Micros

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My team and I took what was an outdated Joomla site and revitalised it into a sleek, modern experience.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 this.

Website landing page. At the top is an orange navigation bar with a logo and drop-downs for 'Home', 'About', and 'Professional Development'. In the centre of the page is the text

Website news page. At the top is a navigation bar with a breadcrumb section underneath it reading the header 'News'. Underneath it are a collection of cards presenting various news posts in a grid. Each shows a picture, date, description, and prompt to read more.

Website news page. At the top is a navigation bar with a breadcrumb section underneath it reading the header 'Workshops'. Underneath it is a list of upcoming workshops. Each shows a picture, date, description, and prompt to view it.

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

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.

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!

I’ve spent the past several years thinking Vite is pronounced ‘vite’ rather than ‘veet’. I’ve gotta start watching more dev videos or something…

Sorry for being MIA these past few days. Russia and Turkey both banned Discord, so I’ve been tied up with Revolt. We’ve had some 250K users join in the past 4 days, bringing us to over 450K users total!

If you aren’t aware, Revolt is a FOSS chat platform and decent alternative to Discord that I work on.

You can check it out at https://revolt.chat if you’re interested.

Bluesky now has over 10 million users, and I was #3,150,897! I would have jumped in earlier was it not for the invite system. I got access just before they opened it up.

Card stating

Oooh w̶̨̩̣̭͙̯͎̭̻̮̪̥̟͇̳̬͒̎̋̉̒ą̷̢̛̠̮̥͔̩̙̺̘͙̘̹̣̪͔͙̊͐̒̍̓͝ḧ̷̗́͊̓̓̽̄̎̉̈ą̷̡̹̰͖͍̥̭̫̤͈̠̀̇̔̓̓͑̅̂̊͘̚͝͝ḩ̶̤͐̍̽̀̆̂̚͝a̴͕̗̭͎̹̲̝̭͗͂͐̿͊̉̈̏̿͂̐̑̆̊̕͠͠h̶̹̑̒̐̒̈̑͋͊͠a̸̲̟̞̼̰̘͂́͌̑̔̊̔̉͗̋̈́̑̐͠͠

Genuine exchange I just had:

Person: It’s broken on mobile.

Me: Do you have a Samsung by chance?

Person: Yes, I have

Me: Do you use Samsung Internet?

Person: I’m not sure what that is. I use the default browser.

Me: I shall refrain from using the selection of words I’d like to.

Seriously, how is Samsung Internet still this much of a clusterfuck?

Great moments in Revolt development:

<span class="hljs-keyword">RUN</span><span class="language-bash"> yarn install --frozen-lockfile</span>
<span class="hljs-keyword">RUN</span><span class="language-bash"> yarn build:deps</span>
<span class="hljs-comment"># RUN yarn typecheck # lol no</span>
<span class="hljs-keyword">RUN</span><span class="language-bash"> yarn build:highmem</span>
<span class="hljs-keyword">RUN</span><span class="language-bash"> yarn workspaces focus --production --all</span>

https://github.com/revoltchat/revite/blob/master/Dockerfile#L9

One great use of LLMs I’ve found is as dynamic WordPress documentation generators.

WordPress is really poorly documented. Especially block themes, which are a mess in more ways than just documentation.