I'm a web developer based in Australia. I build with Wordpress, Shopify and now also Eleventy, sometimes mixing them all together.
Latest Posts
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I'm not great at JavaScript. Never have, never will, and I'm ok with that. I understand enough and can follow many others' leads to do what I want with it.
Or, even better, just not use it. I grew up with HTML, then added CSS along the way. That was always enough.
At one point I had this stomach-dropping feeling that I may need to learn React to keep doing my job. That meant learning React AND JavaScript. No thanks.
Now I see several articles, posts, and mentions a week about how over-reliance on JS is damaging user experience, how it is creating a pointless situation when things could be much simpler.
And I'm glad. It wasn't the way things were going after all, just the way some people thought it should and we all got swept up along the way.
Some of the tools I use in my day-to-day website building activities are very JS-heavy, and it is starting to show. Simple web builders are now bloated to the point they can't perform their basic functions without difficulties (and let's not get started on the shoe-horned AI obsession).
Now I just need to convince my clients they don't need all the bells and whistles!
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Something happened today.
I actually picked up a guitar and made up some new music. It wasn't much, just a few riffs but it's been so long. I'm just constantly working and don't put time aside for my activities.
And it was on bass. I bought a Fender p-bass a long, long time ago and hardly ever play it. I'm a guitarist by trade but it always seemed like a neat thing to have, especially if I want to record anything.
I also recorded it on my phone as I will very likely forget it, which is pretty cool. I remember when I was young I had a MiniDisc recorder to record demo tracks, and later audio software like Cubase. I used Cubase to record Suspect Package's first (and only) album.
But it was nice to just feel free to play something today. Maybe I'll keep doing it. I should keep doing it.
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We've had an old (2021) Dell laptop lying around for a while and I thought turning it into a gaming machine for the living room might be fun.
Now when I say gaming, I'm not really a gamer. I grew up playing point and click adventures (still the best game format in my opinion) and in the late 00's I had an XBox 360 where I played a lot of Red Dead Redemption. Oh, and I have a WiiU in a box somewhere but it has a UK plug and it seems dangerous to have it plugged in to an adapter all the time.
I like playing old games. I got my daughter a Miyoo game boy-style handheld for Christmas and under the guise of "testing" to make sure it would be good to go on the big day I also picked one up for myself.
I've looked into a few options for this Dell laptop (Inspiron 5502 for those who are wondering, whatever that signifies), I'm not a big PC guy - I use a Mac as my daily driver - so removing Windows was a priority. I've played with Linux here and there over the years so that's always an option.
I first tried Batocera, a convenient living room display-style screen mode for retro gaming but I wasn't able to install it off the USB stick to the drive in the laptop.
So now I'm trying out ChimeraOS. It bases itself off Steam so I can access games I have on there, as well as retro emulated games.
I've realised I don't actually have any games in Steam so the homepage is a little lackluster right now (mainly Half Life when it was on a free promo and classic YNAB), but that can be added to.
I found my old WiiU Pro controller and it connected instantly which I was impressed with. The next step is to get Steam Link working on my iPad so I can play some new point and click games I've been interested in but they're only on PC.
Now I need to find some time to actually play some games...