I don’t mean everyone needs to suddenly become a blogger, but it’s nice to have somewhere you can write things down. Post photos. Link to projects.

Not a feed you’re renting from someone else. A small place on the web that is truly yours.

Building and maintaining that kind of website can be a bit messy. Believe me, I know. My site was built with 11ty and a few other bits of glue. It worked well enough, but it always felt like a lot of different pieces held together with little more than duct tape and prayers.

So I built Inkstead, and I’ve migrated my own site to it.

Inkstead is a small publishing engine for personal websites. You write posts in Markdown, it builds a static site, and it can also post to places like Mastodon, Bluesky, and Flickr.

To be clear, it is still very much a tool for developers, or at least for people who are technically inclined. It is not trying to be WordPress or Squarespace.

The scope is much smaller: make this particular kind of website easier to set up, understand, and maintain for developers.

It is intentionally opinionated. It is not trying to replace every other static site generator. It is not trying to support every kind of website. It is built around the kind of personal site I want to have.

I tried really hard to make syndication feel natural. If I write a longer post, social platforms should get a title and a link back to my site. But if I write a short note or post a photo, it should feel like something I could have posted directly there.

Inkstead is also built around adapters. My site currently uses GitHub Actions and Cloudflare Workers, but you can pick other options.

This is all still early, and it is absolutely possible I have overengineered my personal website (once again).

But I like the direction.

Inkstead is my attempt at making owning your corner of the internet a little bit easier, as long as you’re comfortable with code. And without having to turn your personal website into a full-time job.

It’s hard not to be. The conversation around it has become noisy in a way that makes it difficult to tell what’s actually useful and what’s just marketing. Everything is suddenly “AI-powered”. Every product update is framed as the next big thing. There’s constant talk that this is the moment, and that if you’re not fully invested, you’re already behind.

I don’t think that’s right.

A lot of the hype is overblown. AI is often treated as the answer before there’s a clear question. In some cases it feels like “AI” is doing more work in the company than in the product itself. That alone is enough to put people off.

On the other hand, I don’t think the reaction of writing it off completely really holds up either. Not if you actually spend time using some of these tools.

AI is here to stay. Not because it’s flawless, and not because it replaces thinking, but because parts of it are genuinely useful when you’re careful about how you use them.

I don’t see AI as a replacement for software engineers. I don’t even see it as something especially dramatic. It feels closer to another shift in tooling. Something that changes how quickly you can move, not whether you need to understand what you’re building.

Used badly, it’s an absolute mess. You move faster without clarity. You generate code you don’t really understand. You end up debugging behaviour you didn’t design. That kind of speed isn’t helpful.

Used well though, it removes friction.

Tools like Codex have been genuinely useful for me. Mostly when I want to get something running quickly. Prototypes. Experiments. Trying something without committing to it. Skipping the kind of setup work that doesn’t really add much value.

It’s not writing software for me. But it does help me get from an idea to something tangible much faster.

That changes how I experiment, and that’s the biggest benefit I’ve noticed.

Not every AI tool earns its place. Some are unreliable enough that they break your flow more than they help (looking at you, GitHub Copilot). Others feel like they exist just because they’re expected to exist.

What is unhelpful is turning this into an all-or-nothing situation.

AI isn’t going to replace software engineers. But ignoring it entirely doesn’t feel right either. Writing good software still comes down to judgment, context, and taste. AI doesn’t remove that. If anything, it makes it more obvious when those things are missing.

The faster you can generate code, the more important it is to be clear about why you’re generating it in the first place.

So yes, be skeptical. I think that’s healthy. I just don’t think skepticism has to mean dismissal.

Most of the time, this industry doesn’t move forward through big, dramatic shifts. It moves through smaller changes in how we work. AI feels much closer to that than to the moment it’s often presented as.

And honestly, that’s fine.

At the time I was still figuring out its direction as a closed beta. It was most definitely still a bit rough around the edges. Nevertheless, I gathered quite the group of enthusiastic beta testers. Their feedback was really valuable and I kept, over and over again, iterating over the game design. A huge thank you to everyone involved, this wouldn’t have been possible without you.

Today, I’m launching the full version of the game. I’m quite happy with how the game’s evolved over the last year. It’s now open to everyone, so if you feel like joining the adventure, head over to Mythblade and give it a try.

It doesn’t always take the same form. It could be a tool that solves a problem, a random idea I had for a game, or anything in between. The important thing is the act of creating. Making something new. Bringing order to the chaos in my head.

I used to see this as a choice, but I’ve come to realise it’s more of a constant. It’s simply wired into how I think and process the world around me. When I’m building, things make more sense. I feel clearer. More grounded. The most painful thing, for me, is sitting still. Not just physically, but mentally. When there’s nothing to explore, no problem to solve, no thread to follow.

Not everything needs to be shared or to succeed. Sometimes it’s enough just to start. Follow that urge and see where it leads. If it fails, that’s fine. I can live with a bad idea — I just can’t live with not even trying.

This post is that, in a way. A small thing, made because the urge to create was stronger than the ease of ignoring it.

Building video games is hard. Building an MMORPG? That’s the hardest genre you could possibly build.

Most game developers would tell you building an MMORPG alone is a terrible idea. And they’d be absolutely right. The content, the interconnected systems, the networking, the server management, the endless balancing, the list goes on and on. But here I am, ignoring all common sense, and doing it anyway. Even if it is a bit mad.

Mythblade is mostly text-based, and is very much modelled after retro RPGs. It is playable across a range of devices, including mobile phones. And it is incredibly fun, if I may say so myself.

After countless nights of iteration after iteration, and incorporating some fantastic feedback from a small group of alpha testers, I’m pretty happy with the state of the game. And I’m ready to start accepting beta testers over at https://www.mythblade.com.

There’s still a lot to do. There might some bumps along the way, but if you’re curious about how it all unfolds, feel free to join me for the ride.

Over the last few weeks I've done a major rebuild of my personal website, and I used it as an opportunity to try and tackle this problem.

Now, when I publish a new post or photo, many things happen in the background and my content is automatically sent to all corners of the Internet.

Depending on the type of content, there's a few different actions that might happen:
- A post is created on LinkedIn or Bluesky.
- An email is sent out to my website subscribers.
- A photo is submitted to Flickr.
- A post gets sent out to all my fediverse followers.

And I'm sure this list will grow as time passes.

Anyway, this is my first real world test. If you're reading this, chances are it worked. Probably.

I'll start with a quick introduction:

I'm Ivo. I'm a software engineer at heart, with a passion for building great products. I'm also known by some as having a particular weakness for guitars.

I enjoy a good technical challenge, and will in the future be sharing some of my learnings with you.

See you soon.