About this site

v1 - Setting things up

When googling for "Hans Jonkers" there are some to be found, but this hjonkers is a computer enthousiast who enjoys listening to music, reading books, drawing, tasting beers and experimenting with GNU/Linux. Combining these interests led to this website. Or at least partly.

The original goal was to create a personal website on which I could easily display the lyrics of tracks while listening to them, and having fun getting there. It was built using only tools and technologies that I did not use professionally, i.e.:

• An MX Linux computer with the Xfce Desktop Environment and later the Awesome Window Manager .
• Geany and Vim as text editors.
• Krita for simple images like the favicon.
• A Raspberry Pi 2 Model B Rev 1.1, with Apache 2.1.25 and php 7.0.33 as "Development Web Server".
• Bootstrap 4.5.2 as CSS Framework.

Later I did return to Windows and Visual Studio Code though, which i.m.h.o is probably the best code editor out there.

The site makes use of calls to following REST API's to display artist and track information:

• Last.fm
• Genius.com
• Wikipedia.org
• Wikimedia.org

v2 - Database integration

In a universe striving for entropy, we try hard to order things. And so development never ends. That goes for this site as well.

This site is now talking to a MySQL database. Modestly, but the possibilities are endless. Or at least, endless until the data limit is reached, which is not so very close to infinity at all. For now, the database only stores some 'Messages of the day' which are randomly displayed in the banner.

MySQL Shell is used to administer the database during development, PhpMyAdmin serves an easy view on the database.

Other minor changes were done besides the 'big database integration', such as upgrading to Bootstrap 5.2.2. And I started playing around with Azure Boards for keeping track of future changes I want to implement. A bit overkill for planning work on a personal site, but it's fun.

Next on the list: more data!

v3 - Drawings

Content precedes design, or so I've heard, and this site did not show any personal content yet. It merely pulled data from other sites and displayed it in an orderly way. These pages definately needed more. So here it is: the unavoidable 'content update'!

September 2022 I've started attending art classes. Because it beats going through physical sketchbooks or single sheets of paper, I also store my drawings digitally. This site will now be hosting those drawings. Not to show how good I am — I'm not, as the whole world can see now — but to easily view my progress.

The data is stored in the previously mentioned MySQL database. Uploading and thumbnailing of images is handled by php using a simple html form.

Not much more to say about that, move on!

Silly disclaimer

This site you are visiting has some major shortcommings:

• It is created by someone who does not do this for a living or has any Web Development skills.
• It uses API's that do not always return the correct information (Wikipedia and Wikimedia are a nightmare to use).
• It demands patience, it is extremely slow.
• There is actually not a lot to see here.
• That which you do see here is of questionable quality.
• And this is in fact not a disclaimer.

Therefore, it is not perfect, at best it's ok and for my own personal use.