#0 - Setting Up Camp

Hey everyone! Welcome to my blog, Campfire Logs: The Art of Trial & Error. The idea behind this blog is to create a space where I can be completely transparent in my journey as a full-stack developer. We'll dive into the projects I'm building from the ground up—from websites and backend systems to full-stack applications—and I'll share the wins, the roadblocks, and, most importantly, the catastrophic moments when I inevitably break something (maybe intentionally, but probably not). I'll discuss the challenges I encounter, the rationale behind my design choices, and the lessons learned along the way.

Let me go ahead and say that blogging is something I haven’t done since the old days of Xanga and Myspace (I’m only 38, calm down now). Having just spent four years writing academic papers, my wording may at times come across as a bit dry and dense, but I’m working on it. My journey to becoming a developer has been a bit unconventional, and I’m a firm believer in building things the hard way to truly understand how they work. That's why I've taken on the challenge of building a full digital ecosystem from scratch for my brand, dlseitz.dev. From the website to the demo sites, the backend systems and a self-hosted Gitea server, this blog is where I'll log that entire process.

The first full blog post is coming this Wednesday, Aug 27 2025, so be sure to check it out. I will be sharing how the domain-level migration of my Gitea server goes. I’m excited to be pulling it into the ecosystem I mentioned above. Fingers crossed that it goes smoothly because I always get super nervous when I start changing up config files. Debugging silly typos in them has caused me so much frustration in the past. Here’s to hoping I’ve learned from those past mistakes and that this goes off without (much of) a hitch!

Thanks for stopping by!