Sara B.

I was so stressed/irritated earlier this week though that I could feel my heartbeat in my head and that's not great. So I reached for an older album that i used to listen to all the time, What's Inside by Sara Bareilles. I sat in silence and listened to the whole album from start to finish. it's been so long since I've listened to music as the "main event." It was a nice calm hour or so, and then I felt better. So, I put on my shoes and went for a 2 mile walk, with the album on repeat.

Lately I've been doing my walk to T.I.'s latest album, but it wasn't a good fit for my mood. What's Inside is songs she wrote for the musical, The Waitress. That being the case the whole album is basically a story. It's about fear and self-doubt, losing control of your circumstance, love, unexpected blessings, and a lot more. I love this type of album (see also "The Jungle" by Shakka). It left me feeling relaxed and seen.

Standouts are

• What's inside (intro)
• She Used to Be Mine
• Opening Up
• When He Sees Me

Joe Budden

That was a super relaxing and enjoyable afternon and it reminded me how i used to consume music. So I continued the streak by reaching for hip-hop I used to love, but not gangsta rap. Joe is a podcaster now and, like all podcasters, he gets on my nerves a lot haha... but let nobody ever say Joe can't rap!

Joe Budden's All Love Lost is one of my favorite albums of all time. It's super introspective and raw and honest! I sat an listened to that one in it's entirety as well. There's something about the intimacy of an honest piece of art that is really healing to experience. The album is about 80 minutes I think, cus Joe has several songs on there that are like 7/8 minutes long lol... it's a no-skip album for me though.

Standouts are

• All Love lost (the intro)
• Man Down
• Only Human

Meditation

In addition to the music, I had an hour long meditation session. It's been probably a year since I've meditated and every time I do it I wonder why I dont do it more. I lit some candles turned off everything but some very quiet tones, and let myself be for a while. It really helped me get some thoughts and feelings in order and solidify some things that have been moving around the edges of my consiousness.

I've heard mediation described a lot of different ways by different people, but for me it's a bit like fixing the focus through which I view myself and the world around me. It helps me bring important things into focus and let other things blend into the background. I spent time on ideas/feelings that I haven't really given my full attention in some time. I definitely came away feeling less stressed about thigns and more capable of dealing with them.

I should do this more :-)

Peace.

I think I'll just use this post to log everything, and update it periodically.

Daily Medication Tracker

This is a fairly basic medication tracker. It helps me keep track of my medications for the day and when I took them. It's helpful, given that my meds and their timings sometimes change. There is a web version of this that I started with. I build the mobile app once I worked out exactly what features I needed and what friction points needed to be smoothed out so that I'll actually use it.

Treatment (Home Dialysis) Tracker

This is the most recent project I've built. It helps me log all the things that the clinic needs wants me to log, and gives me a nice view of how I'm doing. This is a web app for now, but I have plans to expand it to a mobile app.

Blood Pressure Tracker

This one has become a bit less useful, as I have integrated blood pressure tracking into the treatment tracker. But this was the first one I built, that kinda of set the tone, and helped me work out what's useful for me peronsally in a UX.

Attempt #4

Prep Work

Finished Product

Thoughts

This is, by far, the best loaf yet! It about doubled in size during proofing and rose pretty well during baking. This is also the most shaped loaf I've done as it wasn't too stiff or too sticky and I was able to actually make it loaf shaped :-)

Yeast plus backing powder seemed to work fairly well and the chia seeds held up. I was curious how if they would have a negative effect, as they tend to gather up moisture, but it seems like they didn't.

I'll consider this my first proper bread recipe, and probably continue expanding on it with mixins. It feels like a solid "daily" though.

Why So Simple?

My portfolio doesn't change often. And honestly, I'm so tired of bloated framework code. is "framework fatigue" a thing? I guess you can get fatigued by anything. It's all so over complicated and removed from the actual base level of coding that I think I kinda burned out even before I got sick. I prefer to keep things simple these days.

Constraints

• No JavaScript frameworks. just minimal raw js.
• No build step
• Under 50KB total page weight (not including project images)
• Works in any browser from the last 20 years

The Result

1 html page, with css and a small amount of js. I don't think I'm done yet, but I think I'm close. I need to do some sample sites, for skills/ideas that I don't have client work for. I'll keep you posted.

I'm still not really done with it. It currently functions as less a portfolio and more a digital resume. I'll probably add a few pages to it at some point, as time allows.

Lettuce is Growing Well

The only thing I've been able to consistently get going in my grow tent recently is lettuce. It's fine, since I'm not starting any fruiting plants right now, but it's weird. I may need to get new seeds. These are from 2 seasons ago so they may not be viable or just have a very low hit rate at this point.

In any case, this lettuce is about 6 weeks old right now. It's growing in an inert medium with nutrient added separately through watering. I learned the hard way that actual soil WILL create a pest problem. so far I haven't seen any really issues with using a more hydroponic method, other than the need to add nutirents obviously. But I don't have to add much.

Other Plants

I'm starting a few more plants in these other pots (chives, cilantro, arugula, cabage). We'll see if they sprout. The chives are the newest I think, so I have high hopes for them.

Attempt #1

Thoughts

These two breads have been yeasted, but comparatively yeast is expensive. I just happend to have a few packets on hand. I have one more, but continuing this way will add up consideraly. So I may try using baking powder as the rising agent in a few attempts and see how that works.

I do think I have the air fryer settings figured out, which is wild since I was totally just winging it. Next things to try....

• Using backing powder as the rising agent
• Adding things to the dough(seeds, pigs in a blanket?)

Can you make bread in the air fryer?

Yes! yes, you can!

Attempt #1

I call this, the most basic of bread. Mind you I was freestyling here, based on what I had. The fact I made edible bread is kind of a miracle.

Overall Result:

It turned out pretty great for a first try. It was edible, toasted well, and filling. It was a bit denser than ideal. Not sure if that's from the basic recipe or the short proof time. I'm going to try again tomorrow.

Also: I made a turkeyburger today using the bread I made, with lettuce I grew myself. That's pretty cool!

In any case, today is one of those days! And I have client work to do. This is really the main challenge with re-entering work after so long. Some days I just can't, even when I have to. I can force myself but I'll find it hard to concentrate and end up taking 6 hours for what could have taken 2.

Do I go to sleep and just be more productive later, ocne my body is more cooperative?

Edit: I ended up sleeping, then working overnight lol

What is this?

A blog written in StaticBlogger(I'm not very creative), a local blogging tool that generates a fully static website from HTML posts with YAML front matter. Each post can have its own CSS, use templates, and even include PHP code that runs on the server. It's very remniscent of Dreamweaver from back in the day, but less garbage haha

Features

• Fully customizable HTML posts
• Template system with per-template CSS
• Per-post custom CSS
• RSS feed generation
• Standalone search API
• Extension system for adding features

Why?

Isn't that what being a developer is all about. Not just consuming tools, but creating purpose-built solutions. In this instance I was the client. I wanted a way to blog, but I didn't want any server constraints or unnecessary dependencies that would come baked into something like wordpress.

So, I build a custom blogging platform, from a Laravel base because Laravel is fantastic for this type of thing. And because I built it, I can extend it to do whatever I need it to. Plus.... I've been in a rut lately and I really just needed to ship something. :-)

I may post more about the software/build process in another post. It was a fairly straight forward build, but also kinda antithetical to the normal standard.

That's all for now, I guess.

My Main Requirements

The system had to have a few things:

• Be able to accept raw HTML as a blog post (no special tags to work around an interpreter).
• A Minimal (or no) db. I settled on HTML files with YAML front matter (because simplicity), plus I don't need to open anything but the blog post html file to see all the information I need.
• Render them through templates - I wanted to be able to quickly swap design if I felt like it. Laravel offers blade templates so that was simple.
• Generate a static site I could deploy anywhere. Minimal server requirements. No composer, node, etc... even cheap shared hosting must satisfy.
• Include an RSS feed and basic API, for syndicaing relevant posts to different places, like my main site.
• Be build in such a way that it's easily extendable when I do want new features.

Implementation

I chose Laravel as the local tool, somewhat out of habit/preference, but also for Blade templates and Artisan commands. The structure of the application is pretty simple and The build process is straightforward: parse posts, render through templates, write to disk. Pages are basically static html/css with minimal js where necessary.

    

blog_content/
  posts/              # HTML files with YAML front matter
  templates/          # Blade templates + CSS
    rootwork/
      style.css
      index.blade.php
      post.blade.php
      tag.blade.php
      partials/
        header.blade.php
        footer.blade.php
  images/             # Per-post images
    {slug}/
      hero.jpg
  assets/             # Shared images, fonts, etc.
dist/                 # Generated static site
config/blog.php       # All configuration
app/Extensions/       # Extension classes (just in case)
    

public function build(): array
{
    $posts = $this->postService->all();
    foreach ($posts as $post) {
        $html = $this->templateService->renderPost($post);
        file_put_contents("dist/{$post->slug}/index.html", $html);
    }
}

I really like this build process because it just sort of gets out of my way. I write each post in raw html and push it throgh the build process where it gets dropped into my template and then added to the static site. deployment is just uploading a single folder over scp/rsync. I'm quite happy with how it turned out :-)

What I Learned

The code was the easiest part, once I figured out a structure that seemed intuitive. Then, how to render to static files in the way I needed to.

Deciding what to leave out was a bit of a challenge. I noticed I kept reaching for standard paradigms that I didn't really need, just out of habit. In the end there's no comments, no analytics, no social sharing, etc. Just words on a page, rendered fast and served from a simple web server. Maybe I'll add comments or something later, but for now it's just me, screaming (softly) into the void, for my own sake.

Sometimes the best features are the ones you don't build... or something profound like that haha