Announcement: Welcome to the new website!

Hello everyone! Welcome to the brand new fl1nt.dev. This project has been a labor of love, filled with challenges and learning experiences - but we are here (finally). I really wanted to get rid of my old site because man, like while it definitely looked good, it was too professional. I just want to be known as a dude on the internet who does some cool things - not some super posh industry professional. Therefore, I was like yeah lets just make a new site, so I can finally portray myself in a much more personable light.

Also, the old site used Squarespace, which is just ew... Why did I do that when I literally have the skills to just write a site by hand, plus it shows off my skills better (this entire website and every single line of code is written out by hand). Anyways, welcome, and I'm glad to have you here. :)

This site was actually supposed to be release a couple days prior, but github webhooks had nonstop incidents, which stopped my deployment platform from seeing the repository's commits. So ironically, this is a few days late, but I'm glad to have this finally released regardless.

The Development Process

If you know me well, this will definitely seem off to you, but I built this entire website in JS, when I would usually opt for Python. Reasons are I wanted to challenge myself to learn new technologies, and two, JS is just better for the web - plain and simple. The web is its entire purpose. But that being said, learning a new way to do things definitely presented me with some challenges and while some of the site's features are simple, there are some quirks I had to work out.

Technologies Used

If you are a nerd and are interested, the website is built using a variety of technologies:

• Node.js (as stated before): This was a no brainer, given the scale of the project I wanted to use something powerful, and node is exactly that - a powerful JavaScript runtime.
  • EDIT 10/04/2023: The website is now using Bun, an ultra fast new JS runtime. I've loved by time with it, you should check it out.
• Express.js: Express is used to handle and receive requests, with a variety of plugins too for some small things. I found express really easy to set up and use for handling web tasks.
• Socket.IO: I am using Socket.IO all over the site to deliver most of the stats you see. This includes mouse tracking, chat, and most of the things on the sidebar. This enabled real-time, bidirectional communication between web clients and server.
• PostgreSQL: To store data I am using PostgreSQL. While admittedly this wouldn't be my first choice, I am currently deploying the website using a cool service called Railway, and they have really nice tools with PostgreSQW.
• Markdown: For the blog, I'm also using markdown to format all my posts, if its not obvious already lol.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I feel a lot happier having this out there as my website, and something I hope you guys can enjoy too. I'm glad I decided to stepp out of my comfort zone and embrace new technologies. I hope you enjoy exploring the site as much as I enjoyed building it. I look forward to your feedback and continuing to improve and expand the site. Thank you for being part of this journey.

ps. there's a decent amount of easter eggs to be found, have fun with that. if you want a hint for one, interact with the enderman ;)