User:Burgeonlab.com

Naty S

Pronouns: she/her

Naty is a tech enthusiast and serial multi-hobbyist. She's into FOSS, data privacy, photography, specialty coffee, Hugo SSG, web dev, writing, and more.

Hong Kong, SAR

https://burgeonlab.com

Chat Nickname: burgeonlab

Elsewhere: @eclecticpassions@fosstodon.org

Contact: https://burgeonlab.com/contact

Introduction

Hello there, thanks for dropping by. I'm Naty and I run a personal blog called BurgeonLab. It's built using Hugo and deployed via SourceHut Builds CI. For more information, see the site's README.

Most of the content I write is technology-related, but I've got over 20 weeknotes under my belt (as of Apr 2026), so expect some rambles about my non-tech hobbies, or daily-life content. Inspired by the many sites in the IndieWeb Webring and different small web directories; I want BurgeonLab to grow from “just another tech blog” into my central online personal hub. I plan to publish not only typical blog articles and slash pages, but use Micropub to replace Big Tech social media style content, and write evergreen notes as a digital garden that brings all my hobbies together in one place.

I actually have two other sites: a photography blog which is still under construction, and the other doesn’t get much attention because I’ve been focused on growing my Hugo static site. Maybe one day I'll combine all of them, but it's undecided. [1]

IndieWeb Journey Thus Far

Not long after joining the Fediverse (Mastodon) in mid-2023, I discovered the IndieWeb. After being enlightened by the concept of enshittification and becoming much more privacy-aware around the same time, I decided it was time to own my content and stop (or significantly reduce) my use of Big Tech walled gardens.

The people of the IndieWeb and SmallWeb has inspired me profoundly. Everyone's site is unique in its design, features, and framework—yet they are interconnected—perhaps through something relatable they shared or from a connection with the human behind the HTML. Being able to enjoy this community of awesome humans without advertisements, data selling or algorithmic bombardment is brilliant to say the least (at least it is for me). Owning a website to express oneself is rewarding and makes using the Internet a much more intentional experience.

One of my favourite parts of joining the IndieWeb community has been meeting all the cool bloggers, writers, web developers, and like-minded individuals. I've had the opportunity to participate in over a dozen Homebrew Website Club meetings so far (as of Apr 2026), and I find them to be a nice place to “show and tell” (or ask) all things websites! There's always at least one new thing I discover during the online meetings that inspire me to improve my site. If you haven't joined a HWC yet, I highly recommend giving it a try! Learn more at the upcoming events page.

Currently Working On

Integrating Indiekit into Hugo, since 2025-12-25 Create Day
Plan how to share Hugo code snippets built for IndieWeb features currently used on my site
- Pastebins or a public repo

Itches

These are some of my website 'to-dos' (items are not prioritized).

Create /now and /ideas pages
Import photos and captions from Instagram JSON export to my /photos page
Write post on how I created an HTML+CSS only carousel
Write post explaining how I use Indiekit (Micropub Node.js server) in conjunction with Hugo
Improve content / feed structure
- Should evergreen notes such as topic lists be under content/pages?
- What is the best way to split content into different RSS/Atom feeds? Should my weeknotes or #personal posts go into the main feed? (Right now, only weeknotes/photos/notes (microblogs) contain "personal", i.e., non-tech content. What if I want to write an article (blog post) that's more personal—should that go into the Main feed or a dedicated feed?
  - AY recently asked a similar question on their site
Create an /explore page that acts as a comprehensive overview of all content types
- Currently, there's only an "Explore" drop-down menu in the top nav and a simple list of post types on the /about page
- Examples of /explore: Chris, Joel, fLaMEd

Ideas

This list is more of a 'maybe, need more research'.

Digital garden and evergreen notes/lists
Style guide
Accessibility Statement
Openring
human.txt
Work out how best to use a POSSE and/or PESOS workflow
- Investigate posts-elsewhere
Use a sparkline somewhere on the site
When I learn new vocabulary I tend to add them to my weeknotes. It will be nice to have a workflow (maybe using a data/vocab.yaml file?) that gathers all the definitions and lists them on a /vocabulary page.
Add link to Bookwyrm profile
Create a new tag called #Top4, inspired by Ross A. Baker
Create a custom endpoint for manual Webmentions submission instead of relying on webmention.io's endpoint
Implement auto sending of Webmentions instead of scanning each post with Telegraph
Self-hosted coffee log / dashboard, replacing LookerStudio
Add a /now-playing (music tracking) feature
Add Traditional Chinese (ZH-Hant) translations to IndieWeb-stable pages (currently only 1 page in Simplified Chinese (ZH-Hans) Ref: Wikipedia:ISO_15924_codes)
Investigate if I want to display Webmentions publicly

Completed (chronological order)

Learn more at /⁠changelog.

Create a Hugo shortcode used for simple Mastodon post embeds that runs on build
Create a 'Mastodon Helper' popup with pure JS that opens any of my Mastodon syndicated post links in the reader's instance
Citation block at the bottom of all pages with permalink
New /⁠stats page with a lot of new charts and data
Syndication of notes (aka microblogs) to Mastodon using Indiekit's syndication plugin is working
Create a guestbook page, see BurgeonLab: Leave A Public Thought
Create a /caw page, inspired by Fractalkitty
Successfully created a CSS-only photo carousel for multi-image photo posts shared via Indiekit
Start #100DaysToOffload writing challenge in 2026, see how I'm doing at #100DaysToOffload Progress
Add POSSE: Hugo Blog to Mastodon via Carl Schwan's comments code
Implement basic microformats2 markup (h-card, h-feed, h-entry)
IndieAuth supported
Can receive Webmentions via webmention.io endpoint
Visualization of posting activity on /⁠blog archive using Apache ECharts (See post: Add a GitHub Style Hugo Calendar Heatmap Widget)
Add new Hugo section (page kind) for week notes (Archive on /⁠weeknotes)
Join some webrings
Use D2lang to generate Open Graph images semi-automatically using Bash script (See post: How to Automate OG Images with D2 and Bash Script)
Add a sitemap, firehose (aka /all) page on 2026-01-01
Install Indiekit (Micropub server) endpoints since 2025-12-26, add /notes, /locations, and /photos Hugo sections
Add a stats page with two visualizations (line graph and heatmap-calendar) 2026-01-02

IndieWeb Related Posts

For up-to-date content, check /⁠tags/indieweb. Here's some:

I've also been fortunate enough to have been invited by Hyde at lazybea.rs to participate in one of his interviews, which was featured in Over/Under #60 with Naty aka BurgeonLab.

(Ignore this message: Mastodon verification: )