blankhaar.github.io

Personal website. Built with Jekyll, hosted on GitHub Pages.

Local preview (optional)

GitHub will build the site for you when you push, so this is only needed if you want to see changes before pushing.

bundle install
bundle exec jekyll serve
# open http://127.0.0.1:4000

If you don't have Ruby/Bundler set up, the simplest path on macOS is:

brew install ruby
echo 'export PATH="/opt/homebrew/opt/ruby/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc
source ~/.zshrc
gem install bundler
bundle install

Publishing

The repo must be named blankhaar.github.io so the site lives at https://blankhaar.github.io.

First-time setup:

cd /Users/boyl/projects/website
git init
git add .
git commit -m "Initial site"
gh repo create blankhaar.github.io --public --source=. --remote=origin --push

Then on GitHub: Settings → Pages, source = Deploy from a branch, branch = main, folder = / (root). Save. The site appears at the URL above within a minute or two.

After that, every git push triggers a rebuild automatically.

Editing

• About / bio — index.md
• News feed — _data/news.yml
• Featured papers — files in _papers/. Add a new file, fill in the front matter, and write the lay summary in Markdown. It will show up in the Papers list and the homepage automatically.
• Research themes — research.md
• CV — cv.md. Drop the PDF at assets/files/lankhaar-cv.pdf.
• Talks — talks.md
• Code — code.md
• Notes (blog) — files in _posts/, named YYYY-MM-DD-title.md.
• Photos — assets/img/.
• Styling — assets/css/main.css.

Adding a new paper feature

Create _papers/short-slug.md with this front matter:

---
title: The title of the paper
authors: A. Author, B. Lankhaar, C. Author
journal: Astronomy & Astrophysics
year: 2026
date: 2026-01-15
doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/...
arxiv: "2601.12345"
summary: One-sentence hook for the cards.
figure: /assets/img/papers/my-figure.jpg
figure_alt: Description of the figure.
figure_caption: Optional caption shown under the figure.
press:
  - outlet: BBC News
    url: https://...
  - outlet: UiO press release
    url: https://...
---

Then write the body in Markdown — short headers like In one sentence, What's the question?, What did we do?, Why does it matter?, My role.

Anti-spam email

The contact email is built in JavaScript at click time (_includes/email.html) so it never appears as plain text in the page source — most scrapers will skip past it.