Handcrafting My Web Site

I’ve been tinkering a lot with my web site lately—I find writing code to be relaxing, and it helps relieve stress.

My personal web site has been around for thirty years … and it looks it. I’ve never felt any need to change its design: the design works well, even if it’s far from fashionable. There’s a table of contents on the left, and content on the right, plus a banner at the top. Simple. Nothing moves or slides or jiggles. There are no pop-ups. There are no ads. The site is not monetized. Visitors are not tracked. There are no sponsors. I’m not selling anything. I don’t ask anyone to “create an account” or “choose a subscription plan” just to look at the site.

Most of the site content is text, but the two sections that receive the most visitors are the Paris photo gallery and the (Paris) street scenes gallery. The photo gallery is unusual in that I provide extensive descriptions of what each photo shows—something that many web sites can’t be bothered with nowadays. My site can be visited even with JavaScript disabled. It looks the same on desktops, tablets, and smartphones. It can even be navigated with a text-only browser such as Lynx—how many sites today can say that?

I don’t have to ask visitors to accept cookies because I don’t use any. Likewise, I don’t have to ask them to accept tracking pixels or other spy gadgets because I don’t use any. They don’t need to “choose their ad preferences” because there are no ads.

I still have a crusty old feedback form, and a guest book. They don’t seem to get used much.

Behind the scenes, there’s a mountain of code, and I typed every line myself. I’ve built my own content management system, as well as a ridiculously elaborate user account management system, with roles and keys and access control lists that would make a Multician proud … even though I have only two user accounts (one user account, one administrator account). It has been fun to write.

Amazingly, the site receives up to ten thousand visitors a day, but at least 75% of those are not human, i.e., they are bots, spiders, crawlers, scrapers, scanners and evildoers, and the like. I estimate that perhaps several hundred to a thousand real people visit on a typical day.

I derive significant satisfaction from the fact that the entire site is handcrafted by yours truly. There isn’t anything on the site that mystifies me, because I don’t use anything created by anyone else. I know why, for example, particular icons appear in particular positions, because I put them there. I even created the icons.

Baking in Paris

Four consecutive heat waves since June. A historical first for Paris in summer, with record-setting high temperatures. It’s exhausting.

There are certainly hotter places in the world. But the problem is that this is relatively new for Paris. France, like much of Europe, has always been more concerned with chilly weather than warm weather. Cities and buildings are designed to conserve heat, not to shed it. Air conditioning is rare. So when a heat wave occurs, people literally die from the heat.

Forty years ago, “summer” in Paris meant a few days in August where the temperature might exceed 75° F. Nobody needed or installed AC back then. But now, summer in Paris might mean an overnight low of 76°, and a daily high of 106°.

I got my first air conditioner in Paris in the 1990s, when summers started to get too warm for my liking. I ran the AC (a mobile unit) on a handful of the hottest days of the year. Over time, that handful of days expanded into a week or two; then several weeks. During these past few heatwaves, I’ve run the AC almost non-stop for days at a time. It’s expensive—several euro a day—but it’s preferable to the emergency room.

Most people don’t have AC in Paris, and right now they can’t get it, because stores have sold out on fans and air conditioners, and installers of central air are booked for months to come. As a result, thousands of people have died. The media seem to want to emphasize that heat stroke is affecting mostly the very young and the elderly, but after a few days of excessive heat, all age groups start to suffer. Some people living alone are found dead in their apartments, where temperatures might reach 115°. The Parisian architecture that helps lower heating costs in winter turns small apartments into barbecues in summer, especially top-floor apartments that bake beneath Haussmannian metal roofs. Some people (more than 200) have drowned after a temperature shock when they tried to go for a swim in a river or lake.

Public transportation also becomes an ordeal during heat waves. Buses have been measured to reach 120° inside, endangering both the driver and the passengers. Some buses are air-conditioned, but ecologists have opposed widespread adoption of AC in buses (and everywhere else), so these buses are a minority.

Even hospitals don’t have AC, which to me seems like a particularly egregious oversight given that people in the hospital often require tightly controlled environments.

A huge heat wave in 2003 killed 15,000 people. These last four heatwaves this year have been cumulatively more severe. The government promised all sorts of actions in 2003, but nothing was actually done, apart from creation of a new tax, the proceeds from which seem to have been sucked into the black hole of ever-increasing government spending. This time around, new promises are being made: plans are being announced meetings are being organized, press conferences are being held, and so on, but I don’t expect any results. The reality is that everyone needs to accept the need for AC when it gets hot.