Building Ground Control was more than just learning to code

When I first set out to build this blog and portfolio website, my main goal was actually quite simple: I wanted to learn how to create a website.

Like many people, I had always thought it would be fun to have a blog of my own, a place where I could write about things that interest me and document what I learn. The problem was that I had absolutely no background in computer science or IT, so building a website from scratch always felt out of reach.

Then AI came along.

Like many others, I was fascinated by the idea that an AI could generate code from just a few prompts. It suddenly made something that once seemed impossible feel accessible. Naturally, I wanted to try it for myself.

But I quickly realised something.

Getting AI to generate code is one thing. Building a polished, functional, and well-designed website is something else entirely.

Anyone can ask AI to generate a webpage. The real challenge is learning how everything fits together, refining the design, fixing problems, understanding the code, and creating something that genuinely feels like your own.

That became the real motivation behind this project.

Making it mine

I wanted this blog to be highly customisable and uniquely mine. Rather than using a traditional blogging platform like WordPress or relying on a ready-made blog template, I decided to build it myself. While I started with an Astro template as a foundation, most of the theming, styling, and overall aesthetics were customised by me. Every improvement became another opportunity to learn.

Ultimately, I hope this website becomes more than just a blog.

I want it to be a repository of everything I’m learning while building with AI. I’ll be writing about AI tools, self-hosting, home automation, local AI, coding projects, and other technology that I find genuinely useful and enjoyable.

This blog is simply my way of documenting that journey.

I’m not writing as an expert. I’m writing as someone who enjoys learning, experimenting, breaking things, fixing them again, and hopefully helping others who are on a similar path.

If you’re curious about AI, self-hosting, automation, or simply enjoy building things, I hope you’ll find something useful here.

In this post, I’ll share how I actually built this blog and portfolio website, from choosing the technology stack to working with AI to write code, the mistakes I made, and the lessons I learned along the way. Hopefully, it will encourage you to build something of your own too.