The Short Version

I wanted a place to write about cybersecurity, AI, books am reading and things I’m learning – without fighting a CMS to do it.

Why a Blog at All?

If you work in tech, you’ve probably heard the advice: “Write about what you’re learning.” I resisted it for a while - there are already plenty of infosec blogs. But I realised the blog isn’t really for an audience – it’s for me.

Writing forces you to organise your thoughts. If you can explain something clearly in a blog post, you probably actually understand it. And if you can’t, that’s a signal to go back and study.

So this blog is part notebook, part portfolio, and part accountability system.

Why Hugo Over WordPress

I ran this site on WordPress.com for a while. I managed to get it up and running but that was it, there was a lot of friction getting the site to behave the way I wanted it. So with the help of Claude I decided on:

  • Markdown: I already write everything in Obsidian using Markdown. WordPress wants its block editor. Hugo posts are just .md files – I write them the same way I write my notes.
  • Git workflow: Every change is a commit. I can see the full history of the site, roll back mistakes, and branch for experiments.
  • No attack surface: There’s no database, no PHP, no plugins to patch. The site is static HTML served from a CDN.
  • Free hosting: GitHub Pages is free. No WordPress plan, no renewal surprises.
  • Learning opportunity: Building this site I’m learning about CI/CD (GitHub Actions), DNS, HTML/CSS, and Git workflows. WordPress taught me how to click buttons.

What to Expect

I plan to write about:

  • Cybersecurity: Things I’m learning, tools I’m using, concepts that clicked
  • AI: I’ve been experimenting with AI agents, Local LLMs, AI assistants and deepfakes
  • Books: I’ll be posting a short review of books I read this year, aiming for 6
  • Tech: Whatever I’m currently tinkering with, usually homelab stuff

No posting schedule, no SEO games. Just writing when I feel like it.

The Stack

For the curious:

  • Generator: Hugo (static site generator written in Go)
  • Theme: PaperMod (clean, fast, dark mode)
  • Hosting: GitHub Pages (free, served via CDN)
  • Deployment: GitHub Actions (auto-builds on every push to main)
  • Domain: bryanlopez.net (pointed via DNS)
  • Writing: Markdown in VS Code or Obsidian

If you want to build something similar, all the source code is on GitHub.