It’s been quite a month. So much craziness happened in such a short amount of time. My family and I have luckily been safe from most of it. And I’ve occupied myself with work to the point that I hardly did anything else but code this month. But I still managed to squeeze in some exciting stuff during what little spare time I wanted to share with you all.
Coding
I’ve been working on this new project for a client. Unfortunately, I can’t share what it is just yet. However, I can talk about the stack we’re using. For the majority of my work, I develop in React/Gatsby. It’s not so much a personal choice but rather where the industry is at this moment. So whenever I work with something different, I make the most of it and learn everything I can.
This time, I’m working with Eleventy. I’ve worked with it before; I initially attempted to build this site with 11ty a while ago. Back then, I was looking to retrofit an assets pipeline to avoid running two processes simultaneously (task runner/bundler + SSG). I developed a nice setup that leveraged JS class templates to transpile SCSS and JS at build time. It’ll make more sense if you see the code:
Then, any changes on the SCSS/JS will trigger an 11ty rebuild. And it’s all done with a single CLI command: npx @11ty/eleventy.
I revived these old templates for the client’s project, which worked like a charm. I’ve also worked with Nunjucks for the first time, and reading their docs has been a joy; plain and simple with easy-to-understand examples.
Digest
I watched an entire show in a month and am not ashamed of it. All 700 episodes and three movies were worth it.
Watched
- Naruto: I watched this show during its original run, and it covered a long period of my life. I experienced loss, pain, and marriage while watching it. And so much more in between. Watching it again with my partner brought back many memories and feelings. And now, it holds a precious spot in my life.
- Little Women: Life is often shit, and sometimes the best you can do is make the most of it and move on. This movie did a lovely job showing that, and I enjoyed it.
- How Rockets Are Made: It’s a video about how rockets are made. Filmed by an engineer, Destin Sandlin. It’s just 30 minutes of awesomeness.
Listened
- Lord of the Rings Style Beacon System: Destin talking about the science behind the Gondor beacons system. So, more awesomeness.
- New Listeners Start Here: Aside from his excellent YouTube channel, Destin has a beautiful podcast covering all sorts of great topics and the science behind them. This is a great first episode for anyone interested.
- Making Gatsby Easy to Understand with Laurie Barth: an excellent discussion about the inner workings of Gatsby as a company and Laurie’s journey.
Read
- Legion: Son of X: I finally finished watching the show and wanted to brush up on my Legion lore. This is an excellent series with one of the best representations of how Legion’s mind works, IMHO.
- A Spreadsheet Way of Knowledge: This is an older article —reposting an ‘84 article— I came across about the rise of the spreadsheet and the impact it had on almost every industry. It’s an excellent read for any nerd.