personal website
New Website, Who Dis?
If you're reading this on my website right now, you might be thinking: what the hell did Henrique do? After a few years of calmness and small changes here and there, I've decided to fully redesign this website. And by fully, I mean rewrite around half of the CSS. Much of the old CSS is still floating around. Welcome to my refurbished Internet island!
The Internet Phone Book
A few weeks ago, I received my copy of the Internet Phone Book, which I've briefly mentioned on this website before. The Internet Phone Book includes a list of over 700 websites that you can dial in via their website, as well as essays about different topics.
How Searching This Website Works
I have been wanting to write about how the search on this website works, but I haven't had the patience, or the will, to write about it. It's also not as if anyone asked me about it, so it's not as if it was a priority. Now I feel like it's the right time - is there any? - to finally write about it.
Recently in July '25
I always want to say that the past month was relatively uneventful, but then I write the post and I realized that more things happened than I first thought. So, let's recap July, which is now coming to an end.
Discovering Blogs
I enjoy discovering other people's blogs online, whether it's personal blogs, or gardens, or whatever you want to name thems. I've probably spent too much time just navigating other people's websites, especially in what is called the Small Web. However, this Small Web is also not so small, and discovering new blogs is not always the easiest.
Recently in May '25
May has now come to an end. We started seeing the first signs of summer, warmth and, at the same time, some rain, to keep us refreshed. It was an unusually calm month in my life, I would say. However, I have the feeling that it is the calm before the storm.
Recently in February '25
February is now past us, so it's time for me to quickly recap what has happened last month, this time a few days later than usual. I was hoping to have posted more during last month. However, I made a few updates to the website with the intention of making that easier!
Recently in October '24
October is now two days away. Halloween is gone - which I always enjoying mentioning despite never doing anything for it -, and my birthday too. I'm now 25, a quarter of a century, a very interesting-feeling number. Some would say it's now closer to the 30s than to the 20s. Let's recap what's happened this last month!
Styling My RSS Feeds
Styling my RSS feeds is something that has been on my infinitely long list of things to do on this website. Sometimes I removed it, sometimes I added it back. However, I recently came across Darek Kay's blog post and decided that it was time to finally style both my RSS feeds, and my sitemap.
Recently in July '24
July is coming to an end and the sun is shining. This was a month with quite some events for me, both on the good side of the spectrum, as well as on the bad side of the spectrum. But mostly good. Let's dive into it!
A Decade of Blogging
Today is the 12th of July. For most people, this date doesn't say much, but it marks the anniversary of this website, counting from the first ever blog post I wrote here. And... that was ten years ago, in 2014. Yes, gentle reader, this website is now officially a decade old!
Recently in May '24
May is coming to an end. Not that much happened this month, but it was still minimally eventful. I made a few updates to this website, there's some life-related changes and updates regarding my gym journey. Let's dive into it!
Mitigating Guestbook Spam
Four years ago, I wrote a post about bringing back the web of the 90s, which is somewhat ironic since I don't remember the web of the 90s. Therefore, I'm probably not the best to write that. Anyways, I introduced my guestbook on that same day. Today I want to talk a bit about avoiding all the inevitable spam that I get there.
I Bought a Numeronym Domain Name
Some weeks ago, I read a post from Jan-Luka's where he talked about what to do with his new domain. The most interesting part for me was not what to do with the domain, or the domain itself, but what the domain is: a numeronym.
Recently in January '24
January was a very busy month, which I did not really expect. More importantly, it's already gone. One twelfth of the year has already passed. How crazy is that? Let's quickly dive into the latest events.
Making a Digital Shoebox
A few days ago, I was navigating the web as normal. After some clicks here and there, I found myself on this page. I looked around and realized: it is a digital shoebox. I resonated with the author: I too keep around (shoe)boxes with the most random things. So I decided to also create my own digital shoebox.
Recently in November '23
November is almost gone. It was quite of a slow month, so I had more time to spend working on this website, or in watching series - maybe too many. Let's dive into it.
Open Sourcering My Website
For some, it may come as a surprise that my website's source code is not open-source. That hasn't, however, always been the case. Before I fully switching to my custom CMS - named Eagle -, it did use to be open-source.
Recently in August '23
August is almost gone, and with it the smells of summer. Day after day, the vibes I get from the weather are more autumny 🍁. Temperatures are finally going slightly down and it's starting to feel more cozy. It's been a long, yet satisfying month!
Recently in July '23
July is now coming to an end, and so is summer in The Netherlands per the looks of it. It has been raining for two or three weeks already, and the prediction is that it'll continue over during this week. This, of course, after a few days of what I would consider unusually high temperatures in The Netherlands. Let's recap this month.
Recently in June '23
June was a reasonably packed month: some times more eventful than others, but that's how it always is. Let's make a small recap of what has happened lately.
Small Elements From My Website Inspired by Others
Today I bring something not as conventional: a post about certain elements of my website you could say that are inspired or borrowed from other websites. Things that I found fascinating and included in my website too over the time. Let's go!
Farewell, Eagle (kinda)! Hello, Hugo
In April, I squeezed into my monthly article that I had come back to Hugo. However, I did not give much context about it. And to continue the "farewell" post saga, here it is. Why did I move back to Hugo? What caused that decision, and how hard was it?
Recently in May '23
May is now approaching its end and the birds 🕊️ are chirping, filling the air with spring noises. Summer is almost there. There have been quite a few nice things to look back in this month. Let's go.
Recently in April '23
It is, yet again, that time of the month to write a bit about what's been happening lately. April went by relatively fast and it was quite packed with some events, both regarding personal and work life. In addition, the weather is definitely getting so much better than a few months ago.
Recently in March '23
March is almost gone and here we are again, at one more recap of what has happened over the last month. Compared to February, March has been a pretty eventless month, at least on the surface.
Recently in February '23
February has been a total rollercoaster. Nice things and not so nice things have happened during this month. But overall, let's keep a positive attitude towards the future. Let's dive into the events that constituted this month.
Recently in January '23
January, the infamous first month of the year, is reaching an end. It was a very eventful month, but, by this time, I feel like I say that for every month that passes. I am honestly hoping that February will be a slightly more boring month in that sense.
Recently in December '22
December is concluding and with it, we're closing in the end of 2022. With the end of this month, I am writing one more retrospective about the events that have happened in my life during the past month. I am still on the fence whether or not I am writing a "year in review". I will likely do a post for music and one for movies and TV shows with some stats. But I'm not sure I will write a generic year in review.
Thoughts on Personal Websites and Online Identities
Online services. We all have accounts on those. Be it Instagram, Facebook, Twitter Mastodon, or some other thing that is sucking the life out of us. Even though we are the same physical being behind all of those accounts, we don't always come out the same way to all of them. We look different, we sound different. Maybe that's the nature of what we post there. They are all online identities.
Recently in June '22
I have recently noticed I have been writing 'recently' posts since September 2020. Honestly, I wasn't expecting it to have been that long. Today, I am trying a different format. Sometimes I'm not sure on how to organize this monthly posts and I see some people posting bullet-list weekly or monthly posts so I decided to try.
My Website After IndieWeb
A few months ago, I released an article where I showed most versions of my website before I started integrating IndieWeb into it. I think it is nice to have an overview of how your website evolved with time. So today I present to you all the major changes to my website after IndieWeb.
My Website Before IndieWeb
Since I created this website's colophon (also known as meta page), I've wanted to also created a page that show cased how this website evolved over the years. I created this website when I was 14, in 2014. At first, it was just a bunch of HTML pages written by hand. Within the first year, the website moved from pure HTML to WordPress and then to Hugo.
Farewell, Hugo! Hello, Eagle
In 2015, I posted an article with a very similar name to this one. At the time, I was saying goodbye to WordPress and welcoming Hugo. As with everything in life, there are cycles and things change. It's time to turn a new page on this website's life cycle.
About Moving Away From Hugo
Today I have been thinking about my website. Mainly about ditching Hugo and moving to a completely custom and dynamic website. There are a few reasons about why I would like more flexibility. However, I don't know if it justifies the effort.
Why Should You Have Your Own Website?
We live in a world with increasingly larger social media platforms. Everyone's profile looks the same, barely distinguishable. Why not have a website?
Rebuilding Eagle, My Website’s CMS
I have been working on updating my website's backend, called Eagle. It is full of new features, such as search and ActivityPub.
Recently in September '20
Today's the first day of a new month, so here's a new "recently" post. Since I decided to start this series after mid-september, there's not that many news since. However, I'm more than happy to write a few words about what's been happening lately.
Cleaning up My Website
Just finished cleaning up my website a bit more and getting rid of a bit of noise that I didn't think was needed.
How I Generate My Knowledge Base From Notable
Here I describe my small journey so far with Notable and how I sync my website's Knowledge Base it with.
OwnYourTrakt
It's now time to own my own watch log. I use Trakt to keep up with the series and movies I'm watching and now I'm going to PESOS to my website!
Owning My Reading Log
It's now time to own my own reading log. I started by creating a reading logs page and supporting all the IndieWeb-related specs for this.
Build a Dynamic Website… or Not?
After digressing a bit about building a Micropub endpoint for my website, I’ve been thinking about the next steps: if I should keep Hugo or move to some other system.
Adding Support for Micropub Endpoint
Recently, I have talked about restructuring the URLs of my website and adding IndieAuth so I could use my domain as my main online identity to login into services. Along those lines, I came across Micropub. In their own words:
Enabling IndieAuth on My Website
After updating the structure of my URLs, I now needed to start enabling some IndieWeb features... here's how to enable IndieAuth!
Thoughts on This Website’s URL Structure
Data is a topic I've been wanting to write about for quite some time. Do we own our data? What should we do about it?
Hello, World!
This is the first newsletter issue I'm writing. Today, I leave you with some posts I recommend you, an inspiring phrase and the reasons made me start this!