It’s springtime, and change is in the air…

Today I returned to my geeky roots and replaced my former Tumblelog with all-natural, farm-fresh HTML and CSS craftily assembled by Jekyll and served by the clever folks at NearlyFreeSpeech.

I did it for a few reasons, and these are the big ones…

1. Web standards matter. My Tumblr, like so many before it, had become a steaming bowl of div soup that was a far-cry from passing any validations.
2. Security matters. Transport Layer Security (TLS) ensures that the server sending the page to your computer is who they say they are, and that folks can’t spy on your data while it’s in transit. It’s just a good idea. Through no fault of their own, Tumblr wasn’t able to offer me TLS on custom domains.
3. Speed matters. The index page of my Tumblr would take tens of seconds to load fully (on a good day). Most of that time was spend playing footsies with analytics and advertising networks, and downloading markup that I didn’t need.
4. Control matters. I’m not in love with the idea of my blogging platform being bought and sold every few years between companies that I don’t trust in countries that are not my own.
5. This isn’t meant to be a social blog. That’s what Tumblr is, and it’s the best in the business, but it’s not the right place for my long-form navel-gazing.

This blog is now lightweight, fast, secure, and hand-written in standards-compliant HTML5 and CSS3. There are no longer any analytics attached to this site. All of the options suck.

It should look nice and be easy to read on devices big and small, and it’s deigned to be as accessible as possible to people who need some extra help. There’s even an Atom feed for the real propeller-heads out there.

So long Tumblr, and thanks for all the fish.