Woohoo! Finally, I have found enough reasons and some time to actually start up this blog. I have been contemplating about starting a blog for almost half a year now. So let’s get this thing started!
Learning by writing 🤯
Probably the biggest motivation to start this blog is my firm believe that writing down my thoughts and ideas supports my learning and understanding. It forces me to really think twice about what I am trying to say, what I am doing and if everything really fits together. I made this experience when preparing for my teaching during the last two semesters at undergraduate level. Now that I am pausing with my teaching to focus more on my PhD, a blog seems like a good alternative and create this sort of learning environment.
Keeping track of my progress 📓
Currently, I am quite busy with experimenting ideas and preparing my next study as part of my PhD. The next months will be full of learning and creating new stuff (think 3D modelling and printing, validating algorithms in the lab and finally building a custom wearable IMU system from scratch). And with that, there is a lot of progress to be made. I feel the urge to somehow document my progress throughout this journey - not only limiting my written output to a few scientific publications.
Quarto makes it easy (and fun)! 😎
This is my second take at blogging. A few years back during my bachelor studies I already set up a small WordPress blog. Without any experiences in web development, it was quite burdensome to actually get everything up and running. Overall, everything took way too much time than it should. At the end I only used it for a couple of few weeks before abandoning it.
Nowadays, using Quarto and the familiar RStudio IDE, the whole process of starting up this blog took me about half a day. Even with only minor knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript I did not have any troubles to start. Quarto really makes it easy!
Some helpful guidance for setting everything up:
Albert Rapp’s ultimate guide to starting a Quarto blog
Quarto’s Guide on creating a blog
What to expect?
Good question, indeed! My blog may contain everything from PhD struggles to progress reports on my PhD to rather random topics. I guess, we will see! That’s it for now. First post is done. Stay tuned for more. 🚀