March 1st, 2026 Update: Doing it all, in new ways.
Before I begin I should mention that this is both an update on my website and a bit reflection on what made my website the way it is.
First, I want to talk about the updates to this site. Over the past few weeks I’ve been refining it to make everything feel more coherent to moreso me. The directory structure had become a complete mess so I cleaned that up, and I also spent time improving mobile compatibility. To fix this mobile compatibility I found a template that really appealed to me and adapted it to better match the style and feel I was aiming for.
I also decided to put the effort is making each stylesheet for section appealing to the reader by using resources such as flamingtext and the KDE 2 icons.
Another major area I wanted to fix was the Tech Deck. It was using what I’d call “stale” technology, specifically the old <frame> and <frameset> elements for creating split-page layouts. These methods were common back in the day for dividing the browser window into sections but they’ve long since been deprecated in HTML5 and shouldn’t be used anymore. The new version replaces this approach with modern CSS techniques, using the overflow property (overflow: auto and overflow: scroll) to handle scrolling in a cleaner, more flexible way.
With that said, the old source code can be accessed here: https://github.com/Sinclair-Speccy/Old-Site-Code-Archive
Moving on...
My teenage self had a lot of ideas and most of them terrible. Growing up sometimes means realising just how gloriously stupid you once were, and learning from it.
That’s exactly how I feel about this site. Three years ago 17-year-old me decided to create it. I can’t fully remember what inspired me as it was a mix of things, but one influence was the so-called “Yesterweb.” I was invited there by an old friend who thought it would be a better community for me and in some ways, it was. But it had its issues, too. I wasn’t one of the long-time members but even I could see the cracks like the rapid growth leading to moderator burnout and internal conflicts over direction. Eventually, the organisers went on strike against the community itself in early 2023, shutting down the Discord server in February and the forum by May, citing fatigue from unsustainable standards and lack of trusted help to manage the scale.
Looking back now at the fate of the Yesterweb made me realise my site was not truly me. I kind of let that “old web” mentality get to my head and thus, I feel like there are some people out there who push this old web stuff as some kind of ideal almost like it’s inherently better or more authentic but the truth is nostalgia can be misleading, not that the modern web is any better either.
When people romanticise the "old web," they're often glossing over annoyances like the old popup ads just like we forget the slow dial-up connections or malware risks. Sure, it had that decentralised, creative spark but pairing any revival with modern tools like adblockers shows we're cherry-picking the good parts.
What is considered the “old web” in my opinion really depends on who you ask. For some the 90s are old while for others, the 2000s or even the 2010s. With the rise of AI, mass surveillance and the way the modern web feels so corporatised you could argue that anything before this is part of the “old web.” It’s a fuzzy concept shaped more by memory and feeling than by any strict timeline.
I’ve slowly started shifting my mindset away from trying to recreate a particular era of the web and instead toward building something that actually represents me. Rather than chasing a philosophy, I want this site to be a space where I can experiment, document and express myself without feeling boxed in by nostalgia or trends. If parts of it resemble the old web, that’s fine but that should be a natural outcome of my interests, not the entire point.
The thoughts in my head argue that since I experienced more of the Frutiger Aero era and less of the truly “old old web,” this long rant somehow isn’t valid, or that I don’t really get to have an opinion on it because I wasn’t there for the earliest days yet the more I think about it, the less I agree with that voice.
You don’t need to have lived through the 90s to feel the effects of how the web has changed. The shift toward centralisation, algorithm-driven feeds, aggressive monetisation and mass surveillance isn’t subtle and it affects everyone who uses the internet today, regardless of when they were born. My experience of the web might be different from someone who remembers GeoCities or dial-up, but it’s still a real experience shaped by its own transitions, trends and losses.
In many ways, growing up during Frutiger Aero as a kid and then the rise of hyper-minimalist, corporate design gave me a "front-row seat" to how personality gets sanded away in the name of polish.
That’s not to say modern design is bad as in many ways it’s more accessible, consistent and usable than what came before but something was lost along the way: individuality. The sense that every site was a small world built by a specific person rather than another interchangeable tile in a massive platform ecosystem.
I guess this is what I want site to gently push back against, at least in a small way. Not by rejecting modern tools or pretending it’s still 1999, but by deliberately building something personal, expressive and imperfect. I want this space to feel like it belongs to a human, not a brand and be somewhere I can tinker, document strange projects, write overly long reflections like this and slowly build up an archive of things that matter to me. A space that can grow and change alongside me, shaped more by curiosity than by trends or nostalgia.
If this site ends up as a strange blend of old influences, modern practices, half-finished ideas and niche interests, then that feels fitting. It's always in progress which is probably the most honest way it could be.
In the end, I don’t want to chase any singular idea of what the web should be. I just want to build something that feels genuinely mine.
The site's never going to be polished to corporate perfection and that's deliberate. There will be broken links I haven't noticed yet, pages that are still "under construction" and probably more rants like this one when the mood strikes. But it'll be consistent in one way: it'll reflect whatever version of me exists at the time I update it.
In three years I might cringe at some of these choices the way I now cringe at 17-year-old me's framesets and Yesterweb phase. That's fine. Growth means outgrowing things and moving forward without pretending the past didn't happen. I feel to able to change, one must acknowledge their past, regardless if it was good, bad or messy, and learn from it. Denying it just traps you in the same loops.
If anyone stumbles across this site and finds something useful, entertaining or even just oddly nostalgic in a good way, that's great. This isn't built for virality or SEO or clout. It is meant to be a digital notebook for me, a server rack full of my own junk, a place to mess around without apology.
Thanks for reading (or skimming) as far as you did. The site's here whenever you (or future me) needs it.
- Sinclair Elgazone