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ABOUT

Welcome to my digital garden!! I'm Karl Khumoimage - writer, reader, law student, horror whore. this site will always be a work in progress, and will never run ads :)

BLOGROLL + LINKS
blogs and websites personalcanon manuelmoreale jackapedia laurelschwulst stephango 47nil aworkinglibrary matthewprebeg eemaildotcom sometimes theupstairswindow pocketnotebook anhvn sophie.garden itinerae altalenae sweetfish.site binomech mnemonics ghostingpen sleepycrossing sleuthworm alivenotdeadgirl rainstormsinjuly noisydeadlines benjames houseofkyle scottnesbitt


horror web kindertrauma halloween.mattsoria sadiehartmann


artists and portfolios lucyroleff harrislahti jamescatoauthor gideonleek lamb mizukiyamagen thomashobohm


lit mags sarkapublishing animalbloodmagazine flash-frog quotidianbagatelle


fun stuff floor796 cursor-camp sandspiel window-swap oneminutepark optical.toys neal.fun beasts tinyawards


tools & resources thecreativeindependent reallifemag story-dice-1 story-dice-2 cartography-of-generative-ai oldbookillustrations libraryofshortstories standardebooks auertools


discovery theforest blogroll ooh.directory




THE INTERNET IS ALIVE

NOTES

14 JUL 2026

Graduated law school last week! 🤍 Time to really lock in . . .


27 JUN 2026

Is it possible to be nostalgic for a time you barely remember (if at all)? I just watched a video of what it was like moments before 9/11, and another one about tech trends in the late 90's and early 2000's. Lots of the comments were pointing out how everything used to be so optimistic, like the future was bright and everyone was excited for it. There was a zest for life. Now everyone's angry (understandably so). People are selfish. Life is noisy. So, so noisy. With tech, too, there was so much optimism surrounding it, the possibilities, the innovation. Now there's doom and gloom surrounding it, no one likes AI, and out-of-touch tech companies are still trying to shove it down our throats. Hopefully a return to that time and those vibes is possible, but for now I can try to nurture that energy within my own bubble. Focus on slow tech, stop scrolling, be bored more. Perhaps it's a cycle, too, maybe people of the late 90's yearned for the 70's.


26 JUN 2026

Started reading The Labyrinth House Murders, what would be my second Yukito Ayatsuji. I'm loving it so far! Did a little digging into Ayatsuji too, and I found out that he authored the source material for one of my earliest anime favorites, Another (2012)! I'm not too well-versed in anime, but Another really introduced me to the wonders of actual horror in the genre. I have two more Ayatsujis in my collection that I haven't read yet, including Labyrinth. He's well on his way to becoming one of my favorite authors and I'm excited for all the translations to come!


19 JUN 2026


When I was young I would catch some episodes of Doogie Howser, MD, and my only memory of it now are those scenes of him logging his thoughts into his computer. It made me want to have a personal computer to do the same. You could say he was my Carrie Bradshaw, as I've never seen Sex and the City.


16 JUN 2026

Felt inspired by this post to someday turn this blog into a book, a compilation of my reviews. It's not to make money or anything, but just to keep as a personal reading archive. It might apply healthy pressure upon myself too, to be more intentional with my posts, knowing it's headed towards an essentially permanent binding. Someday!


May 2026

I just started reading (listening to) Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito and there's really nothing like a dark, ominous, gothic entrance to an ivy-shielded old manor, is there? There's always a carriage, too, and someone looking sternly out an upstairs window, and mud on boots first thing. Talk about setting a scene.


May 2026

Every now and again I would find myself thinking too deeply about writing, i.e., what I write, what I want to write, the medium in which I decide to write, how to be successful writing. All of these while not actually writing, mind you. I feel like I'm too precious about my writing. I've created such a "writerly" identity for myself in my head, which is good in the self-assured kind of sense, but bad in the your-identity-is-your-prison kind of sense. I'm also too concerned about being thought of as a good writer. I put so much stakes into writing that I end up not writing at all.

I logged onto my Substack account again and found myself scrolling through my Notes feed, and started thinking whether I was overthinking the "owning your writing" thing. Whether I was overthinking the collapse of art in the age of tech conglomerates thing. Lots of writers are there and thriving, great ones, too, and they seem fine using the platform. Again, I'm being too focused on the medium and not the content. If I were to decide to start writing on there, which still is unlikely, what do I have to post? I have nothing. If ever, I would be posting book reviews on there, but I've only finished one book this year. I do eventually want to migrate some of my other book reviews from my old blog, as I have done for Saint Sebastian's Abyss and Cursed Bread, but a lot of them are simply bad reviews. Again, I'm okay with starting from scratch, I just think some of the reviews might be salvageable.

I don't know if there was a thesis to this post, but whatever. I need to read. I need to write. Everything else adjacent to it should be secondary.


APR 2026

I hand-coded this website, with a lot of help from W3 Schools and coding forums. It brought me back to my Tumblr days when I used to obsess over my blog's design. For years I considered whether a web or UI/UX design career was also in my future, but I'm setting that aside for now, at the risk of spreading myself too thin. I think I have other interests and passions I want to spend more time on; the rudimentary coding I do on this website is enough to satiate my design thirst.

As a kid, when we got our first family laptop, I found my way to building "websites" on Microsoft PowerPoint. Learning the hyperlink feature opened up so many possibilities in my head: I built "websites," quizzes, game shows, anything that needed buttons! Clicking a button led to a different slide, clicking another button would lead you back to where you came from, or somewhere else entirely. I had so much fun.

In college, when I mostly stopped using Tumblr, I also stopped coding. Instead, I started a Wordpress blog and just used whatever minimal theme I liked the look of. It's when I first started book blogging. I only started "seriously" reading in 2017, and was immediately drawn to reviewing the books as well. Although I cringe reading back old writing, I'm glad the blog is still up.

I ran that site until the pandemic, when I decided to start hosting my book reviews on Squarespace (and with my own domain). Those incessant YouTube ads worked on me, unfortunately. I took the site down during law school, but I'm happy to start over. Squarespace felt a bit bloated as a platform for what I wanted to use it for. I customized my Squarespace theme within an inch of its life too, but I haven't gone this down and dirty with HTML and CSS until now. Neocities isn't technically a blogging platform, but you can build one from scratch. I love the control Neocities affords me.

Before I stumbled upon Neocities, though, I briefly considered whether I wanted to restart my book blog on Substack. I read and love a lot of newsletters hosted on it. However, I, for a few months over the pandemic, also had a newsletter over there, right before its boom as a platform. I thus saw firsthand Substack's devolution: it became less of a host for writers and long-form writing, and more like Every Other Social Media in existence, even though it touts itself as otherwise. They introduced a Twitter-like, infinite-scroll microblogging feature called Notes, and are now highlighting video content as well. There was a time when platforms didn't want to be everything. Instagram used to just be for photos, Substack used to just be for articles.

Beyond the reviews, this website represents my disillusionment with the modern internet. I've been online since I was 13, and I grew witness to the wider internet's enshittification. It's disheartening to see platforms with so much potential for building community devolve into money-hungry, AI-infested hell holes. The internet used to be fun, creative, supportive, safe. The internet used to just be a place, somewhere you can enter and later leave. It wasn't an all-consuming, omnipresent vortex. It's why I wanted to return to The Small Web. jackapedia puts it more eloquently than I could, but it truly is time to decentralize. Personal websites should be the future. There's so much more to the internet than mind-numbing social media.

100 QUESTIONS FOR THE WEBMASTER
1. Please introduce yourself. hi!! i'm karl


2. How long have you been making websites? fake websites on microsoft powerpoint: maybe since 2009/2010; actual websites with actual code: since 2011, when i got a tumblr account and started tinkering with the design


3. And what got you into the hobby? honestly have no idea why i started making powerpoint websites, but i did! just wanted an interactive hub for things i found interesting


4. What kind of website are you most interested in? right now, personal websites and artist portfolios


5. What’s your workflow? Do you plan your websites out thoroughly or do you come up with the design as you go along? i don't plan them at all, i would often just have a vision in my head that i wouldd want to execute, and google my way there. sometimes the ideas are spontaneous, sometimes they would be inspired by elements of other people's personal sites


6. Please link to your biggest inspirations. they're all on my blogroll! scroll left


7. What’s your favourite part about making websites? definitely the design aspect, being able to create what i envisioned


8. And the thing you struggle with the most? i feel like such a novice right now, so i struggle with my limited capabilities


9. Do you keep the same layout on all of your pages? Or do you use different ones? they're a bit different, but i keep the same vibe (plain background, same font, rounded corners, etc.)


10. How confident are you with CSS? like a 5 out of 10


11. Do you know how to correctly use < dl >? no idea what that is


12. What is your favourite HTML element? i LOVE a div. i see them as little boxes i can mold into whatever i want


13. If you’re making a new web page from scratch, what is the first thing you do? add the content and set up divs to get them to look how i want them to. i'll start with the font, background colors, and padding


14. Do you know JavaScript? no


15. How about PHP? no


16. Does your website have a theme that you stick to? kinda, yeah


17. Are you more focused on content or design? both! i try to put effort into my book reviews and the content in my garden, and i love to design around them


18. Do you own a domain name? If not, would you ever want to? not yet, yes i do


19. What do you think of nostalgia-focused or "retro" websites? love them! this site used to be retro themed, but i figured my core really is in simple-leaning designs. i like to find ways to blend the two together


20. Is your HTML valid? Do you even check? no idea what that means


21. What are your opinion on buttons and banners? LOVE buttons and banners


22. What do you think of button walls in particular? i love them, but they won't look as nice on my own page. i tried to recreate the vibe of button walls in my blogroll block, though


23. If you started over again, would you make something similar or completely different? probably something similar


24. Are you envious of other people’s websites? YES!! always. i take so much inspiration from all the creative people on neocities and elsewhere


25. What text editor do you use? i just use the one on neocities.....is that bad


26. Why do you use that one? it's already here


27. Do you host your image files on your web server, or on another host? i link a lot of them back, cause they're mostly just book covers anyways. i'll probably host them on my server eventually


28. This might not be relevant to you, but what’s your opinion on the Neocities vs. Nekoweb debate? don't know enough about nekoweb


29. How much server space would you estimate your main website takes up? less than 100 mb definitely


30. Do you keep local backups of your files? i should, and i will


31. Do you prefer simple or highly visual websites? both, depending on the execution!


32. Do you stick to certain colours? Do you do that on purpose, or is it your subconscious? yes, and on purpose. i like to keep a theme


33. Have you ever thought about quitting? Why? not really. i always know i'll come back to it so there's no point in quitting


34. Do you have many webmaster friends, or is it a solitary hobby? more of a solitary hobby for now


35. Do people in your real life know about your website? as of now, just my boyfriend


36. Do you update your website very often? How often is “very often”? i update and tinker with the design fairly frequently, at least once a week. for my book reviews, that would of course depend on how much i'm reading, and if i have enough to say about a book to warrant a review. for the content on my garden, i'd say at least once a week too


37. And the overall design, do you change that much? Why or why not? i don't do overhauls frequently, but i do a lot of tinkering


38. Is your website more you-focused, hobby-focused, or outside world-focused? both me and hobby-focused, as it is mainly a book review website


39. Do you do web design professionally? no


40. If not, would you like to? And if you’re comfortable answering, what do you do for work? not right now, no. i considered it briefly before, but i decided i prefer it as a fun hobby. i'm a law student


41. Do you communicate with people by email very much? not as much as i would like. love email


42. Some people reject social media and use websites as a replacement. Do you keep social media outside of your website? that's the goal. deleted my twitter and instagram forever ago, i only keep facebook for my friends and family but i'd love to delete everything eventually


43. How about instant messengers? Do you use a mainstream one like Discord or Telegram? Or something like Matrix? Do you avoid them? i use facebook messenger, viber, discord, and telegram


44. Do you listen to music while you work on websites? If so, what kinds of artists? sometimes. always ariana


45. Do you keep everything you make on one website, or do you have more than one? i only have one right now, and i'll probably keep it that way for the foreseeable future


46. On a similar note, do you keep to one topic on your site, or many? it's a site primarily for book reviews, but my garden has different topics


47. Do you present your real self, or at least try? Or do you construct a persona on purpose? real self, maybe a bit of a persona if you consider presenting yourself on the internet as inherently performative (which i think it is, nothing wrong with that too)


48. Have you ever made a good friend thanks to your website? not yet :(


49. Are you happy with the way HTML and CSS currently work? i guess? i don't know what i'd want differently


50. What are practices that you think people should avoid? autoplay music probably. but i don't wanna yuck anyone's yum


51. What about under-utilised practices, or things you think people should do more? no idea


52. Do you use a lot of semantic HTML? Or are you guilty of generic structure? after googling what semantic HTML is, i more so use a generic structure lol. i use a lot of divs


53. Do you consider different browsers? just safari and chromium-based ones (i use arc primarily, and then check my site on safari once in a while)


54. Speaking of, what’s your preferred browser? Convince your readers why they should use it. arc! it has great tab organization, built-in PIP, splitscreen tabs, and it's well-designed imo


55. And what OS are you on? macos


56. Do you have a strong opinion on that, or do you just happen to use it? i like liquid glass, and for the os itself i'll always just "happen" to use it because i'll always update to the latest macos


57. Are your websites mobile-friendly? yes! i check once in a while


58. What are your thoughts on autoplay? omg. hate it


59. What are your thoughts on webrings? Are you in any? i love them for discovery. i'm not on any yet but eventually for sure


60. Do you have any web shrines? What do you like to see in that sort of page? not yet


61. Are your websites “cliche”, in your opinion? i think so, it's a simple design i like. but i must say i have not seen any website like my own. the similarity ends with the vibe i guess


62. What is your ideal website? Are you striving for that, or for something else? always striving for the ideal website, whatever that means in my head. i'll know it when i see it


63. Are you an artist? Do you draw or design your own assets? no, i wish i was


64. What are your favourite resource sites? w3schools


65. Is there a habit you just can’t get away from no matter how hard you try? i tinker too much, and care too much about the nitty gritty


66. What’s your biggest advice for a new webmaster? have fun! lay one brick at a time


67. Do you keep all your styling in CSS? Or do you hard-code some? css


68. What do you think of frameset layouts? no idea what that is


69. How about table-based layouts? no idea what that is either


70. Do you subscribe to the ideas of “one-column”, “two-column” and “three-column” layouts? Do you use any of these? sure, depends on the content!


71. Do you spend longer on the HTML or the CSS? css for sure


72. Have you ever made a page with no CSS? It’s useful for your thoughts. not yet, but maybe eventually


73. Do you ever find yourself making layouts with nothing to put on them? Or do you only make layouts when the need arises? i'll always think of something to put in them, so no


74. Would you consider yourself a beginner? Or advanced? Somewhere in the middle? maybe somewhere in the middle


75. Do you have a habit of looking at the source code of websites you visit? yes when i'm curious how they got it to look that way, or if i like a font i see


76. How did YOU learn how to make websites? w3schools, tumblr, just googling everything. i used to make tumblr themes too


77. Do you ever force elements to do things they’re not supposed to? no?


78. Thoughts on floating elements? they're fun


79. When you’re sizing stuff, what do you use first? Do you use px, em, %, or something else? my default is pixels 100%. i use % sometimes though


80. Do you have a favourite font? i love clean sans serif ones like inter and manrope. i like monospaced ones too (roboto mono specifically) depending on the design


81. Would you run a website with another person? How would that work? maybe!


82. Do you surf the Web to find new personal websites very often? yes!! always


83. Do you bookmark other people’s websites? How would you feel knowing someone else bookmarked yours? yes, on my blogroll block! and i would feel amazing if someone bookmarked mine


84. What do you want people to be most impressed with when they see your website? the clean design and the reviews themselves


85. Are you interested in technology outside of websites? Do you collect? fairly, and no i don't


86. How often and for how long are you online? all day, will definitely cut down


87. When it comes to your website, who is your target audience? readers, people who love design


88. Have you ever been interested in XHTML? not really


89. Do you program in general? Have you ever written a program for use with or on your website, not counting simple JavaScript? not yet


90. Speaking of programs that help you make websites, what do you think of static site generators (SSGs)? Have you ever used one? i think they're great. never used one, i don't think. does squarespace count?


91. Do you keep a hitcounter? Why or why not? not yet, i would eventually get one


92. Do you frequent forums? Which ones? coding forums, no. for forums in general, i'm on reddit a lot unfortunately, because you don't need an account to browse through it. i go on the drag race subreddits


93. Do you write your page content directly into the editor, or do you prepare it elsewhere, like a text document or a Word document? for my reviews, i write them on obsidian. for my garden, i usually just write them directly into the editor


94. Do you think you appear cool to others? A more accurate answer now: do other people ever say you’re cool? probably not LOL


95. Are you embarrassed of your old work? Have you ever deleted everything out of shame? not embarrassed per se, but i cringe at old writing lol but i like that because it means i've gotten better!


96. Would you close down your website if you couldn’t update it, or would you leave an archive? leave an archive. i'll keep this forever


97. Do you reveal a lot about yourself on your website? Or are you more secretive? i'm a bit more secretive, i really just focus on the books and site creation


98. Are you willing to reveal who your best online friend is, and/or if they have a website? my irl friends don't have websites :( at least not that i know of


99. And do you optimise the images on your website? i compress them so they load faster, if that's what this question means


100. We’re out of time! How do you feel after answering 100 questions? ....other than exhausted. i feel great. this was just gonna be within my notes block but i'm making it a whole separate block


inspired by altalenae <3
RE: PERSONAL WEBSITES
Laurel Schwulst,
My website is a shifting house next to a river of knowledge. What could yours be?

•

Spencer Chang,
The internet has no benches
RE: BOOKS, READING
Nico Chilla,
On bookshelves and bowers
RE: SIMPLICITY
47nil,
The way

•

Steph Ango,
What can we remove?

•

Leo Babauta,
How to Find Your Signal in the Noise
RE: ONLINE/OFFLINE
Alexander,
Your dumbphone won't save you

•

Zoe Keziah Mendelson,
It Is Urgent and Imperative That We All Permanently Exit Instagram
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