There is something quietly countercultural about maintaining a personal website in 2026.

Not because it is technically difficult — it is not — but because it represents a decision to think out loud in a space you actually control. Somewhere you can be wrong, update your thinking, and not have the original mistake algorithmically resurfaced three years later to embarrass you.

The feeds have trained us to think in bursts. Short, punchy, optimised for engagement. The personal site asks for something different: the willingness to write more than 280 characters, to sit with an idea, to make a claim and defend it with more than a hot take.

## Why bother?

I have been asked this question, usually by people who cannot imagine why you would spend time writing something that "nobody reads." The answer, for me, is threefold. Thinking improves in the writing. There is no substitute for the discipline of putting a half-formed idea into prose. The gaps become visible. The circular logic announces itself. The thing you thought you believed turns out, on closer inspection, to be something you only half-believed. The permanent record matters. Not in a self-important way — I do not think anyone will be mining my archives in fifty years — but in the immediate, practical sense that I can point people here. When I am having a conversation about AI in schools, or about assessment validity, or about what good professional learning actually looks like, I can say: I wrote about this, here is the link. That is more useful than a tweet. It is an act of craft. Writing well is a skill that degrades without practice. The site is the practice. ## The design question A site like this is also a design problem. What does the visual environment say about the writing it contains? Does it treat the words as the primary material, or does it bury them under ornament? I have landed on a principle I think of as typographic daring — the idea that bold, confident typography is not decoration but argument. That choosing a dramatic display serif is a choice about how seriously to take the words on the page. It says: these ideas are worth a clear entrance. <Callout type="note"> This site is a work in progress. The design is intentional but not finished. The writing is honest but not always polished. Both will develop. </Callout> ## On the word "quiet" The name — a quiet corner of the internet — is not false modesty. It is a genuine description of what I want this to be. Not a platform. Not a brand. Not a content strategy. A corner: the kind of place you find when you follow a link someone shared, where the writing does not shout, where there is room to think. The internet has plenty of loud corners. I am trying to build a quiet one. --- If you found this useful, or if it prompted a thought worth sharing, [get in touch](/about).