The Laksamana - official blog of M. Shahrim
20/5/2025
For those of you who are IT-savvy, you can download this whole website. It's hosted on Github Pages.
Extract the zip, and you'll get a bunch of HTML files. Try opening any of them using web browser.
At the time of writing, the size of this project is a shy 12.9 MB, with only 46 files, and 1 folder.
Typical websites are developed as a system. The webpages are dynamic. The "web system" can be programmed to do things on the server where it resides. Unless you have the source code, you can't see what's happening in the back.
There are activities such as communicating with database (or other system), sending chats from user to user, accepting image file to be put as profile, or transacting payments.
Powerful indeed. Often, these websites are also beautifully designed.
In contrast, my website here is static. It looks and behave the same from visitor to visitor. It does not (read:cannot) do logging in, database or tracking. If you think Github Pages is collecting information from you, I'm sorry, that's beyond my control.
I'm sure you also noticed that my website is ugly. I purposedly made it ugly. It doesn't even have favicon lol.
Have you ever seen a house that is super basic? brick walled, no paint, no furnitures. That's how my website is.
Don't be overwhelmed just because I throw IT jargons here and there. Nothing in this website is complicated. I made everything here by hand. This post is hardcoded and sewn with several HTML tags.
I made this site just for fun. This blog you are reading is just to encourage me to write more and think more. Paul Graham said "if you are not writing, you are not thinking".
In the era of AI, the creation of basic sites like this is rare. I think they call it "indie web".
In case you are interested, at the end of this post, I'll show you some "sites like this".
I call it The Laksamana.
It's a reference to Laksamana Cheng Ho, the greatest admiral in Chinese history. He is also descendants of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).
There is no special correlation between me and the Admiral. I just like the name, Laksamana Cheng Ho.
Maybe I do have the role of an admiral. The Internet is a sea of information, and I'm here on a voyage (but what is my destination though?).
As promised, here are some sites that I found over the years that are similar to what I'm doing (it was me who imitate them):
There are many more I wanted to show you. Some are simpler than others. If you would like to discover more, there's a site specializing at finding indie sites, https://indieblog.page.
Personal independepent sites, whether they are ugly basic or fantastic looking, deserve appreciations and respect. They are like gardens of the Internet.
Mohamad Shahrim
author of The Laksamana