Overview #
Policy to Packets is this site: a cybersecurity portfolio and technical blog where I document my writeups, investigations, and projects. It runs on Hugo with the Blowfish theme, hosted on GitHub Pages at www.policytopackets.com.
The GitHub repo is public and available here.
Purpose #
I built this site to strengthen my job applications and show that I’m actively learning, not just listing certifications. A regularly updated portfolio with recent writeups makes it clear I’m not rusty and that I’m putting in the work consistently. It also forces me to think more about how I present and communicate technical information, which is its own useful skill.
Tech Stack #
Obsidian - Where everything starts. I take notes during labs, challenges, and investigations in Obsidian. It keeps everything in plain Markdown and accepts pasted images elegantly in a format Hugo can handle.
Claude - Once I have a rough draft, I use Claude to clean up the writing. My notes tend to be rough, so Claude helps me turn them into more organized readable posts. I go back through and fix issues, and ensure my intent isn’t lost.
Hugo - The static site generator that turns Markdown files into a full website. The ecosystem of existing themes and tutorials drew me to it.
Blowfish - The Hugo theme I use. It’s clean, includes enough functionality without being too bloated. I’ve done some customization, but for the most part it’s out of the box.
GitHub Pages - A simple solution for hosting a static website for free, I just have to push to the repo. It was fairly easy to set up the domain name too.
Workflow #
The general flow from notes to published post looks like this:
- Work through a lab, challenge, or investigation and take notes in Obsidian as I go.
- Once finished, organize the notes into a rough draft with sections, findings, and conclusions.
- Pass the draft through Claude to clean up structure, grammar, and readability.
- Drop the final Markdown file into the appropriate Hugo content directory with the front matter filled out.
- Test locally, then push to GitHub to deploy.
Takeaways #
Standing up this site was a project in itself. Picking a static site generator, configuring a theme, setting up GitHub Pages with a domain name, and establishing a consistent content workflow all required decisions and troubleshooting.
More importantly, maintaining it has become part of how I learn. I have to learn new things if I want to make more posts. Each writeup reinforces what knowledge I already know, and what I learned.
