About this Site
You have entered the domain of Theigno.
Who?
There are many debates about who Theigno is. Formally, Theigno is defined as the person who has originally written this text. In other words: I am Theigno.[1]
In some other places I'm also known as Thertzlor.[2]
I don't believe in elaborate introductions because in the end what you are reading is either relevant to you or it isn't; it shouldn't really matter who I am.
But since I also don't want to appear uninviting, here are a few basic facts about me:
- I currently live in Germany.
- I was born in the late 20th century.
- I enjoy programming. I also happen to get paid for it.
- I also enjoy web design, movies, literature, anime/manga, parallax and footnotes[3] but I do not get paid for that.
- When it comes to art, I value new experiences, different viewpoints and innovations in general.
- I have little patience for any media involving a stable status quo, any band whose style doesn't evolve or for that matter any artist who is content to iterate in a specific niche without experimenting.
- If your idea of art is a tool to produce distractions rather than a means of meaningfully engaging with substantive topics or issues, we won't be friends.
If you feel the need to contact me you can do so at theigno@modal-marginalia.com, just don't try to sell me anything.
What?
Modal Marginalia is my all-purpose website/blog where I post various things that I deem interesting and that I suspect might be interesting to at least one other person besides myself. That's about as much of a “mission statement” as you're going to get out of me.
Usually you'll find me reviewing media, musing about programming and design and generally anything that comes to mind. “Anything” will probably involve discussing as well as making sweeping statements about a wide array of topics and fields in which I have no formal training whatsoever. I also have a tendency to find concepts fascinating that others might find rather dry.[4]
If you are the sort of person who likes being pedantic about things, feel free to dissect anything I say in the comment sections; As a fellow pedant I would be delighted.
As a rule, I don't shy away from politics either, but it certainly will not be the main focus of the site.
You should also know that I like to experiment with technology.
However, there are a few lines that I will not cross.
For example, I do not like potatoes. I will not talk about potatoes and, unless absolutely necessary, I won't even acknowledge their existence.[5] If you are a fellow potato hater you can rejoice in knowing that this is a potato free space.
Why?
I'm the first to admit that Modal Marginalia is a bit of an anachronism. Personal websites are in decline, some would even say they are outdated… at least ones that aren't just glorified PowerPoint presentations of a portfolio.
But nothing else compares. Sure, I could have got a free WordPress or Blogger domain… if I wanted site looking like thousands of other sites out there (No, thanks!). There was also no way I'd descent into the ridiculousness of toxic “positivity” of Tumblr, and I'm just generally to wordy for Twitter, although I am trying currently trying my luck with social media via BlueSky at @thertzlor.bsky.social. We'll see how that goes.
I've designed frontends before and this was a welcome chance to experience the whole process of building and maintaining a site. Turns out the more I worked on it, the more the design itself became as much a statement as anything I wanted to publish on it.
The web has been getting seriously boring lately. “Material Design” and “Mobile First” seems to have homogenized everything to the point of absurdity. If I think of modern websites I think of impersonal voids where disembodied text floats in front of a muted background, sleek but forgettable, and everything is stamped flat and featureless in the name of minimalism. What about depth, texture, expressiveness or any sense of tangibility?
Yes, the glossy plastic style buttons and boxy embossed designs of web 2.0 were wacky and many websites of the 90s looked even worse with the clunky disruptive tiling of their backgrounds, low definition graphics and sometimes almost unreadable contrasts.
And yet… there was a personality and vitality there that the modern streamlined approach never managed to recapture. Web technology and tools, not to mention the available bandwidth has progressed to the point where dense designs even a bit of skeuomorphism can be achieved without looking too uncanny or lacking subtlety.
When?
Whenever I feel like posting. Don't expect content to follow any regular schedule. I generally always have a few posts "marinading" as drafts until I'm really, really certain that I have nothing more to add.
How?
Getting a bit technical, are we? This site is powered by a frontend created in Vue, which is just an amazing framework and the backend utilizes a GraphQL connection to a Strapi headless CMS.
The frontend part of this site is proudly open source and hosted on GitHub here: https://github.com/Thertzlor/modal-marginalia-vue/
^ Not my real name, of course. I quite enjoy the anonymity the internet provides and since I am not using this site as a professional portfolio there's no reason to give it up. ^ Which is not my real name either. ^ Prepare to see a lot of footnotes here. In fact I like footnotes so much that they may sometimes have footnotes themselves.[1] You can hover over a footnote link to view its contents in a tooltip or click it to go scroll down to the footnotes section (The arrow at the start will scroll you back up). ^ There's actually not much of a point to this warning since no one is forcing you to read everything here… I hope. ^ Certain potato-adjacent concepts such as french-fries or chips may be mentioned occasionally.
^ Neat, right? I call them toenotes. It's an amazing innovation that will soon be a mainstay feature in all major text editors.