Less is more.
— Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

A personal blog needs surprisingly little:

• a list of posts,
• the posts themselves,
• a way to find old ones,
• and a way to know who wrote them.

Everything beyond that is decoration. Decoration is not evil, but it should be a choice, not a default.

What gets removed

No banners, no sidebars, no share buttons, no trackers. No JavaScript at all, actually. The page you are reading is HTML and one small stylesheet.

What stays

Typography, whitespace, and a dark mode that follows your system — because reading at night is part of reading.

The one-liner

For small files, just slurp the whole thing:

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use std::fs;

fn main() -> std::io::Result<()> {
    let contents = fs::read_to_string("notes.txt")?;
    println!("{} bytes", contents.len());
    Ok(())
}

Buffered lines

For larger files, iterate line by line without loading everything:

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use std::fs::File;
use std::io::{BufRead, BufReader};

fn main() -> std::io::Result<()> {
    let file = File::open("notes.txt")?;
    for line in BufReader::new(file).lines() {
        let line = line?;
        if line.starts_with('#') {
            continue; // skip comments
        }
        println!("{line}");
    }
    Ok(())
}

Raw bytes

And when the file is not text at all:

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let bytes = std::fs::read("image.png")?;

That covers 99% of everyday needs. The remaining 1% is memory-mapped IO, which is a story for another post.

Measure

Keep lines between 45 and 75 characters. On this site the content column is 42rem, which lands around 70 characters for body text.

Scale

You need far fewer sizes than you think:

Rhythm

Line height around 1.75 for body text, tighter (1.3) for headings. Whitespace between blocks should come from margins on one side only, or spacing collapses unpredictably.

Color

Pure black on pure white is harsh. Soften both a step: near-black #1c1c1e on white, or light gray #d6d6d9 on near-black in dark mode.

The best mornings started before the crowds did. Fushimi Inari at 6 a.m. is a different mountain than Fushimi Inari at noon — just the sound of your own steps under a thousand gates.

Philosopher’s Path was quieter than expected for May. I walked it twice: once for the walk, once for the coffee shop I’d passed and regretted skipping.

Things I learned:

1. Buy the bus day pass. Immediately.
2. Temples close earlier than you think.
3. Convenience store breakfast is not a compromise, it’s a feature.

I left with the feeling that a week was both too long and not nearly enough, which is probably the sign of a good trip.

There’s a trap in tinkering: the feeling of progress without the substance of it. A new terminal theme feels like work. A new keyboard layout feels like an investment. Mostly they’re neither — they’re a way to avoid the blank page.

So my rule now is boring: pick the default, use it until it actually hurts, and only then look for something better. The pain has to come first. Curiosity alone doesn’t count.