The move to a new format is largely inspired by Dan Luu's Site. Importantly, the design is functional and minimal, and emphasis is placed on polished and in-depth writing. The toolchain is also extremely lightweight, just HTML, CSS and JS, easy to get things done.
I had two previous blogs, kwannoel.xyz and Thoughts. Both of these use Static Site Generators (SSGs), which ingest Markdown files and output HTML, CSS and JS. These add overhead, despite being relatively simple to use. Previously, I wanted a common tool for both blogging and note-taking, so a tool like Neuron (Zettelkasten Note Taking + SSG) made sense. But I no longer have this requirement, so SSGs are just overhead. I have to maintain scripts to publish the site, am required to structure the repository in a special way to separate rendered artifacts from the source, and need to setup and maintain the toolchain per machine I use. Moving forward, I will use vanilla HTML, CSS and JS as my blogging tools. There will be no extra toolchain to maintain, and both the source and render artifacts are the same, so there's virtually no maintenance work for me.
If you look into the articles in my previous blogs, they intentionally contained short-form content, instead of something more fleshed out. This was because previously I felt writing was a chore, whereas note-taking was more of a natural routine. So I wrote shorter pieces as a gateway into blogging, to get started on the habit. Nowadays it's the other way around, where I really want to write in-depth pieces. Writing deeper articles with focus on fundamentals makes the concept more interesting, since there's an "Aha!" moment when you connect the dots, and start seeing overlaps between different fundamental concepts. I also write for an audience, since I intrinsically enjoy sharing ideas and discussing them with others. Common ground is easier to establish when talking about the same thing (fundamentals), and you keep your audience engaged.
An added bonus is that I will get to experiment with vanilla HTML, CSS and JS (and perhaps WASM?), since I'm no longer restricted by the requirements of my SSG framework. I always wanted to do things like embedded browser games, esoteric frontend designs. Perhaps eventually I can embed these in my blog.
That's all, hope you will enjoy reading my new blog.