Chapter 1

I started my first blog around 2012 from one cyber cafe. It was very fascinating for me at that time.
I can put something on the computer and the whole world can see. More than blogging it was about the whole website technology was fascinating for me.

Instead of going to school I used to roam around different offices/ shops who make websites for small businesses. I visit them as customers and ask too many questions… later on I did a market job with them in exchange for learning from their developer.

I learn about static - dynamic websites, CMS (wordpress, Dhrupal, Jhoomla), some basics about HTML CSS and PHP, what is domain, what is hosting and server. And most importantly how to do business of developing websites - profit margins and other stuff.

My first blog/website was called ‘Pathak Technologies’. Small web development firm
it was on blogger/blogspot.com

Chapter 2

Around 2013 I moved to wordpress. At that time there was a big Gujarati blogger community on wordpress. Most of them are sitting in the USA or Canada and blogging about their retired life :)
I remember Suresh dada’s blog, Vinod bhai blog…

I also remember reading Hiral ben, Kartik bhai, Nirmal bhai’s blogs.

I was running three blogs at that time -

• my personal blog called ‘Mihirism’
• blog called ‘Prayog Ghar’ about science & technology in simple language
• ‘Sanistha kelavani’ about Nai taleem education
• I was contributing on ‘Evidyalay’

it was wonderful learning time

Chapter 3

I remember samyak bhai introduced me to markdown, git and something called ‘Medium’ :)

Medium was very new and silk that time. super clean writing focused blogging platform.

I liked it immediately and made my profile. My last post on Medium was on Nov- 2023

I wrote about my classroom experiences / learning experiments with children and teachers, I wrote about some interesting resources I found for educators / interesting stuff around pedagogy and more. mostly centred around education, philosophy and pedagogy . Sometimes some personal stuff like poems or life as an educator..

in between, around 2015

we (lakhan samani and kashyap helped me a lot. very grateful for that - Thank you guys) have made ’learnlabs’ website in PHP

Around 2018

Jubin introduced me to wix.com - I made first version on ’learningwala.com’ on that

I was using it till 2022

During that time I shifted my blogging journey on instagram.

Mostly because I was getting community over there. Educators, Artist and more. I mostly put posts about my experiments with children, workshops I am conducting with teachers, books I am reading, inspiring educators and more.

till now 839 posts, 1132 followers

oh, I forgot about facebook. I have been active on FB since 2010 (Remember UC Browser ??) till I got instagram. After instagram, facebook is running on auto pilot. All instagram posts auto publish on FB.

I tried IFTTT before this instagram feature came.

• I made some very good connections through instagram and facebook.

Chapter 4

After leaving wix for my personal website I shifted my stuff (projects, writing, CV, etc) on linktree.

I made websites for friends on wix and still maintain it.

Since the last few months I have had the desire to start my blogging journey again. With more categories in writing like weekly notes, ideas for project based learning / nature based learning and some other experiments.

Medium is now paid for. You can’t read unlimited stories. I started exploring other platforms
Ghost, Wordpress, there is a long list of minimal blogging platforms. Some are giving self hosting facilities.

I was looking for a super minimal platform where I can just write posts and I have control on my data.
no advertisement, monetisation of posts, no social network around blog, - just writing place

Someone suggested trying Jekyll and Github pages. It was too geeky for me. I tried two - three themes but never started writing on it.

I found something called bearblog.dev

Basically, someone developed a back-end to update your static site. It is perfect for minimal blogging
but it is not available for self hosting, what if this project got stopped ? What if the product strategy of this platform changes ?

But I really like the theme. I searched more and luckily I found the same theme on github which was available self hosting on github pages / netlify / your own server.

Finally I saw two youtube videos and learned how to set it. And yes I am writing on the same platform :)

Low tech website

This website too simple, ugly, no modern features

And no Js, No cookies, no tracker, fast, clean, functional, you own the data, you can develop in your own ways, less energy usage, less computing power usage

let’s find why, what and How about low tech website :

- How to Build a Low-tech Website? - Stone websites - This Page is Designed to Last

My ultimate dream is to host my own static site on solar powered raspberry pi
someday I will do it for sure.

Thank you