jeapostrophe.github.com

Personal website for Jay McCarthy. Built with a minimal Deno-based static site generator.

Repository layout

content/          Markdown source files
  _home.md        Homepage (manually maintained list of links)
  tech/           Technical articles
  poetry/         Poems (subdirectories for series)
  games/          Retro/indie game writing
  faith/          Theological articles
static/           Legacy static content (old-blog/, home/, etc.)
build.ts          Static site generator (~300 lines)
style.css         Single classless CSS file
deno.json         Build tasks
.github/workflows/deploy.yml  GitHub Actions deployment

Local development

Preview the site locally:

deno task serve

This builds to _site/ and serves at http://localhost:8000.

To rebuild without serving:

deno task build

To rebuild automatically when content changes:

deno task watch

You can also open _site/index.html directly in a browser — all paths are relative.

Deployment

Deployment is automatic via GitHub Actions. Push to master and the site is built and deployed to GitHub Pages.

Initial GitHub setup

1. Go to the repo's Settings > Pages
2. Under Build and deployment > Source, select GitHub Actions
3. Push to master — the workflow will build and deploy automatically

Content format

Articles (timestamped, reverse-chronological)

---
title: "Why Continuations Matter"
date: 2026-03-10
type: article
description: "Optional one-line summary"
---

Article body in Markdown.

Pages (curated, manually ordered)

---
title: "Reach"
type: page
weight: 10
url: https://github.com/reach-sh/reach-lang
description: "A programming language for blockchain safety"
---

Pages with url set are external links — they appear in section indexes but don't generate their own HTML page. Lower weight = more prominent.

Poetry

---
title: "Morning Prayer III"
date: 2026-02-15
type: article
format: poetry
series_order: 3
---

Lines are preserved
as written in the source.

Place poems in content/poetry/series-name/ for series grouping. Add a _series.md file for series metadata:

---
title: Morning Prayers
---

Optional series description.

How sections and series work

• Section indexes (e.g., /tech/) are generated automatically when a section has 3+ content items
• Series indexes (e.g., /poetry/morning-prayers/) are generated when a series has 2+ items
• The homepage (content/_home.md) is manually maintained — add links as content grows
• Pages appear before articles in section indexes; pages sorted by weight, articles by date