about the webmaster

howdy! my name is leonardo, and i’m the person who runs this monstrosity. the bulk of my experience with html and css was with the “about me” creation gui of fanfiction/quiz website quotev dot com back in the early-mid 2010s, so i’m practically an expert at web design. when i was in middle school, i took a java class online and hated it so much that i swore i would never touch a piece of code again, but it turns out coding is kind of fun when you’re doing it for completely inconsequential bullshit. or biostats. god, i love biostats.

i’m a big fan of microbiology (so much so that i got a degree in it), but i’m a sucker for insects and other inverts, too! deep space nine is my favorite star trek series, and the only star wars movie i can remember the plot to is the star wars holiday special. my favorite wikipedia page is The Cetology of Moby Dick, and i love discussing how all tetrapods are taxonomically fish. i’m currently learning colemak-dh, but will admit that i coded all this using qwerty. i don’t know what else to put here. onwards…

about the webpage

this entire site was generated using hugo. the very first iteration (never finished, now deleted) was made with jekyll, but i was forced to switch static site generators due to a yet-fixed bug with debian. the site is named after the genus of cockroach, Periplaneta. the most notorious member of this group is P. americana, or the american cockroach. it’s partially an homage to the fact that my master’s thesis research pretty heavily featured cockroaches, but i also think roaches (and most bugs, really) are unfairly maligned! the reason we consider them “pests” (and only a few species of roach are pests) is because they’ve become so beautifully adapted in living and thriving in this world. i’ve nothing but respect for such a hardy group of organisms that have been so unfortunate to gain such an ill reputation simply by living in the vicinity of humans. utmost solidarity with the grotesque and socially irredeemed <3

by the way, this page is purposely kind of garish, but not overwhelmingly so because (1) i like to “keep it simple, stupid” and (2) i believe the internet, even in its eye-strain y2k-esque glory, should be accessible to as many people as possible. please let me know if there’s anything i should change in this regard. is the font too small or difficult to read? does the layout interfere with screen readers? message me on github and i’ll do my best to fix it.