Colophon

This site is built with Jekyll and Sass, using a bespoke theme. I use a few plugins, including jekyll-assets. (Previous versions of this site were on Svbtle, and before that, WordPress.)

The header typeface is Merriweather; the body uses Lato.

I code and write in Sublime Text, do a tiny bit of image editing in Acorn, and make the occasional diagram in OmniGraffle.

Site hosting is provided by Netlify; source hosting by GitHub. (The repo is private so that I can save drafts to the cloud without effectively publishing them; but if you’d like to see my Jekyll source, I’m happy to share.)

All the content is licensed under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-ND 4.0) that allows sharing with attribution for any purpose (but does not allow derivative works). Take my stuff—just give me credit, and don’t mess with it.

Why a compass?

The compass was my original icon at Svbtle (back when it was invite-only and Dustin Curtis was pixel-fitting custom icons for each new writer). I had wanted a globe—to indicate a grand perspective and world-changing ambitions—but someone had already taken it. I ended up liking the compass better.

The compass represents exploration and adventure. It is a reference to navigating uncharted territory, without a map. It is a tribute to the great navigators of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, who charted the world so that we may travel it safely. And it is an allusion to having a moral compass, or more generally, having abstract principles to serve as a “true north”.