Personal site redesign — “Ice & Ink”

Date: 2026-08-31 Site: https://Sk-2103.github.io (repo Sk-2103/Sk-2103.github.io)

Goal

Modernize the existing Academic Pages (Minimal Mistakes fork) Jekyll site in place — new visual system, fixed placeholder content, and a few content corrections — while keeping the data-driven collection structure (_publications, _talks, _teaching, _portfolio, _datasets, _tools) so future updates stay a matter of dropping in a markdown file.

Background

The repo also contains alfolio-site/, a static (non-Jekyll) HTML prototype styled after the al-folio academic theme, built in an earlier session but never linked from the live site. It is not the basis for the live site going forward (its content duplicates and will drift from the real Jekyll collections), but its bio copy is more current than the live about.md and its type pairing (Roboto Slab + JetBrains Mono) is being reused for continuity. It will be removed from the repo once its useful content has been folded in — it remains recoverable via git history.

The theme already has full light/dark theming via CSS custom properties (_sass/theme/_default.scss, _sass/theme/_dark.scss) toggled at runtime through a data-theme="dark" attribute set by existing JS in assets/js/_main.js, with a toggle button already wired in _includes/masthead.html. No new dark-mode infrastructure is needed — only new color values.

Visual system

Color — light (_sass/theme/_default.scss, :root)

Color — dark (_sass/theme/_dark.scss, html[data-theme="dark"])

Typography (_sass/_themes.scss)

• Headings ($header-font-family): “Roboto Slab”, Georgia, serif
• Body ($global-font-family): “Inter”, -apple-system, “Segoe UI”, sans-serif
• Accent/mono (dates, venue badges — new class, not a global override): “JetBrains Mono”, Monaco, monospace
• Fonts loaded via Google Fonts <link> in _includes/head/custom.html

Components

• Masthead/nav: sticky top bar, background --global-bg-color with a 1px bottom border in --global-border-color; nav links get an accent-color underline/hover; theme-toggle icon unchanged in behavior.
• Author profile card (_includes/author-profile.html + its SCSS): avatar gets a subtle ring/shadow; social/contact links restyled as a compact icon row using the accent color on hover; card background uses --global-code-background-color with $border-radius and a soft $box-shadow.
• Archive/collection list items (_includes/archive-single*.html and related SCSS) — used for publications, talks, teaching, portfolio: styled as cards with a small monospace year/venue badge tinted with the accent color at low opacity.
• Buttons (_sass/layout/_buttons.scss): rounded corners, accent-color primary style.
• Footer: unchanged structurally, muted text color.

No layout template restructuring (sidebar + content stays) — this is a visual/CSS pass over the existing Minimal Mistakes structure, not a rebuild.

Content changes

1. _config.yml
   • description: replace placeholder "personal description" with a real one-line description (e.g. “Postdoctoral researcher in geospatial data science — Earth observation, foundation models, and deep learning for glaciers, floods, and water resources.”)
   • author.pubmed: clear the template’s leftover example URL (...term=john+snow) — no real PubMed profile exists, so the field (and its sidebar entry) is simply removed rather than replaced.
2. _pages/about.md
   • Fold in bio content currently only in alfolio-site/index.html: the Tellman Lab / Schneider Lab affiliation detail, Hugging Face profile link, and teaching course mentions (“AI for Sustainability”, “AI for Earth Observation”).
   • Keep the existing Academic Achievements and News sections as-is — confirmed nothing newer than the Feb 2026 entry needs adding.
3. _publications/2025-07-01-publication.md (“Beyond Clouds”)
   • Change status from Under-Review to Published.
   • Add the ESSD link: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2026-474.
   • Update the citation string to reflect ESSD publication (journal name, year, DOI), keeping all four co-authors (Kaushik, Tellman, Howat, and confirming Haritashya per the ESSD listing).
   • Keep the existing title (“Beyond Clouds: …”) and all four existing figures (DOFA.png, GLB.png, GLB_random.png, challenge1.png) unchanged.
4. Repo cleanup
   • Remove alfolio-site/ (git rm -r) once (2) has absorbed its useful content — it stays recoverable via git history, just no longer shipped or discoverable as a stale duplicate.

Testing

• Confirm Ruby/Jekyll/Bundler availability in the working environment before relying on jekyll serve for local verification; note if unavailable and fall back to careful manual review of generated SCSS/HTML.
• bundle exec jekyll serve -l -H localhost, then visually check:
  • Homepage/about (profile card, achievements, news) in both light and dark
  • A publication page (including the updated “Beyond Clouds” entry)
  • A talks/teaching archive listing (card styling)
  • Mobile-width nav collapse
  • Dark-mode toggle round-trips correctly (persists via localStorage)
• Confirm no Jekyll build errors/warnings introduced by the SCSS/content changes.

Out of scope

• No layout/template restructuring beyond component-level restyling.
• No changes to _datasets/_tools collection content beyond inherited visual restyling.
• No new pages, no CMS/build-tooling changes, no hosting/workflow changes.
• Nothing is pushed to GitHub as part of this work without separate, explicit confirmation.