So I created a website (again)

Man, does time fly... I set out to create this site a year ago, but life got in the way. Granted, this is probably my 4th or 5th iteration of a personal site. They've all served a purpose, been built with different technologies, and faded into the void.

I originally tried this with Hugo and Obsidian after watching a YouTube video showcasing the combo. I got it up and running, but I just wasn't feeling it. The setup was clunky, and I was too zeroed in on making that specific workflow work. It was more than just writing, committing, and pushing; I had to run a Python script just to convert image links from Markdown to HTML. While it worked, I could either see the images in Obsidian or on the web, but never both. For someone with my level of OCD, that was a deal breaker.

I eventually dropped that project after not finding a solution to that one issue. Never finished writing my post, never hit commit, never hit push. This year is going to be different. I have a lot of ideas bouncing around my old noggin. Many are one-offs that are "meh" on the totem pole of interest, but some are worth diving into just for the sake of learning. Like a browser extension for tab management (I have a problem… and a solution!).

A few ideas, though, really latch onto you. My PoE Bot, for example, was more fun to build than actually playing the game. Or, what do you do while shiny hunting and waiting for DLC? You build a site that turns Serebii data into an easy-to-digest format for Tera Raids. Lately, I've started a project for my TCG hobby, sparked by seeing some cool card CSS (my first love of the web) I wanted to try out. That project is quickly becoming more addictive than Arc Raiders!

In the past, projects like the PoE Bot were total attention hogs. I would focus on one thing until I was burnt out, leaving no energy for anything else. I don't want to do that anymore. I want to save brainpower for other interests while balancing work, socializing, and gaming. That's why I restarted this blog.

I know the TCG project will take awhile, and I need a "side-quest" to keep from mainlining one thing at a time. When I looked back at my old Hugo site, it felt daunting. After a quick search, I found Astro, which is exactly what I was looking for. It uses TypeScript, which I know enough of to be dangerous, and generates a static site for GitHub Pages based on simple Markdown files. I created a new Obsidian vault in the /src/content/folder, and now every post is just a Templater script, a commit, and a push away.

Astro is really neat! I can build collections, components, modules, etc that makes it feel like working on a front-end application, but is so simple and easy that it took less than a day to get it up and running. I have already tinkered around with the limits, which is fun!

I don't know how often I will post, but I already have a few ideas in mind for more in the future. I'm already planning a write-up on the building and evolution of the Tera Raid website, that was a really fun learning process, and I'll definitely be doing one for the TCG project too. I'm really enjoying the tools I've built so far.

I have high hopes for this blog, my little space to get things off the brain and into the void. I have several projects in the works, of varying difficulties, so I will have a lot to share this year.

I've found some old development projects from some old companies, even found one of my old PHP websites from back in the day. I'm pretty sure this is the one that eventually got hacked, learned a hard lesson about securing file uploads on a server as a teen. I found some old ColdFusion projects, which brings back some memories of a dude who would use the Prod servers to do his CF work, including bringing down the site with malformed syntax.

I mentioned CSS being my first love of the web, and that was powered by hatred of JavaScript. I was too young to realize it was the bad implementations I didn't like, not the entire language. It still has its issues, but what language doesn't? That was in the early days of Web 2.0 and jQuery being forced onto things that made no sense. At the company I was with at the time, I ripped out the JS powered menu for our client templates, and replaced it with full CSS and kept the same animations. They were simple :hover and background: changes, but felt good to refactor and it still work.

I want to play with and learn the Tailwind system more, I would have killed for this back in the day. I love back-end and software building, but front-end is so much fun too. I did a few CSS things for this website, and the new @view-transition stuff seems really fun and impressive! Don't expect the site to always look like this, I have a lot to play around with!

I don't really do New Year resolutions, but a personal change I am making, and have had great success with so far, is allowing myself to start new projects even when I'm already mid-build on something else. There are too many things to learn, do, and build.

But this year, I will create.