil - that was the gem!) of this grand world-wide-web.
Smugmug was targeted to photographers and they provide amazing service and options in their website, so I decided I would create a nice layout, upload my photosets and showcase them to whomever wanted to see. And after uploading a couple of nice photos I quickly became bored with it. No one was finding it and it felt like just a place I was using to gloat about a few nice pictures I took.
I can’t exactly put a finger on what it was, but it just didn’t feel like something I wanted to advertise, and I ended up only adding maybe 4 or 5 new photos after the initial hype. It’s not that my love for photography vanished, on the contrary. I actually bought more (and more expensive) equipment, invested in a backup system and got a great NAS that I would be able to expand as my collection increased. I even started making short travel videos to register and remember good vacations times - oh, and speaking to all of you from the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is nothing I miss more than having some good nice vacations, getting to know new exciting places.
But I’m digressing now. My original idea was to have a site where I could post anything I wanted and to train my design and coding skills. I’m not a programmer, but I’ve coded since I was around 10 years-old, always relying on internet material and the thousands of blogs I’ve read over the years. These blogs helped me in so many different things and my idea was to start one myself, where I could register my thoughts and, maybe one day, help someone. But mostly do it for myself.
I found Paul Stamatiou’s site a few years ago, searching for good PC setups for Lightroom use. I was coming from a Mac-only world and wanted to get back into the PC game - funny thing, I’m now back to Mac. I loved his site and his content is amazing. It made me want to go back and re-visit my original idea of having a personal site. I’ve procrastinated for too long, mostly due to the daily life of a salaried worker, but now I finally had the time to put my ideas to action. Yes, my design has been deeply inspired by Stammy’s, but I hope this is just the beginning and that it will eventually morph into something of my own.
To be honest, I’m not sure where this is going to get. I really hope I’ll start the habit of writing about whatever it is I like, and posting even if only for myself. I’ll start curating my photos and making some photosets. Hopefully this will get me to revisit the many, many photos I take on every trip - and home - and never look back.
Building this site has been a great IAP project - during the winter term MIT has an Independent Activity Period for students to get into whatever project they want. And who am I kidding? It’s January 2nd, 2021: everyone is stuck at home hoping for when we will finally be vaccinated. It’s not like I have a lot of things to do either way.
It took me 10 years, but it’s finally here.