About This Site
This site is intentionally simple.
It exists as a professional home base. It is not a social network, not a feed, and not a place for constant updates. It is designed to be stable, readable, and long lived.
Everything here is built around one idea:
Write once, publish deliberately, and retain full ownership of the work.
Why I Built It
I do not use LinkedIn or other social platforms.
I intentionally stepped away from social media in 2014, and never took much part in it before then.
My work does not depend on constant visibility or ongoing posting. I prefer a publishing model where material is written carefully, released deliberately, and remains available without requiring continuous activity to stay relevant.
At first, I considered simply using Standard Notes and Listed.to as the entire solution.
They remain central to how content is created. However, their output control is limited, especially when printing and long term readability are treated as requirements rather than afterthoughts.
I wanted a system where writing could remain portable, while the final published form would be fully controlled and preserved under my own domain.
This site began as that solution.
From Site to System
In solving problems around durability, ownership, publishing flow, and long term maintainability, the system became something more structured.
That work led to Cloudline Press.
Cloudline Press is an Apache-first reference implementation for calm, durable, print-aware web publishing.
It is not a framework, not a product, and not a CMS. It documents one complete, working publishing system and the reasoning behind its design.
This site is both the result of that work and its first real implementation.
What This Site Is (and Is Not)
This site is:
- a professional reference point
- a place for verified work history and case studies
- a personal professional website built on Cloudline Press
- a working implementation of the reference architecture
- documentation of outcomes, decisions, and tradeoffs
This site is not:
- a content feed
- a social platform replacement
- a comment system
- a site optimized for engagement metrics
- a JavaScript-dependent experience
If someone wants a quick overview, the résumé is enough.
If someone wants deeper understanding, it is available but optional.
The Name blackie.black
The name blackie.black comes from a long-used personal username.
It begins with Blackie Parish, a character from the television series General Hospital. My mother watched the show, and the name remained with me over time. Eventually it became less about the character and more a consistent personal identifier. It reflects origin rather than branding.
Another layer references black ice. The spelling intentionally removes the c from ice. The word appears complete at first glance, but something is missing. That small omission mirrors the nature of black ice itself. It is present and solid, yet often difficult to recognize without attention.
There is also a technical interpretation: Black IC, as in integrated circuit. This reading connects to interests in infrastructure, signal flow, and underlying system design. It suggests structure beneath the surface rather than surface presentation.
Taken together, the name functions as a marker of continuity. It is not intended to immediately explain itself. Its meaning develops through familiarity and context over time.
Among the Clouds
Cloudline Press takes its name from Among the Clouds, the newspaper printed on the summit of Mount Washington.
Beginning in 1877, Henry Martyn Burt printed daily weather bulletins and short newspapers from the summit itself. These were produced under extreme conditions, often in high winds, freezing temperatures, and isolation.
The act of printing from the summit was not about convenience or scale. It was about maintaining a record.
The summit press demonstrated that publishing could happen anywhere, even in the most inhospitable environment, as long as the process was deliberate and the tools were reliable.
July 20, 2027 marks the 150th anniversary of Among the Clouds.
Cloudline Press is a modern adaptation of that same idea.
Instead of a physical printing press on the mountain, this system publishes in the cloud. The environment is different, but the principle is the same.
Publishing should be resilient.
Publishing should be deliberate.
Publishing should preserve the record.
This site, blackie.black, is an implementation of the Cloudline Press reference architecture as a personal professional website.
The reference architecture itself will live at:
cloudlinepress.amongthe.cloud when it is ready for public consumption.
Between now and the anniversary, this site is being used as a proving ground. The focus is on testing, refinement, and operational correctness before a formal release.
How the Site Works
The site follows a publishing first model, similar to print.
Writing, structure, and presentation are intentionally separated.
1. Writing layer (Standard Notes and Listed.to)
All content is written in plain Markdown in Standard Notes, then published through Listed.to.
This provides:
- distraction free writing
- version history
- portability
- independence from a custom editor or CMS
Only publicly published content is consumed by the build.
2. Manifest driven structure
One published note acts as a manifest describing the site.
It defines:
- which pages exist
- their titles
- their source locations
- the navigation structure
To add or revise content, I do not edit the website directly.
I update the manifest and publish it.
3. Build time HTML generation only
A small build process:
- fetches content from Listed.to
- removes platform specific chrome and branding
- normalizes structure and headings
- assembles complete HTML documents
- inlines navigation and layout at build time
There is no runtime templating.
There is no Server Side Includes.
There is no request time rendering.
Apache serves static files.
4. Immutable editions and publication
Each build produces a complete edition of the site.
Editions are:
- timestamped
- immutable
- reviewed before activation
When an edition is approved, it becomes live all at once via symlink pointer movement.
Rollback is also pointer movement.
Why Print Matters
Print is treated as a first class output.
Pages are designed to remain readable when printed or saved as PDF, without reliance on color, animation, or screen-only layout.
This matters because documents should remain understandable even when separated from the web.
A printed page should still stand on its own.
Operational Boundaries
This system keeps responsibilities explicit.
- Apache 2.4 serves the built output as static files
- TLS is handled externally using ACME and certbot
- there are no databases and no application servers
- the public site does not require JavaScript to read
These boundaries reduce complexity and keep the runtime surface area small.
Why This Matters
This approach prioritizes:
- ownership, content lives under my domain
- durability, minimal reliance on platforms at runtime
- clarity, writing, structure, and presentation are separate concerns
- intentional change, nothing updates automatically
- auditability, what is served is visible on disk and versioned as an edition
Because of this, the site also functions as documentation:
- of how problems were approached
- of design decisions and tradeoffs
- of how Cloudline Press evolved in practice
The system is not theoretical. It exists because this site needed it.
A Quiet Alternative
This site is not meant to compete with social platforms.
It is meant to replace what those platforms were originally supposed to be:
a stable professional presence
controlled by the person who owns it
No feeds.
No noise.
No performance.
Just work, documented clearly.
TL;DR
- I write in plain text
- the structure is manifest driven
- pages are built once and released as immutable editions
- output and print behavior are fully controlled
- the operational model is static and inspectable
- the system emerged from real use
- the process is visible, not hidden
This site exists so that when someone asks:
“Can I see your work?”
the answer is simply:
Yes.
