Pick a window manager, learn how to use it, and go from there. Popular options are i3 (i3-gaps if you want some space between windows), sway (i3, but for Wayland), bspwm, awesome wm. Usually they're used in combination with polybar (highly customizable status bar) and rofi as an application launcher.
That's right, /r/unixporn influenced me quite a lot. I read a lot of folks' dotfiles that were posted there and was inspired by the screenshots. Because I had built a lot of software with LFS, I wasn't at all afraid of tackling building custom versions of i3 (i3-gaps) and compton (compton-tyrone) to get visual bling.
Unixporn is often too flashy for my tastes. Something like DWM with a CPU and RAM meter up top is often enough. Why we gotta mix compositors with 3D file system explorers and animated desktops is beyond my needs, but I'm atleast guilty of the animated wallpaper trend
I read the blog post and to my surprise it talks about adding more characters to simple caesar cipher. Can we do it with emoji's? It is going to be fun to try out.