I run this blog off a really old Windows PC acting as a server – it’s been great, and serves my needs for years (at least since pre-COVID!)

Recently a lot of my online services and apps that I run have been dockerised and through the simple use of docker compose, I’ve always enjoyed the simplicity of using some proprietary software that required Windows, as well as just running this site off Docker for Windows.

Until now – I’ve since installed WSL2 and moved this container onto the WSL2 filesystem, and let me tell you – the performance is night and day between the site when it was running through all the translation stuff for Docker Windows, and Docker “natively” in WSL2.

I can’t believe it…!

And now I’m going to start looking at migrating all the rest of my stuff across in an effort to maximise performance.

There’s a lot I’d like to write about and the number of draft posts in this blog’s backend are piling up honestly; but from the get-go:

• DUMBarr being setup to replace my Plex and home media server stack
• The fight between Notion and Obsidian as my knowledge system is coming to an end(?)
  • And it looks like Notion is winning…!
• Getting my services, and the infrastructure back online

There’s a lot to do! And a lot to figure out.

Stay tuned 🙂

After nearly 10 years of my old logo, I thought it might be nice to rebrand my personal logo; taking some influences from my life since the last time I did a brand design for myself.

In the course of my day-to-day tinkerings, I’ve occasionally needed to whiteboard an idea with friends and family. Now, from my former professional life, tools like Figma, and Miro come to mind; except for a simple home user like myself – they’re paid platforms, or their free tier restrictions are too much.

I came across ExcaliDash by ZimengXiong – a free, self-hostable version of the very popular ExcaliDraw web app that offers a set of pretty awesome features:

• Drawings are stored on the server, making them easy to backup and export/import
• You can collaborate with as many people as you want
• User authentication and management is within the app
• Each person can see their own drawings or can be configured for sharing
• It has a dark mode ❤️

What about Obsidian’s Canvas feature?

Canvas is great – for mind mapping stuff, sure! But that’s about it — sadly, if I wanted more complex diagrams of things like server structure, etc. there’s issues with “Ordering” of entities on the screen, as in you can’t send things to the front, or back, or bring them up/down one layer. More complex editing features like grouping and ungrouping and even more are not in the Canvas feature. It wasn’t designed for this kind of diagramming, so it’s understandable!

What about draw.io?

A fantastic self hostable app too that actually works really well! But it doesn’t allow for collaboration, and I can’t add user authentication, control or sharing very easily either. On top of that, it doesn’t store the diagrams locally on my server, rather they become downloadable files that can I load in/out of the browser, or if I use local browser storage, the diagram isn’t as portable (I can’t work on it across networks or machines).

Done deal!

I’m happy with the setup, it’s not without it’s jank, but the project is active, and it works well for my very simple needs! So if anyone else is looking for a collaborative whiteboarding app, give ExcaliDash by ZimengXiong a look!

Back in a previous post about Obsidian, I mentioned that I was paying for Notion, and Clickup. In an attempt to reduce my overhead costs, I had initially started using Obsidian as my main PKMS (Personal Knowledge Management System — I didn’t make the acronym up, there’s a fantastic sub-Reddit you can find at r/PKMS). I have since been bouncing between Notion, Obsidian and a newcomer, Affine Pro.

One step closer to completing the jtiong.com project, I finally laid down the groundwork for the Photos section of the site. It’s always been something I wanted to include in the website, being able to share photos of my adventures and hobbies with the few friends & family who visit this website from time to time!

To give some insight into how jtiong.com currently works, it is a marriage between a WordPress backed blog for my Blog entries and my sections as “sub-sites” in subdirectories like /games or /labs. By doing so, I get the feature and stability(😏) benefits of using (I dare say) the world’s most popular blogging CMS/platform; and the flexibility of adding in dynamic features that suits my needs like Game Server info, network status, and other integrations to the site.

It’s been a bit of a steep learning curve (if the number of commits I’ve done in the month of March alone is anything to go by) but there’s been something really fulfilling in finally building the site that I’ve always wanted to but never quite had the time to.

That’s not to say the site is perfect, but there’s beauty and perfection in the very journey of just building this, and maintaining it, and eventually (over time) evolving it into whatever my needs require.

Just in that alone, there’s the Ikigai, Kaizen and Wabisabi of it all.

Update: 20th March 2026

The Photos section is completed in design! It took a moment longer than normal but I managed to shoe-horn the functionality of mobile/sidebar stuff into the WordPress ecosystem properly <3

All done 🙂

Continuing on with what is probably the biggest code project I’ve done in recent memory (that’s a low bar given I’d “retired” from the tech industry for a while) – I’ve made a Network Status page that was essentially the contents of jtiong.network, and brought it here into the Labs section of jtiong.com

The site pulls Badges (using For the Badge styling) that are generated by an Uptime Kuma deployment I have running off my personal infrastructure. You can check out the deployment here!

One more domain I can disable the auto-renew on 👍

It’s a milestone in the “project” of building up jtiong.com because jtiong.network is the first complete domain name that I can decommission.

I’m finally back on working on some more public facing stuff on jtiong.com — this time, bringing my website jtiong.dev, into the Labs section of my site. Here’s the older design (jtiong.dev), vs the new design (jtiong.com)!

In the original design, I showed every month since 2015 until present day, with the number of commits showing as a bar graph across the top of the page. Now, this was all well and good, but further down the track the bars are going to get smaller and smaller as time goes on. Not really ideal!

In the new design, I’ve taken more “inspiration” from Github (really it’s just straight up copied) using a tabbed layout to show my commits across the years, plus a slightly more unique “last 365 days commits” in the first tab to make it a bit more dynamic.

I’ve listed the commits underneath the graph too, they don’t link to any repos or commits themselves, as generally I work in mostly private repositories.

The mobile view and compatibility is even better – the tabs are swipe and tap friendly, meaning it’s easier to browse my commits as needed if I ever need to reference the day’s code.

I think a lot of creators say, “When you have a nice space, it makes you want to use it more” or something along those lines for creative output. Having nice tools makes you want to use them more, a nice chair to sit at, or a powerful PC, shiny power tools to make things, etc.

That philosophy even rings true for something as basic as an online blog (well, now more of a whole damn website). Since deciding to redesign my site and consolidate it all, it’s given me ikigai and really, it’s become a joy to start updating my this site (and even this blog) a lot more.

I won’t go so far as to say my aim this year is to blog more or do more content – but I’d like to foster a better environment around which I can update this site more often, be it with blog posts, or new site features, or otherwise.

An evolution of my website’s themes

Independent Publisher is a fantastic theme – I loved how simple and straight to the point it is. I actually came across this theme when I started following a Minecraft Modder back in the early halcyon days of Minecraft’s modding scene, the early alpha and beta days. There was a modder by the name of Sk89q (Albert Pham) who actually developed one of the most important mods that propelled Minecraft into its modern day popularity, WorldEdit. His blog had this theme in a nice neutral toned colourway that made it easy to read and keep up with a lot of his (sometimes not so) little projects. I immediately took to using the same theme, with a few little tweaks of my own, and left it mostly at default with a colourway change for things.

Minty Charmander is my own from-scratch WordPress theme, the first time I’d actually properly done something like this without just hacking other themes or shoe-horning other layouts in. I made this theme shortly after meeting my fiance Annie 🥰. One could even go so far as to call her my muse! The theme’s nomenclature came from our shared enjoyment of the earlier Pokemon games (Red/Blue) and how we both chose Charmander as our starting Pokemon.

The design began as a way to “modernise” the look of the site, and it was the first attempt at sharing a common design language between mutliple domains (jtiong.blog and jtiong.dev) — in fact, you can still see the older Minty Charmander design applied to jtiong.dev (as of the time of writing!)

Chunky Snorlax is of course, the current incarnation of the site, and a much larger project than just a WordPress theme. It too is written from the ground up, but with a few hard requirements to the project such as:

• The site must be usable on mobile
• Discord integration for my personal community must be implemented
• It must be able to handle private gated sections for family, or friends

The project is like Minty Charmander, targeted towards unifying the domains under jtiong.com as well as having consistent branding across the sections of the domain that they’ll become; and is in fact, so large that I even have it documented in Notion for task tracking and managing what I’ve done so I have a reference to come back to in future development.

It’s an interesting development project for me because after a few years away from the tech industry, I’m finally dipping my toe back into coding and learning some skills along the way, at my own pace 😃

The site will continue being a desktop first website. I’m always designing and developing the site based off how it appears on my personal desktop, before making the design responsive and accommodating for mobile resolutions afterwards.

Improving standards in publishing posts

I’ve been a WordPress user for a long time in regards to this blog – about 10 years apparently. But it’s always been a secondary, perfunctory usage. I’ve always just very basically logged in, dumped what was in my head into a post, and hit publish.

Since I started with Minty Charmander during July 2024, I started to use more features of WordPress’s editor like Galleries, and photo uploads properly. And with the blog’s current iteration, I’ve started:

• paying attention more to CSS styling (partially due to design hard requirements above)
• learning to use the built-in lightbox feature and some improvements with it
  • the lightbox now loads the source image in full res when you click on them instead of delivering an upscaled thumbnail with the native WP feature
• learned that adding image captions improves traffic to my site
• likewise, feature images also help increase traffic! It also just looks a lot nicer across the blog 🙂
• the tags and categories system needs some refinement, but works fairly well
  • I need to go through my posts and re-tag and re-categorise as appropriate!

So it’s nice to see that putting in the effort into the site has also meant I’ve started improving my own methods and processes for creating content here. It’s an older form of content, I’m not a YouTuber or some sort of highly skilled video editor; and it’s never a “no” but for now, I enjoy the written word more. And so I rant on the internet using this blog 🥳

From my last related post about all the clutter and possessions I have – as well as a history of the posts in this blog – I am quite into journaling.

I have a problem in that I have too many places to journal and keep ideas – that I’m not sure what I would consider the “most efficient” way to do things.

I have:

• DayOne
• Notion
• Notability
• Physical Bullet Journal
• Travelers’ Notebook (passport size)

So I thought I’d do a “stream of consciousness” rant and put my thoughts down on the screen about how to best use these resources for me personally.

Thoughts about each resource…

DayOne

I’ve been using DayOne on and off ever since the app first came out back in 2016 (whoa, 10 years). It’s actually been my go-to for on-the-go journaling. It has an interesting integration with my phone that just collates all the images taken on any given calendar day of an entry – meaning I can quickly and efficiently make entries as needed.

To that end, DayOne remains clearly the “first port of call” whenever I need to put something down in writing. Or should the need arise (and more often does), I can whip the phone out, press the camera button on my phone and snap something really quickly, then return later in a quiet moment and add it into the DayOne calendar entry for keeping track of the moment(s).

Notion

Notion is actually something I’ve “come back to” recently. I was previously using Obsidian as a sort of knowledge store; but with the idea of making things easier for “those who remain” – I reverted back to Notion and have since been trying to update it more regularly.

Overall I think Notion remains a knowledge store more than any sort of journal system – ironically though as I started writing this post – there’s now a calendar view that allows me to attach pages to each Day in what can only be described as an excellent digital planner/journal setup 😂

Still, it’s a much better application for keeping knowledge base items in there (like, how did I design this site, and the steps I took); and for things in my life that need more organised tables and pseudo database views.

It doesn’t hurt that Notion is available across iOS, iPadOS, and Windows – all my devices are able to access Notion smoothly. Even Linux based devices!

It means that I can smoothly access this knowledge from anywhere, and should the need arise, I can add to my “Diary” if need be to keep information tracked with a day’s entry into my journals.

Physical Bullet Journal

These are traditionally my handwritten journals that I’ve been doing since 2018 – they’re done in “classic” size gridded Moleskine book – soft covered.

Does it still make sense to have a hard copy journal?

This year so far I’ve stated doing the book as more of a long form journal rather than as a planner/bullet journal setup. I don’t carry this journal with me normally so it makes sense to turn it into something more long form, with nice photos and such.

A digital journal, the wildcard…!

Something has been sitting in the back of my mind though about it all – as the times have been changing – does it still make sense to have a hard copy journal? The DayOne journal’s benefits are the multimedia capabilities of such a setup. I can include video footage, photos and even audio recordings per journal entry. That’s simply unbeatable in terms of “saving memories”.

The biggest advantage of a hard copy journal that a lot of proponents will push, is the fact that you have an emotional connection to the handwriting of the journal – you can tell someone’s mood, state of mind or general vibe from how they’ve written on the page (e.g. agitated writing might be sharper or more jagged in the lettering; calmer might be rounder and smoother, etc.) but that becomes moot with something like an iPad Pro, and the Notability app. I can handwrite, and scribble, doodle, and draw my way through a “journal” all while still embedding multimedia into the page, almost like a living Harry Potter Newspaper-esque experience!

Travelers’ Notebook (Passport Size)

I also have a Travelers’ Notebook – a little pocket-sized journal that I can use on the go as well.

Originally after first buying the standard sized journal as a souvenir from Tokyo as well as this passport sized notebook – I couldn’t figure out how such a structure would match the bullet journaling methods I use or how it would fit in with what I do. It uses slim notebook refills and doesn’t seem to be appropriate for the longer form style of journaling that I’m beginning to do.

“Bullet Journaling” on a lighter note seems to be the answer for me – it’s less about doing bullet journals in the way I’ve always known them, and more using the Traveler’s Notebook as a sort of physical life planner that logs appointments to keep, as well as a sort of daily log of where I’ve been or what I’ve done in bullet point format.

There’s 2 refills I keep within the book, and a small kraftpaper folder to hold things like spare cards.

The first refill is an undated monthly view planner book; the second refill is a dotted grid book. Keeping a physical planner system is probably going to be more significant to me as I can look back for a quick jog of the memory for a day’s “traveled journey”.

Coming to a decision

I think it’s time to make the switch to a fully digital journal. Being able to put my thoughts to screen above – led me to realise that Notability is the solution to my future journal needs. It covers:

• the emotional connection of hand-writing and drawing my entries
• being able to embed photos, video and audio into the page for multimedia entries
• iCloud based backup for future use across devices
• on device storage for the Notability files is possible
• editing the journal is far easier – I can select, move, resize things as needed

It also gives my iPad Pro an important use case, aside from just being a graphics tablet and secondary monitor for my laptop, or my desktop – it’s also the device I update my journal in. So there’s clearly a lot of boxes it ticks.

Figuring out the negatives however, are pretty simple:

• it’s battery powered
• there’s an Apple Pencil involved – and that’s expensive…!

There’s a whole load more upsides than downsides – and I haven’t even covered everything. But at this point it’s clear that it’s the future of my journaling.

So here’s to making my iPad far more useful to myself again! 🤣