Heartspace v9

The undertaking of my website's rebirth was something that loomed over me for months. Now the time has come. I answered the call around 10 days ago and had been at work ever since. V8 lasted 17 months, having its debut on 25 June 2025 and being archived on either the 13th or 14th of November 2026, depending on whether I can push this update live before midnight.

Heartspace's new look might be surprising to acquainted visitors. Where did that eyesore red polka dot wall go? I loved it so very much and it was so hard to let it go.

People might not know but surfing the net had become a tiresome activity for me. Web accessibility was now a necessity in my weblife. I no longer tolerate eye strain like I did years ago. Screen responsiveness, color scheme and UX decide within the first 10 seconds whether I'll stay on a website or close its tab.

⟵ me and my friend meel

The cognitive dissonance of greatly preferring simple pages while having visually heavy and cluttered pages on my own site finally got to me. Don't get me wrong, I love love loved those polka dots and that HTML red body. I have received so many compliments about it too. I even fondly recall someone calling my site "neobrutalist porn". Though the used term is a huge hit or miss as an aesthetic, I am a big fan of the sounds of "neo" and "brutal(ist)" and "porn". But true web brutalism reigns higher supreme than any eye clutter.

It was hard to nail down a final layout. V9 went through at least three different iterations before it ended up on this one. I had to drop the complex HTML/CSS because it was getting in the way of maintaining the site. I stubbornly tried to keep the red polka dot wall no matter what but it just was not working. The final look is inspired by feelings of "book" and "letter". It ended up looking more old-fashioned and geocities-like than I expected.

Another major thing I dropped are the home directories—the way I structured them, at least. Atrium, Ventricle, Aorta, Arteries were meant to categorize pages by topic and type. They still exist (because directories named after organs are the best thing I ever came up with). They just have to be rebuilt. I think I started taking this site too seriously and wanted to loosen up by letting myself write more regular blogs like these where I just say whatever. Usually confusion on which directory I were to include this page would prevent me from doing so. I am now trying a bottom-up approach to organizing my pages, where I make pages then categorize them, rather than making categories first then making pages to fit in those categories. This is the approach I use on my new Obsidian vault for note taking and I ought to try it on my site. I discovered this organization method from Steph Ango's Obsidian vault(5). Different from private note vaults however is the idea that URLs should never change(6) in order to preserve the web's life by preventing link rot(7). From now on, heartspace pages shall no longer be organized by folders. Categorization should come at the last level—in the HTML itself, through links. As you may have noticed, new pages now just exist at the root of this website's folder. This is going to be a pain from my end but it's not something I can't work around. Good file naming convention becomes key here and I hope to figure that out.

Another thing: Heartspace now has dark mode. I'm not a big fan of its the white text on black background design but I imagine it delivers the same harsh rawness as black text on white background. I have also replaced the link colors with HTML blue(8) which has better contrast on white than HTML red(9). Visited links also now appear as a darker blue. The tile themes of the homepage have gone with the red polka dot wall. Those assets however have always been free for anyone to take, and I have planned for years now to create a page where that is made clear but I have yet to get on it.

V8 pages are now archived. I am deciding whether I should keep these pages as is or transfer them to the new v9 template. The answer is probably going to be both. Some pages will stay archived like those in my dollhouse(10) as they are heavily decorated and already veer away from both the v8 and v9 style. Meanwhile the plainer more boring pages might be ported to v9.

Heartspace carries on, now as a plain jane website.