the drop cap is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
An almanac, but the stars are people.
Almanacs were the first personal websites. One person, once a year, printed everything they thought you should know: when the moon rises, which planets are up, when to plant, a few predictions, and a lot of opinions in the margins. Half science, half gossip, all voice.
This site is that, for a backend engineer who looks up at night. The day job sits in the tables: positions held, things that broke, what I use. The personality sits in the margins. (Which is where the good stuff always was.)
The front of every almanac had a star map. Ours starts empty and fills up with visitors. Each one adds a star, names it, leaves a line. Come back and your star gets brighter. After a year the sky is a map of everyone who ever showed up.
The cover loads as a night sky of visitors, over the real sky from the morning I was born, with Hevelius' Taurus engraved behind. "3 reading tonight."
Hover stars and read notes. Faint glints drift across: other readers, live, labelled with a city and the chapter they're on.
A small moon sits top-left in the bar on every page, with no label. It starts in tonight's real phase and turns through the month as you scroll. Tapping it plays music. Hover only shows a play mark.
Chapters are real pages: positions, eclipses, observations, snapshots. Plain to use, charming to read.
You're given a star when you arrive. It follows you as you scroll. Tap it to name it. Come back and it gets brighter.
twelve rows. two of them skipped the numbering. they know what they did.
Every section, as a chapter.
Chapter names carry the story. The plain label under each one is what the nav and search engines see, so nobody gets lost to a metaphor. Quoted lines are draft copy in your voice. You edit all of them.
every star here is a person who stopped by. yours is missing.
i write java for a living and i'm at peace with it. mostly.
positions held. like a planet that can't sit still.
listed here so you don't have to repeat them.
hobbies i'm bad at, in order of how much i'll talk about them.
clarity 2/5. hazy, but i'm writing it down anyway.
snapshot 14. [a place] · [a year] · [one line about it]
[channel name]. for [when you'd play it].
your cron job will run twice. plan for it.
clear till 2 am. jupiter up at 22:40. me, much later.
400 readers. a few of them came back.
send a signal. i reply faster than the voyager probes.
scroll on. from here the career goes round in circles, which is accurate.
Positions held.
How the career chapter reads. Facts come from what you've told me; asides are drafts. Rows in brackets are yours to fill.
Positions held, in orbit.
tap to look closer →The planets start where they really are tonight and go round at their true relative speeds. Scrolling turns time forward. Sizes and distances are not to scale. Next position: not yet plotted, conf. 40%.
- Diameter
- One day
- From the sun
- Axis tilt
- Moons
none of this is financial advice. especially the bitcoin one.
Predictions for the year.
Java will outlive all of us, and it will be fine about it.
Your cron job will run twice. Plan for it.
Someone will call bitcoin dead this week. It will not notice.
The BigDecimal you forgot to scale is already in production.
I'll finish a side project before starting a new one.
I will redesign this site again. You're reading attempt number five.
the blue light following you down the page is yours. yes, that one.
Leave a star. Come back brighter.
The wewere.online idea, but it belongs to this site: presence you can feel, and one permanent trace per person. No accounts, no feed, no likes. Try it: your star is already on the page, top right. What you write in this preview stays in your browser only.
- Your starEvery visitor is given one star on arrival. It rides a slow curve down the page as they scroll. Tap it to name it (24 chars) and leave a line (80 chars). One star per person.
- ReadHover or tap any star for its name, line, city and the night it was added.
- ReturnEvery return visit on a new day makes your star a little brighter. Regulars literally shine.
- LivePeople reading right now drift across the sky as faint glints with a city and the chapter they're on.
- Count"3 reading tonight · 400 stars in the sky" sits on the cover. The newest guests make the cover constellations; everyone else is scattered down the page, recent ones bright, older ones faint. The Guest Stars page lists every one.
- MotionStars drift on slow looping curves, never straight lines. New stars swoop in along an arc and land with a small spark. Constellation lines are soft curves that draw themselves in, sway, and light up when you hover one of their stars. Everything shifts gently with scroll and cursor, nearer stars more than far ones.
- Keep it kindLink and slur filters, one star per device, rate limits, and a quiet report link. I can remove a star.
Brightness, by loyalty
no gradients. the vignette doesn't count.
Printed at night, on black paper.
Dark, but not a dark mode. It should feel like a book printed in cream ink on black paper, with gold foil on the cover. Character comes from three things only: seventeenth-century engravings, old-press type, and tidy tables of numbers. No gradients, no glass, no neon, no emoji.
A soft, slightly wonky serif, pushed to its roundest. Titles, names, numerals, and in italic every gold aside.
A warm book serif, built for long reading on screens. Same soft temperament as the headings, quieter voice.
jupiter · 22:40
clarity 3/5
A typewriter for dates, coordinates, counts, the top bar and every table. The engineer's hand in the almanac.
Motion: ink, not bounce
Things fade in like ink soaking into paper, lines draw themselves, stars twinkle. Slow easing, nothing springs or wobbles. The sky rotates about one degree a minute.
One engraving per page
Every chapter gets one plate, faint and huge, behind its title: Cetus for eclipses, Orion for positions, Lyra for frequencies. Never more than one.
Margins do the jokes
Headlines stay straight. The humour lives in asides, captions, confidence levels and table footnotes, which is where Atul puts his too.
phase 2 starts after phase 1 ships. conf. 60%.
Open a constellation, the site changes.
Each hobby is a constellation. Focus one and the whole site changes: the sky, the picture, the type colour and the music. The visitor stars stay put; only the sky around them changes.
Black paper, engravings, real positions of tonight's planets over Bengaluru.
The sky swirls into Van Gogh strokes; visitor stars become thick dabs of paint.
Stars pulse with the music; the chart turns slowly like a record.
The sky snaps to a faint board; stars sit on squares; your engine plays a move.
Stadium lights come up at the edges, the sky goes hazy, a scorecard replaces the table.
the homework section. there is always one.
What I need to finalise it.
Decisions first, then content. Content can arrive later; the build can start once the decisions are made.
Decide
- The name: The Unfunny Almanac, or something else in the same spirit.
- The chapter list: anything to cut, merge or add.
- The look: black paper, engravings, old-press display type.
- Music source: your own files (true always-on across pages) or Spotify/YouTube embeds (easier, but they stop between pages).
Send when you can
- Hobby list in order, with one honest line each. Do you own a telescope?
- Three to five eclipses: things that broke and what changed after.
- Ten photos with a place, a year and one line each.
- Your channels: names and a few songs per channel.
- Any asides above you'd never say. I'll rewrite them in your voice.