Past few days have been fascinated with journaling and thinking on paper. Started thinking about a personal website — initially just a blog.
Came across Ali Abdaal's website. He does not just blog, he shares videos, courses, everything. Clicked that I was limiting myself. Then started watching Starter Story videos of founders building and scaling apps. Pulled me back to a long-term passion: building things, vibecoding, solving problems. A passion I have had for a while but never acted on consistently enough.
Figured — why not document all of it in one place.
Added a constraint to keep myself accountable: one project per month, $100 total budget (tools + marketing + everything). Time-boxed and money-boxed. Document everything — what I built, what I spent, what I earned.
Long-term goal: $100,000 through vibecoding. Starting from zero. No audience, no guarantees.
Also run a marketing agency in Dubai (Scaling High Technologies). 5-figure MRR. Documenting that journey too.
Project 001 is this website itself.
What got decided today
Spent roughly four to five hours in a planning session with Claude. Started with just a blog concept and kept expanding until it stopped making sense to expand further. The book notes section was the first thing cut — too much surface area, not enough conviction. Simplify before launching.
Domain was genuinely unclear at the start. Was considering mustafabuilds.com or something concept-based. Landed on mustafapiplodi.com — your name is the brand, not the activity. If the activity changes in three years the name still works.
Final site structure landed on three sections: the $100 Challenge, Growing Scaling High (the agency journey), and a general Blog.
The design decision I am most happy with
Spent more time on design than expected. Two directions were on the table: editorial journal (warm, serif, Morgan Housel energy) versus builder terminal (monospace, engineer's notebook). The editorial direction felt dishonest — this is not a literary blog, it is a build log. Went with the terminal direction.
The wordmark decision was the most satisfying one. "mp_" — the underscore reads as a blinking cursor. Nobody else has that. It immediately signals what the site is about before a single word is read.
Deliverables from today
Two documents ready to hand to Claude Code:
- Full technical spec including stack, file structure, component specs, MDX frontmatter formats, and content helpers
- Full UI/UX design document including typography, color tokens for both modes, every component and page laid out, search implementation, and animation rules
Next session: open Claude Code, paste both documents, start building.