Is it worth it though? Renewing a domain is yet another bottomless pit you throw money into, along with server hosting. For a site without ads or other revenue it's just more expense.
If we think about potential dollars, though:
The bottomless pit isn't very deep, it's a few dollars a year.
If it nets you one single short-contract offer (nevermind a job) or worthwhile contact because someone found your work, it'll pay itself off many, many times over. Let's say one person found him and offered him a $3000 contract to do some electronic thing for a week, well, then the cost of the domain and hosting won't matter for the rest of his life.
The mere fact that this guy has an oscilloscope out means he has skills that someone might want to contact him about in relation to his blog.
Limiting yourself for want of a $10/year domain name is probably not a great idea, and again, it's something I learned the hard way.
I can find it for much lower though, like $8/year? Then again that's on namecheap who then raise rates when you go in to renew lol.
That's 10 years of benefiting from a real domain name for the cost of... a very long list of pointless $100 goods and services.
It's a couple of cents per day.
How come? I think services like GitHub pages are a great way to host a static site.
I remember using 000webhost back in the day, their free plan had an uptime of "maybe". It was never up when I actually needed it.