Having seen many academic CVs and personal websites online, I thought I’d have a go at building a website. I must say, it got really interesting and I decided to take the deep dive… hopefully this’ll help build some online visibility and get my work out there. If you’re also interested in building a website, check out Alistair Bailey’s “Building a website using blogdown in R”. At first I tried to use Jekyll but changed my mind after reading this post. I used the two-repository approach to link my website to GitHub pages, following the workflow by Tyler Clavelle.
As for blogging, I think it’s a great way to document the little things I’ve discovered or ideas I’ve had. Blogs have become a go-to for me when seeking answers to various questions (just like building this website), and I think it’ll be nice to contribute to this resource base as well. At the very least, future-me will be happy to have something to refer to when I hit the same obstacle down the road. It’s probably difficult to assign a consistent theme to my blog posts, but expect ramblings about data science, productivity hacks, writing, the environment, design, music…
Finally, I think websites and blogs are also a refreshing alternative to writing long, academic pieces. It’s often a challenge to make my research relatable to people I talk to, and I feel like what I say doesn’t always do justice to the huge effort put in. Most people aren’t really that interested in the technical details (even my wife! But she tries really hard <3), and digital media definitely helps with science communication. Hopefully you will find the content here interesting and useful.