Welcome!

Hi there. Welcome to my website. I'm Neil.

I've been wanting to get a blog set up for a while but I never seem to get along with blogging platforms or most CMS systems, so I've spent the last few months getting my own CMS sorted. If you come to learn anything about me, that will start to seem very "on brand" for me.

Anyway, it's called SeaMist and it applies an API layer over the top of a bunch of markdown+metadata files. I find myself missing aspects of The Old Ways more and more, so writing a CMS that's just some files on a disk seems like a step back in time, in a good way.

The files served by SeaMist are pretty simple, but relatively powerful. Take a look at the one for this post:

[meta]
title = "Welcome!"
type = "markdown"
tags = [
  "news",
  "seamist"
]

[content]
Hi there. Welcome to my website. I'm Neil. 

...

The [meta] section at the top can contain any arbitrary TOML. There are a few special keys with specific meanings, like title and type and tags, but I could have used any property and filter on that in the front end application.

You get the idea.

My plan for this site is mostly to write about technology, the evils of Big Tech, and the interplay with autism and/or anxiety. I'll probably write about other interests too. It's basically a dumping ground for my thoughts. Sounds great, right?

Also, there's an RSS feed if you want it.