Opening day

Welcome to my new personal website! It took me quite a while, but I finally finished building the first iteration, and I had so much fun doing it. As the site’s first article, I’ll talk about what I’m planning on posting here.

The last time I had a blog was almost two decades ago. I was living in China and had just started my career as a web developer. I was eager to learn all the frontend technologies and read many O’Reilly books. So, I was blogging about what I learned, in Chinese. It’s such a shame that I didn’t persist, as I often admire people who’ve kept their blogs for decades.

Web design

But, better late than never. Two decades later, I’m still a web developer, and I’ve never been more passionate and confident about web development. So naturally, that’s what I’ll be primarily writing about. My focuses on web development are accessibility, semantic HTML, progressive enhancement, performance, maintainability, and localization. I also spend a lot of time thinking about web design, which, in my opinion, is an essential part of our job, because what we code directly impacts users’ lives, understanding and caring design makes us better developers. As a result, I regularly use “web design” and “web development” almost interchangeably – more on this in future articles.

Drawings

I’ve been doodling since I was two years old. I drew all over my textbooks, even in my notebooks for our weekly writing assignments. I’ve never had proper training. I used to think that allowed me to draw freely. But in the recent years, I hit a wall—I wanted to draw “perfectly” like a professional illustrator, but my lack of training kept dragging me down, I often relied on happy accidents to achieve what I want. Eventually, the frustration built up, I stopped drawing, for years, until last January, when I became aware of my anxiety issues and started to look for solutions. One day, I decided to start drawing something without caring about perfection and polish, I had a blast for about 2 months. You can see all drawings in that series on the Drawings page. I will continue posting some of my old drawings and new ones as I go.

Disney

I always think I am who I am because of 2 things: my mom and Disney. I grew up in the far west part of mainland China, and the internet wasn’t a thing until I was in high school. Disney was my window to the outside world. My love for Disney has driven me through almost all significant changes in my life. So, it would be impossible for me not to talk about Disney on my personal website.

Other things

I’ve also developed interests and hobbies in many other things, like linguistics, typography, travel, animations, and so on. I’m using this site to express my thoughts, experiences, and passions. It’s one way of dealing with my anxiety, I can build and write in the ways I want, and it helps me move my focus away from things I can’t control.

Hope you enjoy the ride.