6/3/2025

It's Alive! A Look Into How I'm Building This Frankenstein

---

Hello there, denizens of the internet! Mason here, and no better time like the present to make my first blog post on here. I've put off making a proper portfolio site online for a while, so I'm glad that I can finally get to it!

 

This website is built using a combination of React, Tailwind, and Next.js. Bear with me here, but I'm very much into Doom (the DOS one), and am going to "borrow" and invert one of their terms to help describe the design philosophy of my site.

 

"Doom Cute" is using the original Doom engine or any one of its forks/rewrites to design something that is intended to mimic a real life object while constrainted by the limitations of the said engine.

Caption: A Doom Cute Dining Table! Credit goes to MattFright on the DoomWorld forums

 

I'm going for a "90's Cute" style on my website, except in reverse! Rather than using a limited engine to attempt to recreate something modern, I'm trying to use a modern engine to give a "rose tinted glasses" look back to 90's Web Design. It's a time period of the internet I find quite charming and refreshingly experimental, and I hope to do it justice here.

 

Do I sound like a bit of a klutz for using "90's Cute"? Probably, but it fits the theme I suppose. Is what I'm doing a flanderization of the 90's aesthetic? Perhaps, but after website functionality, "rule of cool" is second highest on my design priority list. I wouldn't be building my website the way it is if I didn't have at least some respect for the design trends of the time.

 

In the near future, I plan to flesh out the portfolio portion of my website much more, as well as add some fun little quirks/tools into a "Web Things" portion of my site. As for this blog, I might very well soon write about how I did the "Matrix Rain" effect (it's rendered responsively in real time with React and Tailwind only!), how I built the blog in the first place, CS industry ramblings (from the perspective of a quite green CS student), and some future project/career ambitions.

 

Thanks for reading this rambly first article! Feel free to reach out to me at any point, and stay rad!