Website Name

ABsurdly Goud is a personal website. Its name came from a few pieces of inspiration:

• My initials are ABG - I wanted that included in the name
• absurd means completely unreasonable, illogical, or lacking common sense
• goud is a reference to my surname (Goudemond) and reads as the word good
• Combining these two words together is fun and surprising - just the kind of thing I want my website to be
  • Together - could mean: this is strange, but I like it or any other interpretation you may have!
• A domain like alexBlakeGoudemond.com is then focussed on Identity and (more-so?) Professionalism
• It also reminds me to not be serious all the time 🧐😏
• All-in-all - I just like it so it is ABsurdlyGoud.com!

Website Purpose?

I built this website for a combination of reasons that all blended together at the same time. In no particular order:

• I was exposed to the IndieWeb, and was captivated - I knew quickly that I wanted to join
• I have had some ideas for fun personal projects that I want to roll out - and this website has a very low barrier of entry for me to try those as Proof Of Concepts (POCs)
• I felt empowered to express myself freely and detach from Social Media a bit more
• I like the idea of revising my frontend skills; I spend much time on the backend at work

There is a kind of self-reflection on how I am building the site - via posts and notes. And by placing those ON the site - it feels like the website is documenting its own journey as I build it up piece by piece 🥳

In few words, it exists:

• because it can 💪
• because building it and having it is fun 🎉
• because I want it to 🥰
• as an opportunity to grow and learn, striving to get better each day 📎

Why IndieWeb?

A friend asked me: “Why build a website for the IndieWeb and not just a normal website?” and the question held me. We had discussed the obvious things before:

• no priority on advertisements
• no need to chase algorithms
• no need to build around Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and trends
• no need to justify the website’s existence

And upon reflection, I realized that these responses did not address the core of question…

Then my answer came to me:

Why IndieWeb?

“I want to be a part of the community. I want to rebel against the current Internet structure. I want to be in control of my own data, time, attention and engagement. I want to have fun, explore and grow”

I felt satisfied with that answer! And as an outcome: we will see if my friend joins the web as well! 😏

What’s with the rubber ducks?

It all started with rubber duck debugging - I bought a rubber duck for my IT job and it has snowballed into a small obsession with finding them ‘in the wild’ and even building up my own small collection. When building this website, it organically grew into swimming ducks in the background - because why not! If interested, see My Rubber Duck Collection

Website Stats

Initial Quack (Website Creation): 2026-08-17.

Disclaimers

AI Usage

I am a developer who does use Artificial Intelligence (AI) - and I focus on using it responsibly. I own and take accountability for all the work I generate - and if an AI helps, then I give attribution to both of us.

Important

I AM PERFECTLY CAPABLE OF WRITING CR@P CODE MYSELF! I do not need an AI to write cr@p code on my behalf 😏

The AI helps me get places faster ⚡, and I am able to speed up my learning along the way.

I am accountable for the content I write - and I must be able to explain, extend and justify everything the AI does on my behalf. This is the standard I hold myself to

Specific AI Usages

I use AI to do the following:

• Help me learn and onboard with tools I am not familiar with (Jekyll, GitHub Pages, etc)
• Help me debug when I am tired of squeezing my rubber duck(s)
• Help me fast-track boilerplate tasks that I know I could do myself - and want done faster

What I do not use AI for

I do not use AI to:

• Write
• Make pictures / media - like the buttons and memes used in this site
  • I do use a script where needed to produce the 88x31 memes-as-buttons
  • If not editing the SVG raw - use Inkscape to create the other 88x31 buttons
• Any other art-sy work - I want to do that

Specific AI Tools

The AI tools I have used so far:

• GitHub Copilot & JetBrains Junie (In the IDE)
• ChatGPT (in the Browser)
• Claude (as a dedicated Application)

Opinion Pieces

I recognize:

• Data provided in prompts to AI tools is likely to be used as training data 📈
• There is a good chance that data the AI interacts with during a task can be used as training data
  • I am referring to data not included in the prompt - data in the codebase / file system
  • The AI companies promise the AI tools do not do this - and I am sceptical
• AI is a really good next-word-predictor
  • It mimics what it has been exposed to in the past without ever TRULY understanding what it is saying. Hence hallucinations 🫨
• Passing off AI code as my own without attribution is deceitful, and I will not do that - hence the disclaimer button

Comments:

• I am sceptical around AI companies promising that they will NOT collect data outside of the prompts
  • I am awaiting the day when we are told: “We have been scraping data for years - now buy this product…” ⚠️
  • To cope with this, I have a personal policy: Only use AI on code that is publicly available
    • This way - anyone COULD use AI on it, by cloning the repo
• If my code exists in the public domain, I cannot detect/stop AI being used on it
  • As such, I am not going to police AI on my site – I will instead focus on what I like and consider AI to help me when relevant 💪
• If an AI tool has been trained on a super large dataset, it can help me detect conventions and patterns used by a majority. I can then follow up on those things when solving problems
• If AI disappears / becomes unavailable (or becomes sh!tt!er), I owe it to myself and my peers that I can operate without it; aware that it will be slower 🤓