This website is really just a place for me to mess around with web design. In 2021, I created a first version using Hugo, which is a nice framework for building static sites, but I didn't actually learn much while building it. Just choose a theme, run some commands, and you have a website!
At the end of 2024, I decided it would be helpful to actually learn some basic HTML and CSS and so decided to create my own theme from scratch. Having ChatGPT available makes this so much more achievable (and fun) than in 2021. I can just find an element of a website I like, ask the LLM how to make that, and then slowly copy things over to my code base, adjusting things to learn what each element does. It's a great way to learn a new language imo.
My goals for the design of this site are to have it be (1) primarily textual, (2) as simple as possible, and (3) information dense. My two primary inspirations for this site are Edward Tufte (see Tufte CSS) and gwern.net.