Red Starfish's Webpage

I think this post, telling you why I've made this website, would be most appropriate as the first post.

As most of my fellow GNU users and free software enthusiasts agree that, the state of current internet is very poor. The internet and the World Wide Web(WWW) is controlled by the 5 corporations(GAFAM), but especially by the Google. As Google's chromium has monopoly in the browser market, whatever it is implementing, is becoming a "web standard". Also websites are very bloated nowadays. Many website lose functionality when you block javascript(and you should). They hardly works with text based browsers. We also don't see people having their own website like they used to have. Mostly they spend their time on Facebook and Twitter(and other such proprietary social medial platforms). The way Facebook/Twitter is using these people for their own gain is outrageous (to quote Richard Stallman: Facebook has no user, it has 'used'). They are even influencing elections.(By the way, fediverse/Mastodon are very good solutions to Facebook/Twitter)

Few months ago I saw a youtube video from the youtuber known as Luke Smith. He makes GNU, Linux and free software related videos. In that video he was telling how easy and important it is to have your own website. So from then on I had a desire to have my own website. Before that I used to think, having website is too hard and money consuming. But I had zero knowledge about managing websites. I knew some basic HTML and CSS, and that was all. Also as I was very busy at that time, I decided to let the matter drop.

But yesterday, suddenly a thought came to me(an itch?). I had known about Github pages all along but never considered using it because I have serious problems with both Github and Microsoft(the company which owns it). Then I considered, while using Github pages I am not forcing people to use proprietary software. This whole site is made up of HTML and CSS. So having this website is not immoral, and I can totally have it. It'll also give me experience about how to make websites. Most importantly I have enough free time now to play with it. So yesterday evening, I started building this website.
Previously I had some basic interaction with Git, then I read some posts about how to use Github pages, and realized, it was not that hard. I also had come across a site whose style sheet I liked. I copied it, made some minor modification and make it look red instead of purple(that website was under CC BY-SA), so here is the result. The fact that you can see the source of any website you visit is really helpful.

I also wanted to have RSS feeds in my website. RSS feeds are a great way to follow websites without any 3rd party meddling and for that reason it is a must have for me. So I spend another half hour learning how to do it and I am really surprised by how easy it is to set up. I wish more websites would use it.

I think this is enough for the first post, GNU Emacs tells me we have already crossed 600 words. And I don't want readers to lose attention midway while reading this.

So, see you in the next post. If you want to get notified, don't forget to subscribe to this blog using RSS feed. Also do you have any comment regarding this post or website? See details in the contact page on how to contact me.