About The Arobase website

a screenshot of the Neocities text editor with an html file for one of the pages of this website open

The website

This is my personal website. It's called "The Arobase website" (/a.ʁɔ.baz/) because that's how I decided to call it when I signed up for Neocities. Arobase is a French word! The "@" symbol is called like that in French. People also call it monkey, monkey's tail, dog, puppy, sweetroll, and many other things, depending on the language.

This is my first try in building websites ever. I hesitated when I first found out about Neocities, but actually giving it a try was an eye-opening moment for me. I decided to build my little website manually, without using a static site generator. Also, I try as much as possible to use the web with Javascript disabled, and I want my website to work witout it, too.

There is just something charming about the way HTML and CSS alone can make websites with complex and responsive layouts work. Also, I don't like that many web developers make users with aging modile devices feel inferior. Speaking of mobile – this site respects you if you are browsing from your phone! It was created mobile-first from the ground up, and will continue to do so.

What's it for?

There wasn't a certain reason in my mind when I created this site. But seeing how it's been going, I guess this site now serves as my playground for working with web technologies for the first time, and as a love letter to the early web which was much more personal than the currentone. I adore the modern indie web too, and I'm happy to perticipate in it myself.

Unfortunantely, wasn't born in a generation that built personal websites. Not even myspace or tumblr profiles. I have the tech community to thank for getting me into that, especially the Fediverse. Fedi has changed my life, really. Also, discovering some archives with websites from Geocities and then seeing Neocities had a profound impact on me – I remember opening some popular pages here and being blown away by how much effort the indie web comunity puts into their little web places. So now that I've finally decided to dedicate some time to build a place of my own on the web, I'm going to put some of my soul in it too.

About me

I'm a university linguistics student. Currently, I'm studying English and French, along with a little Latin for general knowledge. Languages are one of my passions, along with computers and software (espacially free software!), videogames, audio, mechanical keyboards, urbanism, online privacy, ethics, environmental activism, and a few others. I'm mainly here for getting to know HTML & CSS, tinkering with it, and sharing my progress. I like just writing stuff, too. It also makes me happy to tell people that I have a website and see their surprised expression.

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