Feed of blog posts from jwww.me
If you're like me, you probably bounce around between coding tools – Cursor, Opencode, Codex etc. These sessions exist all over the place, with a multitude of working directories, and I often forget which tool I started a session with. So I built opensession – a simple TUI for managing your past chat sessions – making it easy to recall a session and jump right back in. Screenshot of the Open…
Technically, I got "TransPRK+ with iDesign Studio" but LASIK is the lingua franca for laser optical vision correction I've had glasses for as long as I can remember. I don't think there's a moment of my life when I remember waking up and just simply "seeing". I've tried contacts and never enjoyed them as they didn't feel like a full vision correction. As a matter of fact, I've actually always…
Ghost + Raspberry Pi + Cloudflare Tunnel + GitHub Actions + Vercel Late last week, I was looking through my desk and stumbled across an older Raspberry Pi 3 B model. Not a particularly powerful unit but I thought I could possibly still make use of it. Ghost recently released their Docker (preview) in version 6, and I've been looking for an excuse to try it. So I cooked up this idea to host a Ghost…
I was playing around with a React project locally and I wanted a way to share it within the context of my own website. In this particular case, I'm configuring React, but you could use Vite to configure any other frontend framework. This website has a bit of an unconventional setup, so I thought I'd share how I added a React application within the site. The concepts in this article could be…
I thought I'd try a different format for this year's review. I'm simply going to list out a few things I've done and haven't done, and then a few favourites. Haves While travel was definitely a highlight, we also spent a lot of quality time at home. We did a lot bike riding, a bit of skiing, and enjoying those glorious Manitoba summers in the backyard. It was a really mild winter, so skiing was…
I've used the helpful @vercel/og package before to generate OpenGraph images within Next.js projects, but since I re-wrote this blog using PHP, this was no longer possible. The documentation has some hints of "using @vercel/og without Next.js" but there is no real documentation for it. After some scouring, I discovered unstable_createNodejsStream in the TypeScript definitions First, let's setup…
A quick disclaimer. This article is not intended to disparage Next.js – I work with Next.js every day, and really quite enjoy it. This is simply a study in using an outsized solution for a trivial problem. In 2023, I decided to re-create my personal website using Next.js. I even wrote about it . The building process was a lot of fun, and I even built a fun personal Twitter feed alternative .…
My first foray into the world of mechanical keyboards actually started with the Keychron K8. I backed their Kickstarter launch in July of 2020, and received it in September. Unfortunately, I was not a fan, and I sold it on Kijiji a few months later. The tenkeyless Keychron K8 During this time, Keychron had another Kickstarter launch, this time for a low-profile mechanical keyboard. Since I didn't…
Building The Blog This article is going to be a multi-part series. I'm going to be building a personal blog using Next.js 13, Tailwind CSS, next-mdx-remote, Planetscale, and Prisma. I'm going to be writing about the process of building the site, as well as the tools I'm using. Getting Started with Next.js 13 Building the Blog (this post) Creating a Personal Feed with Planetscale and Prisma Adding…
Using Vite to Develop Wordpress Themes At Leisure Travel Vans, we've been using a custom build system to compile our SCSS and JS files for our Wordpress themes, as well as custom plugins we've developed. We've been using this system for a few years now, and it's worked well for us. However, with modern browser support aligning well with our user demographic, I wanted to move to a more modern build…
In the last number of years, I'd completely come to rely on using Twitter as a way to "put things out into the world", as well as keep up to date with what's going on in the world. The sale of Twitter had folks thinking about "owning their own platform" and I was no different. In late 2022, I decided to re-vitalize my website by building my own personal feed. Next.js 13 had just launched with the…
Now that we're a good three weeks into the new year, and all of the dust has settled from the other 2022 recaps, I figured it's as good a time as any to post my own. Since I have to make up for publishing exactly zero blog posts in 2022, this is a pretty long post. TL;DR: 2022 was a great year, and I'm looking forward to 2023. In 2022, I began to settle into my new role at Leisure Travel Vans as…
In the spring of 2022, the first prototypes of our brand new Unity Murphy Bed Lounge and Wonder Murphy Bed Lounge were completed at our factory in Winkler, Canada. This was a milestone for us – the first time launching a new floorplan on both our Unity & Wonder product lines simultaneously. We wanted to do something special to launch this new twin floorplan, so we came up with a plan to…
TBD
In the spirit of software development, I thought I'd keep a record of the changes and upgrades I make to our 2022 Winnebago Micro Minnie 2100BH – a sort of "release notes" if you will. 14 May 2021 Took delivery. 17 May 2022 Received our Westinghouse iGen4500 Inverter Generator. This is a 4500W inverter generator that runs on gasoline. It's a bit larger than I would have liked, but it's the only…
Originally published January 23, 2017. Information may be out of date. The Big Island of Hawaii has always been a very special place for us. We first visited in 2012 and returned every single year after that, up until the COVID-19 pandemic. This document is intended to be living document, documenting our favourite places and things to do on the Big Island – designed with the intention of being…
I’ve been reminsicing about my trip to Iceland for the past week, so I thought I’d share some of the photos I took there. They were all taken with a Nikon FM using Fujifilm Xperia 400 film. Check them out on Exposure .
This past week, Josh approached me about re-building his site, The Newsprint . We've kind of been in an ongoing discussing since he started the column a year ago. He's asked for various advice and I've given it as best as I can. If you've been following The Newsprint, you'll have noticed how much Josh likes to tinker with his site. In the short span of a year, he's gone from Squarespace to Ghost;…
I’ve been negligent in writing here, as well as keeping you informed about what’s happening in my life right now. I’m sure most of my semi-regular readers have already abandoned me, but I thought I’d give a quick update here anyway. My wife and I are currently living in Hawaii, volunteering at the YWAM base here. During this time, I won’t really be writing about much here. I’ll be continuing to…
I can’t say I’ve been more excited for a pack of notebooks. That grid is going to be beautiful. The colour choices are lovely as well. I’ve always loved the dot-grid for my sketches, but I think that the blank page will be good for me. I often have little sketches or diagrams that accompany my notes, and it will be interesting to try not having them inline with the actual notes. My only gripes are…
This is a follow-up post to my earlier post; Choosing a Web-Presence . Firstly, I'd like to apologise for my lack of keeping up-to-date. It's not like I haven't been writing; Josh got me into Field Notes, but it's primarily been for Collectif or for trip planning . I've chosen a web-presence! In the near future, I'll be saying good-bye to Svbtle as my primary blog and moving all of my online…
Today is my last day as a web designer at Co-op@Home . I’ve been working for this business for quite a while. It started in 2008; I was in high-school and was interested obsessed with the workings of computers. I started part time at Something Digital, where I worked a junior technician. My dad, Tim , had just left the business to go back to teaching, and I got to work with a number of amazing…
Edit: I’ve chosen a web-presence and written about it here . Over the years, I’ve had my personal web presence hosted on a myriad of platforms and services. Things have changed a lot since Geocities. I’ve experimented with a few different publishing platforms, and hope to commit to a few services for my specific needs. jwie.be is my primary personal & tech presence on the web. It’s currently…
Update : Launch Center Pro was updated to version 2.3 with all kinds of amazing features! Read more about it here I was recently reading about meal logging with Day One & Launch Center Pro on The Newsprint . I’m not very disciplined at digital journaling, and Josh got me thinking. I began to devise a few of my own actions, generally based around menial events that had a daily significance.…
I had a rare Twitter username, @N. Yep, just one letter. I’ve been offered as much as $50,000 for it. People have tried to steal it. Password reset instructions are a regular sight in my email inbox. As of today, I no longer control @N. I was extorted into giving it up. A slightly terrifying account of how Naoki Hiroshima ’s Twitter account; @N , was stolen. It’s astounding how one weak link in…
I’ve been working with the web for a long time. My earliest memories of “creating websites” began in the year 2004. I was an avid Redwall fan and had just started learning about the web. I believe I started with Geocities, where there was an avid Redwall community springing up. I decided to start a “fact” website. There was a great deal of fan-fiction sites springing up, as well as countless…
Following the announcement and subsequent release of iOS 7 beta, there have been mockups, complaints and criticisms flying rampantly around the design community. I’ve actually seen a lot of mockups that I’ve quite liked, and there are parts of iOS 7 that I’m fond of, but I’m not here to share my opinion of it. I’m here to discuss how Apple arrived at their design decisions. There’s been heaps of…