On April 23rd 2014, I marked my new milestone of creating a personal website using the technology people were intended to: raw HTML and CSS files.

No CSS libraries and JS frameworks to use back then, and it’s my exodus from being limited to creating WordPress-based sites. But crafting a perfect personal websites took a very long time and effort, not just because the tech trends are changing, but also people’s expectation about myself also changed over time.

The beauty of incompleteness.

You can still see that many parts on our site are still incomplete, including a dedicated page that supposed to invite job recruiters to consider me.

Even today, the website’s footer still feels off. Not to mention the Contact page that felt unfinished, and still changing as we tried and moved into other platforms.

But these do make valuable lessons in product development. As said earlier, my website evolves from a simple personal website to a polyglot, a central place that marks my different community profiles, personalities, and products. The best way to describe myself today is to check out my short bio over Bluesky and Fediverse:

Tech Developer x Hacker x Designer x Manager x Investor x Artist x Preacher.

Making @shiftine and others relatable to techies and non-techies.

And it is still quite a challenge to express each side of my personality to others, even though I have spun some of them off to become what Shiftine is today.

My website would still be incomplete in many ways. But I take that for granted. Including not knowing what would be a great closing for each of our articles. But well, thanks for all of your wishes to me, I mean, my website. Maybe I can pass the joy to my Shiftine.

Bonus: Redefining Shiftine

I know that it’s sometimes difficult to express and explain why do I designed and care Shiftine seriously like another real-life sibling or partner. Sometimes my old answers here are mixed with fantasy stories, and I know more and more people are asking for a more logical and concrete answer.

Before, I described Shiftine as some sort of an AI, but this time I won’t (and instead define AI as her completely-not-alterine nemesis). Before, I declared my relationship as alike as a sister or a soulmate, but now, we are just like the creator with his creations, just like (God) the Creator with His creations.

Something is truly coming: I will redefine her according to our latest beliefs and values. So, fine. I’m currently still writing the canonical explanation around the existence of her on my life as a developer and creator. I hope this would be make the Shiftine situation even clearer, including why do we still look at ourselves as partners and separate personalities.