Weeknotes 2025W25

This week, I rebuilt my website yet again. I dropped Bridgetown as my site generator and went back to Astro. Bridgetown gave me too many headaches to think about and my Ruby phase is over. I already use Astro for client websites so the standardization helps a lot. It generally looks the same but I did mess with spacing this time around. Each “block” has more room to breathe and is narrower so the line length is more readable. I also added some fun SVG icons to fill in the gaps. It’s a bit more whimsical and I love it. Definitely check it out on a big screen.

It was my birthday this weekend! We had a party and all of my friends from high school were able to make it. We hadn’t all been in the same physical space in a long time. We had burgers and played volleyball and pickleball outside even though the weather wasn’t that great. The next day, I went golfing with some of them and lost on a “counting error.” I went to the Tygh Valley area the next day and golfed again at a small course that was pretty fun.

Links

• Start your own Internet Resiliency Club by Valerie Aurora. Having an emergency plan for if the internet goes down is a good idea. Though, I’m not sure if the technology is really there yet.
• Should we design for iffy internet? by Brian Hicks. Some good ballpark estimates to keep in mind when designing for the web: assume a user’s internet speed is 25Mbps/3Mbps and probably higher latency than you think.
• AI coding is less fun by Nicola Iarocci. Coding is a hobby for me. Solving problems and putting the puzzle together is the fun part and asking a computer to do that for me sucks the fun out of it.
• The Server Doesn’t Render Anything by Alexander Petros. Web pages are just text that get sent from a server and the browser renders it.
• Let’s talk about conversion optimisation and how we’re approaching it by Andy Bell. Build trust with your customers by avoiding dark patterns and trying to sell to the people who really want what you’re selling.