It’s the year 2026 and I’ve made a new blog?! Whatever for? Well,

Tech considerations

I’d been wanting to overhaul my old blog for a while, mainly because I didn’t like using Jekyll. My thought was that if I migrated to a React-based framework I’d have more flexibility just because I know my way around React. I didn’t 100% go that route - I’ll put up a post explaining the whole setup soon.

Increased anonymity

My old blog URL was straight up my government name, and I think it being the first thing that came up when you searched for me had a chilling effect on me wanting to write stuff. See my activity since 2023. Not that I’m, like, going to start posting embarrassing crap now, but I feel like I can lower my standards a bit more. I’m completely fine with meatspace associates knowing this blog is me! But my boss doesn’t have to know. On that note, I also really needed a text-editor-centric activity to replace doomscrolling BlueSky at the office.

More kinds of content

The inciting incident of this project was that I wanted a place to host sheet music! I’ve been putting together some charts that I want to make publically available and my personal site seemed like the best place to do that. And if I’m adding new features, might as well just go in and overhaul the whole thing, right?

My goal with this page is to be the kind of website with a “Fun” section, and I intend to add more little interactive bits and bobs and badges and webring links and such things.

Enter: mortodella.net

Last month’s (January 2026’s) huge snowstorm was the perfect opportunity for an indoor activity, so I bought a new domain and started doing static blog framework research. You may note that that was fully a month ago. I’ve been having a great time fussing around with CSS but I’m also glad to have things in a good state to actually write content. I’m especially happy with the wonderful icon I got from noion!

All you need to know about the pseudonym “Mort O’Della” is it’s a pun on the Italian meat product mortadella but that sounds like a guy’s name. Thus, this new site’s mascot is a living Billy Roll.

A Brief, Website Tour

The left nav is basically the sitemap and it’s pretty self-explanatory but here’s an overview of what’s here as of this post.

Home

The front page of the site aggregates posts of any category, so if I post something new, it will show up here.

Archive

Likewise, the Archive just lists every single post in publishing order.

All Tags

Listing of every single tag on every single post of any category.

Blog

Blog posts on miscellaneous topics. Could be whatever. I’ve went through and imported all my posts from the old blog.

It’s not that I haven’t written anything since 2023, I just haven’t posted anything. I have a bunch of drafts sitting in version control that I’m going to try and polish off.

NEW - Sheet Music

Archive of sheet music I’ve been working on. Inspired by websites like The Session and chart-o-tron. And because MuseScore’s website sucks! Each piece has a PDF + recording + example performance. I’m mulling over whether I should also provide the .mscz files.

Projects

This is just the Blog section filtered down to the “projects” tag. Software (and other, maybe!) projects I’ve worked on.

NEW - Art

Going to post art here! Art commissions I’ve gotten over the years, plus my own amateur-tier drawings. I’m still working on uploading old stuff here, which I’ll backdate to its original creation.

Video Game Backlog

My old video game backlog series, which was most of my old blog. I’m not sure whether I’ll continue with this, I feel like I’ve outgrown it a bit! Unsurprising for a project I started in 2020. Unreal that its been six years, and I still haven’t played my copy of 2064: Read Only Memories. The truly cursed thing here is that as the world has gotten worse, I’ve only accumulated more video games I haven’t played, from all of the itch.io fundraiser bundles.

Friendo

Friendo! A tamagotchi-like idle game I made in college. It was bittersweet to private this on GitHub for anonymity’s sake, but I’m trying to use that feeling to fuel making something cooler now that I have like, a career of software development experience.

NEW-ish - Turt’s Grove

Turt’s back! This was also a feature of my old blog, but now Turt has a little house. Once you hatch him, Turt will follow your mouse around and try to eat it, at which point he’ll gain a level. You can click the “put turt to bed” link in the sidebar to dismiss him if you find him annoying.

Conclusión

Going through my old posts to get them working with the new framework was a real trip down memory lane. There was a point where I was like, oh god, I haven’t written anything in almost two whole years, am I even this person any more? Why am I doing this? What’s the point? And I started crashing out a bit, probably due to February’s malignant energy. But I got better. The thing is, it’s odd to have my life and personality change so little in six years, and that number only gets larger as the changes get fewer and fewer. Perhaps this is a sign that I need to make a more deliberate change, but I think it’s more that this is just what being an adult man is like, and I’ve just settled into being a certain type of guy and that’s it. Sorry if that sounds a bit dour but I don’t know how to feel about it!

Now that I’m done faffing about with Astro, I’m looking forward to actually writing some posts! I have a lot of ideas, so, get ready for that, at least until I run out of posting energy/the weather finally gets nice again and I flee the computer.