Why I’m Blogging (and Why Jekyll)
Why am I blogging?
I’ve been messing around with a bunch of stuff lately — embedded C, ESP32, FreeRTOS, ROS2, local LLMs, RAG pipelines and I realized that I needed a place to put it all.
Somewhere between the main.c, the several hundred browser tabs and the horribly named folders, I figured a blog would give me:
- A place to log what I learn, before I forget it.
- A reason to stay accountable to my side projects.
- A personal space to geek out about spacecraft, robots and random 3AM thoughts.
So here we are.
Why Jekyll?
There are a bunch of ways to spin up a blog in 2025. You’ve got Notion, Hashnode, Medium, Ghost, Obsidian + Publish, Astro, Next.js, and probably 5 new frameworks by the time I finish typing this.
But I wanted something:
- Minimal and classy
- Static (no backend, no databases, no bloat)
- Easy to version control via Git
- Hosted free on GitHub Pages
Enter Jekyll.
What is Jekyll?
Jekyll is a static site generator. It takes your plain text files (written in Markdown) and turns them into a complete website.
No JavaScript frameworks. No dynamic rendering. Just HTML, CSS and good old static files.
It just works.
What is the underlying stack?
Jekyll is built on Ruby. This is all we need to know.
What is Ruby?
- Ruby is a high-level, interpreted programming language. It is object-oriented, dev friendly and is like Python’s artsy cousin.
- It’s primarily used for Web dev (Ruby on Rails framework), scripts, dev tools and static site generators.
What is a “Gem”?
- It’s a library/package in Ruby
- Distributed via rubygems.org
- Eg: jekyll. rails. httparty etc.
Bundler is a Ruby tool that helps you manage dependencies. You’ll use it to install everything the blog needs via a Gemfile.
Getting Started
Use these concise guides to install Jekyll and its dependencies on your Operating System. Installation
Then, pick a jekyll theme and follow the respective installation instructions. I chose chirpy so I used these instructions.
Do some basic configuation changes in _config.yml and you’ll be good to go.
Why Chirpy?
Chirpy is a beautiful, modern Jekyll theme that comes with:
- Dark mode out of the box
- Tags, categories, archive pages
- Built-in support for search, SEO and PWA
- Syntax highlighting, math expressions and flowcharts
- GitHub Pages compatibility
It’s perfect for someone like me who wants good design, but doesn’t wanna dive deep into frontend every time I write a post.
TL;DR
This blog is my mission log, a way to track what I’m building and thinking. I picked Jekyll because it’s fast, minimal, and lets me focus on writing and shipping, not tweaking layouts for hours.
More posts coming soon.
Until then, happy compiling.