Random note: Has anyone noticed how fast the author's webpage is? I know it's static, but I mean it's fast even for the DNS lookup. I would love to know what they have on.
There is an nginx server running on debian stable somewhere in the dark heart of Germany. But I do have numerous tricks (too many, probably) to keep things quick.
But there are still ways to be quicker. For example, the header photo is smaller than the vector diagrams on the page, by about tenfold.
server: cloudflare
You said it though - the reason is that its static without any js/frameworks/SPA round trip requests.