Hello World!
I’ve always wanted to have a personal blog (since the 8th grade, to be more precise). Back then, my goal was simply to make money online, as I was one of the most well-known members of the ClubPTC forum — a community of Romanian jobless people earning 10 cents, each and every day, online. A cent here on NeoBux, a satoshi from a so-called Bitcoin faucet — the grind was never really standing still.
The WordPress Era
On the one hand, I wanted to diversify my online income portfolio and eventually add a passive source, as I was already getting tired of clicking all day for pennies. On the other hand, I discovered a prominent Romanian blogger and realized how fulfilling it could be to have my own blog.
So, on December 5th, 2015, I launched my first blog and broke the ice with a post titled How to Clean Your RAM, which was read by over two people. This monumental success motivated me to keep writing for a few more months, until the national middle school exams took over my life. The recurring theme of academic priorities crushing my ego would become more and more present in my life, and I’ve been fighting with it ever since.
In the end, I gave up, but not before creating an international version of the blog — a chance to showcase my English skills, which at the time, I could speak quite “fluently.”
The InfoGenius Era
Time passed, I participated in my first NOI, and I realized it was the perfect moment to start a blog about computer science and programming. I broke open my PayPal piggy bank, using the $200 I had earned from PTC sites, and spent part of it on WordPress hosting and a domain. On June 22, 2017, InfoGenius was born.
In the first year, I actually used the domain gareth618.ro, simply because I couldn’t think of anything more creative. I soon realized I couldn’t compete with names like învață.info and tutoriale-pe.net, so I decided it was time for some rebranding. I came up with the name InfoGenius and asked a 40-year-old friend from ClubPTC to help me with a new logo. The rest is history.
For more details (technical and otherwise) about InfoGenius’ journey, you can check out the post InfoGenius v2.0 — A New Beginning!. It’s worth mentioning that despite not posting anything for over two years, InfoGenius is far from dead, no matter what the naysayers claim. I just need some time to rewrite it in Astro and start fresh with new posts. I’m not at all satisfied with its current version, both technically and editorially.
The Perfect Present
What I’ve discovered over all these years working on InfoGenius is that I truly enjoy writing. As a result, I’ve long wanted to have a personal blog where I can write about topics beyond the algorithmic realm. Well, the moment has finally arrived, especially now that I’ve developed a certain personality and have a few projects to showcase here.
This blog is built with Astro — by far the best static site generator. The developer experience I’ve had with this framework over the past month has been absolutely phenomenal. But I think the user experience is pretty cool too. Just look at how smoothly the transition is from the Blog page to a specific post. It uses the latest web technologies, all encapsulated in just two lines of code by Astro.
I can’t believe for how many silly reasons I avoided using Astro and, in general, simplifying my work as a web developer. For example, I always bypassed Markdown as a markup language for content. I always thought it was more efficient to write my own language (with a VSCode extension for syntax highlighting, of course) to fit my specific needs, when in reality, I could’ve spent a few hours learning how to customize Markdown.
That’s how I ended up writing InfoGenius v2.0 in Gatsby, which, in the meantime, has become the most hated static site generator in the global web developer community. It actually feels good to not be so perfectionist anymore.