The personal websites I think about most often weren't especially convenient. Some played music before you could find the volume button. Some had tiny animations everywhere, or a visitor counter, or a page devoted entirely to a pet. A person could put twelve poems online because they had written twelve poems. That seemed reason enough.
Following a link could feel like being invited into someone's room. You would find their favourite music, a picture of their desk, something they'd been thinking about, and links to other people they liked. The arrangement might be confusing. It was also specific. Someone had decided what belonged there.
I miss that sense of arriving somewhere. Much of what I do online now happens inside platforms with a familiar layout. I can change a photograph, write a description, choose what to post. Those choices matter, but the rooms themselves are largely decided for me. The same walls appear again and again.
A website and an account offer different kinds of freedom. With an account, someone else decides how the page works, who is likely to find it, and what changes when a new feature arrives. I can be comfortable there and still have very little say in the building. It is a peculiar way to make a home.
There were good reasons to stop making websites ourselves. Hosting was confusing. Things broke. Moving an image a few pixels could take an evening. The easier alternative was genuinely easier. But the difficulties also left traces of the people solving them. One person made a sidebar; another made a page of links; another gave up and left something slightly crooked. You could see the decisions.
I notice a similar pattern in the way we share our interests. A song, a film, a book: each can become a selection inside a ready-made arrangement. The taste is our own. The form in which we present it is often shared by millions of people. We express ourselves partly by choosing what goes into containers we didn't make.
Then those choices acquire an audience. A rating begins to say something about the person who gave it. A bookshelf becomes something to be seen behind a face on a screen. The things we enjoy take on another responsibility: explaining us to other people. Sometimes I wonder how much room that leaves for simply liking something.
This is what I find moving about an awkward old personal page. Someone had to decide that a poem deserved a page, that a particular colour looked right, that a photograph should go there. Those decisions might have been made for an audience of almost nobody. Their existence didn't depend on being rewarded immediately.
I like the possibility of putting something online and letting it sit there. A thing can be available without a running explanation of how well it is doing. Someone might find it. Someone might come back. The absence of a number doesn't make the encounter less real.
A room holds things that don't justify the space they take up. A ticket from an evening you remember. A book you haven't finished. An object whose significance would take too long to explain. That is part of what makes it possible to recognize a person in a room. I wanted some of that feeling here.
The practical parts of this website matter to me. I want someone to be able to find my research, understand what I contributed, or get in touch. But I also want the books, the films, the unfinished writing, and the interests that don't fit into a professional introduction. They belong to the same life.
I imagine someone arriving through a research project and following a link to an essay, then finding a film they haven't seen. Another person might come for the writing and become curious about EEG. I like the small change in direction that a link makes possible. It lets one interest introduce you to another.
I'm not trying to recover a perfect version of the internet. The older web could be hostile, tedious, and difficult to use. Plenty of the things I remember fondly were also objectively annoying. What I want to keep is the permission to make a page because I care about what is on it.
So I am making a place where the different parts can sit together. It will change as my work and interests change. Some pages will remain unfinished longer than I intended. Eventually there will be photographs, and probably things I haven't thought to include yet.
For now, this is where I'm keeping a few things. You're welcome to look around.