I turned my personal website into a Now page

2025 Sep 07.

There’s something interesting and meaningful I’ve seen many people do: the /now page, an idea from nownownow.com. I think it’s a great thing for every website to have, especially since the about page often gets “forgotten” and can quickly become outdated after the first time it’s written. We humans are always changing, even according to Buddhism that in every fleeting moment (瞬間, kṣaṇa). That’s why the idea of a /now page feels so necessary, especially for yourself, because it prompts you to ask: how are you right now?, to be conscious of your present, how you’re living, and what you can share. It might sound like an obvious question, but I’m often surprised how both me, and people around me forget to ask ourselves that.

I wanted to build a page like this, replacing the /about page (which I never even had 🤣), and instead of placing it at /now, I simply turned my personal website into it.

Before introducing the site, let me share a bit about myself. I was born and live in 🇻🇳Vietnam, so my full name is Nguyễn Hữu Phong—with Nguyễn as the family name, Hữu as the middle name, and Phong as the given name. Since it’s a Vietnamese name, it’s written in reverse order compared to English, so in English you might see Phong Nguyen or Phong Huu Nguyen. But regardless of the language, I prefer using my full name, or Hữu Phong with all the diacritics, as a way to honor my late father who gave me this name. So, you’ll always see my name written this way on this blog—it means "Winds" in English, so it’s easier to connect.

I own a domain with my name: huuphong.com. I bought it last year for 10 bucks. I’ve always felt lucky about this, because by now, about 98% of one or two words Vietnamese names are already taken, most bought 10 to 20 years ago. This domain, huuphong.com, had also been registered and held by someone for almost 20 years if I remember correctly. Then, suddenly, it dropped. I have no idea why, forgot to renew? Didn’t need it anymore? Something happened to the previous owner? Or just dropped it for no reason. Whatever the reason, I’m grateful and feel lucky, because I was able to buy it at the original price, and the registration date reset. Besides, I’d been searching for and wanting to use my name as domain since high school (almost 10 years before it dropped), so this really felt like a small miracle to me.

If possible, buy yourself a domain like this, preferably a (.com), not just for you, but also for any business you want to build. Paul Graham once wrote an essay about choosing a name for your company. I wonder if bearblog.dev will ever become bearblog.com or even bear.com (haha, I think that’d be awesome, even if it’s just superficial).

Back to my personal site: why did I use my homepage instead of /now? I read somewhere (can’t remember where) something along these lines:

Use your personal website to build whatever you like most, change it, tweak it, do everything from adjusting the interface to trying different concepts, from various platforms to self-coding, do whatever you want, and if you get bored, just wipe it out and start again. Repeat that over and over, and you’ll learn so much, not just about coding, UX/UI, trends, and building products, but also deep things about yourself.

I’ve been doing this for years, trying to realize any idea or imagination I have. And you can imagine how hard it was to figure things out on your own “before LLMs”. But, true to that advice, I’ve built a foundation strong enough for me to do things better, and it’s brought me almost everything I have right now. I’m always grateful and appreciative, and I thank myself for having “jumped in” like that.

I left my personal website empty for almost a year, but it’s time to do something with it again. Turning it into a /now page suddenly made sense, since my domain is my name. So I decided, and I wanted to code and self-host it as well.

About techstack, it’s simply built with Astro (A web framework you should totally check out if you haven’t because it’s super worth it. Easy, Powerful, and Art are the three words I’d use to describe it), TailwindCSS, and hosted on Cloudflare Pages. For the content, it’s just my name, a few bullet points, and a photo. I wanted to keep it as simple as possible so I can update it quickly by editing a Markdown file, like I do with Bear, but still make it look a bit dynamic.

And here’s the personal website I rebuilt today.

Available at huuphong.com

When I sat down to think about what to write, I was honestly surprised. I didn’t expect it to be this hard. I’ve read a lot of other people’s /now pages, they’re really interesting, and I thought it’d be kind of easy, but building my own, it turns out to be tough. Maybe it’s been too long since I’ve really been clear about where I’m at; I need more time to unpack things, to slowly become more natural with it, but not just yet.

So I wrote down things that are a bit odd, but also obvious in their own way.

The first line, “joined The Matrix 10,281 days ago.”, I think you get the Matrix reference, and I totally agree with that way of thinking. I used JavaScript to write a simple day counter, and it’s a strange feeling every time I see it: both long and short, both quick and slow. You can click on “10,281 days ago” to toggle to “years ago” and also see the exact time. I tweaked that JavaScript a bit and used it for the counter since I created Bearblog as well, you can see it on the Home page of this blog. If you want, just press F12 to get the Script and HTML to use for your own Bear page (or just ask ChatGPT to make a better one for you 🥹).

You can also use your birth date to calculate when your 10,000th day will be (I think it’s roughly 27 years, 4 months, and 17 days), or 15,000, 20,000, or 25,000. It’s fun to think about the future, and look back at the past, it makes you realize how precious the present is, and that our existence actually means something. Try it out, and check your phone, what photos did you take on those days? What were you doing? Eating? Who did you meet? What were your 8,000th, 10,000th, or 12,000th days like? Whether it’s already happened or not, you’ll see it’s so interesting that you just want to live each day better.

I also have a line: “captured 📷 sunset’s 10,000th day,” sharing the photo I took that day. It was a magical afternoon when I was walking in a small park that I spent a lot of time in late last year.

Next, there are three intro lines I just felt like adding, wanting to see myself as a tiny being amidst space and time, before diving into specifics:

• as 🤨 Human.
• located on 🌏 Earth, ☀️ Solar System, 🌌 Milky Way.
• living in era at the event horizon of 🕳️ the singularity.

They’re linked to Wikipedia, and reading those makes me feel incredibly small, almost beyond words but also so fascinated it’s hard to describe. Humanity is truly amazing when you look at the big picture of the universe, and our era is just as exciting when you look at it positively.

After that, a few lines about my hobbies like 🧵 embroidery & 🍵 coding, with links to this Bearblog and my contact page. I want to share more about what I’m doing in embroidery, because to me it’s like “a poem.” The blend of thread, fabric, design, tech, details, everything harmonizes into something beautiful. I’ll write about these things on my Bearblog in the near future, if what I do now really “put a ding in the universe.” ¹

Finally, a song I’ve been listening to over and over without getting bored. It’s a track that released two years ago as the debut song from FIFTY FIFTY - a Kpop girl group. It’s a perfect combination of lyrics, melody, and music video. It comforts and motivates me in so many invisible ways. I wish I could hear it live, but that’s no longer possible since something happened last year and the original FIFTY FIFTY disbanded. The FIFTY FIFTY you can find now is already the 2nd generation, with 4 out of 5 new members (though they’re also talented and different).

🎵 FIFTY FIFTY (피프티피프티) - ‘Lovin’ Me’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PnFuEbzxos

If you haven’t, give it a listen and see how it makes you feel. I think it might make you a little bit happier, even if it’s just for a few moments.

And that’s everything I wanted to jot down the first time I made a Now page for myself. Below is a random photo that made me smile when I found it in my camera roll, taken in March.

That’s it.

This post probably a bit long, with maybe too many personal things. I just wanted to write down what I was thinking for this very first time. Of course, since it’s a Now page, everything I wrote here will soon be changed or might not even be here anymore. Consider it a snapshot.

We’re always changing every day, hmmm maybe, every moment. So, here’s hoping all the changes can always keep in a positive direction.

To me, and to you. To us.

Thank you so much for reading all the way to here.

Hữu Phong.

Happy
Sunday.

#journal