Firehose

Part of my diploma at North Metropolitan TAFE was a live-works project redeveloping the website for Public Libraries WA.

My team and I took what was an outdated Joomla site and revitalised it into a sleek, modern experience. The old site was built back in 2009, had security flaws and lacked responsive design, rendering it nigh unusable on mobile devices.

We rebuilt it from the ground up using WordPress paired with a custom theme built using Tailwind and a tailor-made plugin to perfectly fit our client’s needs.

It was awesome working with Emily Drage, Zoe Chan, and Maria Benic on it.

Say what you will, the phrase ‘hacked up, bastardized simulacra’ is genuinely pretty awesome. I suppose we at least got something out of the WordPress mess.

Saw a guy sprinting through the city with a Sonic the Hedgehog shirt on.

It took a hideous amount of restraint not to yell ‘GOTTA GO FAST!’

I see a lot of stuff gain traction that I’d have figured is too well known, too obvious, or too low effort. I need to do more stuff.

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take after all.

Coming around to that time of the year when I update and refine all my configs. I’ve got a lot of notes on what needs work.

Should be rad.

Lorem Ipsum

'Blah blah blah' doesn’t look quite as good.

A page for testing and trialing formatting, features, and typography by seeing how they interact in complex arrangements to catch edge cases at scale.

https://vale.rocks/posts/lorem-ipsum

I’ve been very disappointed with DuckDuckGo results recently. Seems there was a sharp drop in quality ~3 weeks ago.

Kagi gives the best results I’ve found, but at a financial premium. I’m kinda just jumping around search engines looking for a home.

I really appreciate that people in my feeds engage in nuanced AI discussion. Yes, there are negatives. Yes, there are positives. No, flame wars don’t get us anywhere.

Thanks for all being so awesome and eloquent with your words.

I usually steer clear of political posts, but I can’t stress enough how important it is for every American to get out and vote. The world will be a little better for it.

Blimey, I’m lovin’ <dialog> and the Popover API. JavaScript free* menus without the need for any hacks.

I used to use some trickery involving CSS’s :target to implement menus…

This is only gonna get cooler when anchor positioning gets more comprehensive support. Top layer elements and anchor positioning go together like butter and toast.

‘Brittle web technology’ is one of the most perfect phrases I’ve ever encountered. It just perfectly sums up the shattering characteristic of so many dev tools.

It’s the web! It should be the wild west! Chaotic, unstoppable madness! Bodge everything and take no hostages!

Micro-blogging platforms like Bluesky and Fedi are built around following people, not topics. This is good in that I can create meaningful connections with familiar faces, but bad in that I pass up great content because I can’t just follow the parts of people’s feeds that interest me.

Sometimes I wish I could follow someone’s tech posts without their politics, or their design without their hot takes. If you’re wondering why I don’t follow you, it’s probably because of this. I still love ya!

(I’ve come to find this is somewhat doable via word filtering, although it is a bit finicky, not comprehensive, and introduces potential for false positives. I’ll trial it and see how it goes.)

I barely find myself needing CSS ‘hacks’ anymore. Most stuff I need to do is kinda just a thing now.

Thanks to all the many people who’ve made this a reality!