Colophon

This is a collection of various information about this site in case you wanted to ask.

Production process

Offbeat Bits is powered by Eleventy and a bespoke self-built theme. You can get a modified and improved version of this theme called Bliss. Or you can check out the GitHub repo for its source code.

I write my posts in Markdown. I occasionally use HTML if Markdown fails to offer specific features I need.

Typography

I use a mix of serif and sans-serif web-safe typefaces available with leading operating systems. I decided against using custom web fonts. Instead, I based my typography choices on popular font families listed on CSS Font Stack, effectively saving myself from the analysis paralysis while browsing custom fonts online.

Styling

I use SASS / SCSS under the hood. Apart from normalize.css by Nicolas Gallagher, there is no third-party code, fancy tooling or CSS framework being used here.

Accessibility

This site has a modest set of accessibility features:

• semantic HTML is used whenever possible,
• each link can be navigated to and activated with keyboard,
• link outline is visible while using keyboard for navigation,
• it’s possible to jump straight to content with a special skip-link at the beginning of each page,
• small amount of ARIA attributes is used whenever needed,
• content language is marked with appropriate HTML properties whenever possible.

I tested the site with Apple VoiceOver screen reader on MacOS. I am vaguely familiar with WCAG guidelines but I do not claim compliance or declare any specific accessibility level.

Code / website hosting / infrastructure

Source code of the site is available on GitHub.

I use Netlify to host the site. I don’t use any Netlify-specific features though to avoid vendor lock-in.

The domain is registered via OVH and DNS zone is hosted by Netlify. While I do not consider this setup optimal in case of failure (failure of one party brings two services down at once), having migrated from Cloudflare I am yet to find a decent provider of DNS zone hosting.

Since this site is essentially a set of pre-built text files, this setup allows me to use virtually any hosting provider. If Netlify ever fails on me, I am capable of migrating between providers with very little downtime. I can also downgrade to old-school SFTP-based static hosting.

Inspiration

The site design was inspired by many other sites on the web. Multiple resources influenced my design decisions behind it. Notable mentions include:

• eleventy-chirpy-blog-template - I used it on this site before switching to the current. I borrowed a lot of ideas and code snippets from that theme
• https://paulmcbride.com/
• https://blog.logrocket.com/
• https://anthonyhobday.com/sideprojects/saferules/

Licensing

Unless specified otherwise, all textual and visual content on the site is licensed as Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.

Unless specified otherwise, both code powering the site and code included in its content is licensed as MIT License.

AI transparency

The proliferation of tools commonly referred to as ‘AI-based’ is something I observe with curiosity, but I’m also not oblivious of ethical implications and long-term effects of using them.

This blog is built by a human and written by a human for fun and benefit of other humans.

That being said, I may use AI-based tools to:

• proofread the content and correct any potential errors or mistakes
• get help in tricky cases while translating content from other languages (typically I use dictionaries for that)
• enhance and upscale pre-existing images if it brings significant improvement to their quality and doesn’t violate copyright of their authors

I do not to use AI-based tools for:

• sourcing article ideas
• generating article contents in any capacity
• generating images unless the imagery is directly related to the topic of the article
• anything else that significantly affects creation process in a way new content is being produced rather than improving existing content

If I use AI-based tools in ways that violate this section, relevant disclaimers are present alongside the content.

Note on using this site for AI training

I do not oppose against using my content for training AI models. I have no effective tools to prevent that from happening.

However, I explictly ask each and every entity that uses content of this site to improve their AI-based tools to obey the license requirements - including, but not limited to, crediting the original authors where appropriate.

Legal

This site is not authored, affiliated or endorsed by any company I may be personally affiliated with.

Any and all opinions listed here are my own and not representative of my employers; future, past and present.

All trademarks, logos and brand names are the property of their respective owners. All company, product and service names used in this website are for identification purposes only. Use of these names, trademarks and brands does not imply endorsement.

The content of this site is for informational purposes only and it is not meant to be legal, investment or financial advice.