Hello world

Hi everyone,

This isn’t the first time I’ve hosted a website. But this is my first attempt at hosting a blog.

Back in 2002, when I was 16, I built my very first website using the famous LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP). That’s how my journey into the tech world began. I learned a lot from that first experiment. Back then, deployments were simple: you just dragged and dropped your files over FTP, and you were good to go. I used Infomaniak to host that website. Since 2002, a lot of things have changed.

Fast forward to 2024: I started hosting my own Mastodon instance (mastodon.imichka.me), deployed on AWS using Git, GitHub, OpenTofu, and Ansible. I’ll write a dedicated blog post about that later, because it deserves one of its own.

And now, in 2026, I’m finally starting this blog. This one is going to be static (it is built with Hugo: https://gohugo.io), which simplifies hosting a lot. Still, the infrastructure has been set up with OpenTofu on AWS, using S3, Route 53, and CloudFront. Reactions can happen through Mastodon or LinkedIn, since I’m going to share blog posts there.

Why now?

I’ve wanted to create a blog for a long time, and the main things that held me back were my English (and time). I could have written articles in French, but I wanted my writing to reach a wider audience. Some people might say that my English is already good enough — and honestly, it’s decent — but English is still not my native language.

So what changed?

AI is available now, and I can use it to review and polish my writing. To be clear: my blog posts will not be written by AI. I only use it to improve readability and correct my English.

Also, I got a new role at my company, which means I will be spending a lot of time on the TGV between Lille and Paris … giving me time to reflect on things and write them down.

I’ve also given a few talks at conferences, and I want to try a different format to share my thoughts. I’m 40 now, and I finally feel confident enough in my opinions to share them publicly with a broader audience. Topics here might be a little more controversial than in the talks I’ve given. I also have enough hindsight now to look back on what I’ve experienced and talk about it with perspective.

Anyway, I already have a few posts in preparation. Let’s see where this new adventure takes me.