Journal

Today I learned that NetNewsWire opens in a new tab added an extension to Safari that puts a little RSS button to the left of the address bar. When you click it, it auto-magically finds the RSS feed for the website you’re currently on and opens the “New Feed” dialog on NetNewsWire w/ the feed’s URL already copy-pasted into the dialog box. Found a new blog that you think is neat? Two clicks ( philip opens in a new tab ) and that blog can be added to your RSS reader, ready to view on both your laptop and your phone whenever you want (remember, this app has iCloud sync! :3).

I immediately went through my sharefeed and added as many blogs as I could to NetNewsWire. I doubled the amount of blogs in my “Blogs” folder. I feel like a god.

…But I also realized how neglected my sharefeed has become lately. The last entry to it before today was in August. Of last year. Ouch.

Have I just run out of content to regurgitate? Nope. I’m still glued to my Hacker News Telegram bot opens in a new tab , saving articles that look cool. I just haven’t read many of them to the point where I feel comfortable doing my blog equivalent of a retwskeet yet. I save, but I do not engage. I hoard instead of currate.

I’m not sure how to fix this other than… doing the freakin’ thing more often. I’ve thought about automating the process of adding new entries a little more, maybe with a tiny wizard script that asks for each field and then adds that object to the JSON array… but I feel like making that whole thing work would be overengineering, as opening up the JSON array itself and adding the object myself is just as easy.

Hopefully, this little button in Safari will help me keep tabs on sites I like better. I’ve really enjoyed the thought of using RSS readers, but I keep running into little issues with them. NetNewsWire has solved most of them, but even then I get more outside problems like “oh god why did I add this news website, now I get like 100 new articles a day about things I don’t care about and half of them are ads and I can’t keep track of all of these posts aaaaaaaaaaa”. The more I replace these big news sites with a bunch of smaller blogs, the better my RSS experience will be, I think.

Oh, and I’ve decided it would be a cool idea to make a blogroll to more explicitly recommend sites and people I find cool. I’m still wanting to flesh it out a little more before I publish it for real, but I hope it will be a good resource when it is released.

Finally, here’s a song that feels very thematically appropriate regarding current events opens in a new tab . ok bye

Oh my god!!! It’s another year!!!!

In fact, it has officially been six-ish months since this version of my website has been around (yes, it’s only been two since I switched to Astro, but since that was more of a technical migration rather than a whole website redesign, I’m not counting that lol).

On one hand, it is really cool that I’ve settled on something that I can feel proud of every time I look at it. On the other hand, my god do I need to put more stuff on here.

So, here’s the current plan:

• Make an editing pass on the last blog post (FINALLY) so I can stop worrying about it.
• Just. Write. Goddammit.
• Theeeeeen maybe we can worry about that fancy comments system I keep fantasizing about.

Heck, if you want to leave me a note on one of my blog posts, there’s a great way to do so: email me! Or fedi me!! Or bsky me (ok maybe dont do that because i rarely use bsky)!!! The main reason I want to implement a comments system is to build a community… but I can’t really do that if there are no people to fill it. So if you want to be a part of that, let me know.

…Completely unrelated question, does anyone want to see an eleboog.com IRC chatroom?

oh and obligatory song link opens in a new tab

As I said in my now entry, my hyperfixation has returned to this website. I do not control the hyperfixation, and I wish it would hyperfixate on class instead, but since this is still somewhat productive, I’m okay with it being here for now.

The main thing that I did was add my first “interactive” element: the accordion.

It looks like this!

When you click or tap on the box, it unfurls into a section that can contain literally anything I want… like an image of another accordion!

A screenshot of the "todo" accordion I currently have at the top of this page. Unchecked tasks include "Potentially add an extra 'new-tab' flag to MDX links (a space & '+'' after the link in the parentheses? that might be too complicated to implement nicely tho)" and "Set up a dev version of this site & start implementing the account system!". Checked tasks include "Make external links open in a new tab. This should be pretty easy to implement." and "Automatically insert an 'external link; icon on links that open in a new tab."

However, there’s a problem with this: it requires Javascript to function. I want my site to be completely functional without Javascript. So, there is a fallback for if JS is disabled.

A screenshot of that same "todo" accordion but with Javascript disabled. It just looks like a regular section of the page, but with a special icon showing that it was meant to be an accordion.

Now that I know how to make stuff like this and give them noscript fallbacks, I feel much more confident about “Phase 2” of my site (implementing a comments section and account system).

The prototype version of my site with an accounts system should be coming out by mid-December. It will likely be hosted on a completely separate server (not on Hetzner lmao) and require manual approval to sign up. I’ll make sure to give you a little badge next to your name in the comments if you help me out with beta testing, though :3

Currently, my ideas for Phase 2 consist of the following:

• Accounts will not use passwords. There will be two authentication methods available: passkeys and single sign-on. SSO is the easier of the two, as it just refers to using another site to log onto this one (right now, Google, Microsoft, and Discord are the sites I’m thinking of using for SSO). Passkeys are more secure but not fully ready for prime-time and obscure in documentation. I’m implementing them partly as a challenge to myself and partly as a way to yell at everyone else “HEY!!! THESE ARE COOL!!! WE SHOULD USE THESE MORE!!!!” I’ll be sure to make a guide on how to sign up with passkeys and/or add passkeys to an existing account for those who are not in the know yet. Eventually, I will want to fully move my account system to only use passkeys, but I recognize that I can’t do that now with the current state passkeys are in.
• Even after the beta, I’ll likely have account signups operate under a manual approval / application system. Basically, you’ll have to prove to me that you aren’t a bot or a Nazi, and if I believe you, I’ll let you in. This is my way of preventing spam and exploitation of my site.
• I want the accounts system to be flexible enough to where they can be used for things other than just my comments section. If I ever make a forum on my site again, the forum will use these accounts. I also want accounts to have their own profile pages so if you see someone in the comments you think is cool, you can check out their profile and follow them on other places. I want the comments section to be its own sort of community, and stuff like profile pages helps reinforce that aspect of community imo.

Is this way too much effort for an obscure blog’s comments section? Yes. Is this just a way for me get more portfolio work done and justify it with a lofty humanitarian goal? Yes. But I think it will be worth it. It will be another thing to set my blog apart and hopefully encourage more people to check it out… and possibly give me money opens in a new tab .

Anyways HA IM NOT GOING TO GIVE YOU MUSIC TODAY, THE NUKETOWN EASTER EGG DROPPED AND IT’S GREAT opens in a new tab ok cya

I did it. This entire site is now running on the Astro web framework opens in a new tab instead of Next.js.

There were two main reasons why I chose Next.js for this site originally:

1. I already had some experience with it in an older iteration of my website refresh (which you can see in this blog post ), and
2. It is by far the most popular metaframework on the web opens in a new tab right now.

Both of these made it easier to get started with Next.js, and #2 made it more appealing as a learning / portfolio-enrichment experience.

However, along with these two upsides, two big problems conversely arose with Next.js:

1. Building a Next.js website (which I didn’t think I had to do when I chose Next.js!!!) takes a lot more resources than I thought it would. In order to rebuild my site and make my changes live, I need to take the website down first on my basic bitch $7 VPS from Hetzner (put a pin on this, I’m going to talk about it later).
2. Because Next.js is designed primarly for single-page applications (SPA’s), when you click on a link to another page on the site… nothing happens. No loading bar shows up in the browser. The site itself doesn’t even show its spinner for a bit. This garbage time can be a fraction of a second or multiple seconds depending on how shitty your internet is. And I hate it with a passion. And there’s no way to fix it without hacky workarounds. opens in a new tab Pain.

The second problem can absolutely be fixed with Astro since it primarily relies on either static page generation (SSG) or server-side rendering (SSR), both of which make the browser show a loading bar immediately upon requesting a new page like it should. The first problem is still TBD because I haven’t pushed this site to prod yet, but I have a feeling since Astro’s whole entire shtick is SSG, it should have better optimization on that front.

Since I deliberately made this site text-focused and light on visual complexity, making everything work on Astro was surprisingly easy. There was of course a learning curve with all the ways Astro does things differently, but most problems I ran into were able to be resolved in the same sitting I found them in. I was even able to reuse some of the libraries I was already using to make the porting process easier. All in all, this site should work pretty much the same as it did under Next.js… but better opens in a new tab . (I know, fuck this character and fuck this show but i think this meme fits here ironically lol)

The true test for Astro will come when I deploy it, though. I have never actually deployed Astro before, but since it uses (p)npm for running deployment commands, it should be easy to automate with PM2 opens in a new tab like I already do with Next.js. I hope it uses less resources than Next.js so I can actually leave my site running while it’s updating, but time will tell.

The simplest way to fix that problem, of course, is to throw more money at the problem by upgrading to a better VPS. However, due to issues with censorship of “pornographic content” opens in a new tab (parts of this article are a little sus but the big idea of “if you host a fediverse instance that doesn’t completely ban nsfw content, you could get rocked by Hetzner” is scary to me), I don’t really feel comfortable staying with Hetzner. I’ve used Vultr before but they’re pretty expensive, so I might just say fuck it and move back to Linode lmao.

Hopefully, all of this change will be for the better and not for the worse. I’m rapidly running out of energy and I’m suddenly feeling very weird for no reason so I think I need to stop writing lol. also SOMEONE’S USING BONE CONDUCTION HEADPHONES RIGHT NEXT OT ME AND THEY’RE ORANGE AND THEY’RE USING EAR PLUGS WHAT IS THIS ABSOLUTELY INSANE STRAT I NEED TO INVESTIGATE THIS (one day)

right music link uuhhhhh here’s something that was in my watch later feed for a billion years opens in a new tab ktnxbye

[ this is not finished. it will never be finished. fuck you ]

(note to self: if this becomes 100+ lines, just make it a fucking blog post jesus christ)

Yeah, it’s been a while since I made an update to this site. But hey! I got an actual post this time!!!!

Since I’m writing this while I am still working on editing the post, I’m going to leave a checklist here of things I want to work on surrounding the site before I publish a new article.

Syntax Highlighting

This post uses a lot of code blocks and code strips (what I’m calling “monospace” formatting). I’m really proud of where my syntax highlighting and code block functionality is right now. However, I want to make a couple of tweaks and updates to make my implementation first-class.

First, I need to do a quick check on whether syntax highlighting in code blocks works without JavaScript. In my eyes, it should, since all of the processing happens on the server-side and all the client gets is a bunch of <span>’s with different colors attached to them. If it doesn’t, I need to figure out why and fix that before publishing.

Ideally, my site should require as little client-side scripting as possible, if any. The main reason I moved away from Zonelets (a popular blog template for Neocities) is because of how it required client-side scripting to even function properly and let you see what posts are on the site. Especially after I moved away from Neocities, a platform that is built around banning server-side scripting, that reliance on client-side scripting to make up for that slack seemed kinda silly now that I can use server-side scripting.

I know it’s kinda silly to want as little JS as possible on a site powered by JS/TS in the backend and on a platform designed around single page applications & routing… but hey, a girl can have her cake and eat it too sometimes.

The other main thing regarding syntax highlighting I wanted to check is how to get it to work with Tailwind’s automatic theming. Currently, the site switches from light to dark mode with the browser / OS — there is no way for the user to set it differently. That’s something I want to change in the future, but for now it makes things Just Work™ a little better because I can use Tailwind’s automatic light/dark theming system to change colors based on theme.

Before, I just had the MDXCodeBlock component change its entire theme depending on whether the browser is in light or dark mode. This had two problems: the theme only updated once, and it updated slightly after the rest of the site is themed properly. The theme is set to light mode by default, so in dark mode, the theme would be too dark for half a second before the theme check actually goes through and the code block theming fixes itself. That is very bad.

My thinking is that since what gets sent to the browser is a bunch of <span>’s with colors slapped on them anyway… what if I make those individual colors themed instead of changing what colors to slap on depending on the theme? The easiest way to do this would be to make a new theme where instead of defining the color by a color: attribute in style, the color is defined by classes. That way, not only can I build a theme with my existing Tailwind colors and themed around my site, but I can also give all tokens two colors — one for light, and one for dark — using the dark: prefix I already use in the rest of my site.

I am slowly realizing that I will almost forever be struck with the YGS curse until I stop having things to tweak on my blog.

I’m not sure how I feel about that. On one hand, I want to make this site into another platform of sorts for smallweb tech people. On the other hand, I want to actually write blog posts once in a while. So… I think I may be putting that former aspect on hold until I get into a good rhythm with my… ugh… “content”. I hate that word so much.

Also I just now realized you can totally get away with just using HTML’s bult-in <audio controls> player for embedding audio into your site. So, I’m probably just going to do that for my narrated articles until I get enough complaints about it not having things like speed controls or etc. And there will always be the podcast feed for people who want more controls.

I just pushed a whole bunch of updates to the blog so I think my next blog post will be about all of that and how I feel about having had this site up for just about two months (I think). I need to write. Aaaaaaa.

I heard this in a Starbucks and I had a hell of a time looking it up so here it is for you to enjoy. opens in a new tab Thanks!

I survived my summer class. I think. I haven’t checked my grades yet but last I saw it I got a C. C’s get degrees. Especially when you do half of the classwork within three days holy mother of god how did i live

Right now, I’m in Kentucky visiting some very special people. I might make a blog post about the journey, but I’m not sure how much detail I want to give in a fully public space like this site. I’m also not sure how much detail I can really give in general. It’s pretty much just “I got an emergency lift to the bus stop, rode Greyhound for eight hours, I shat in a McDonalds, and that’s the story.” Actually now that I list all of that out I probably could make a decent sized post about all of that, hmm. Maybe I’ll do that. But now I’ve got so many ideas for blog posts but never really committing to any of them that I feel halfway to Malamaroo again. I need to square my sights on one idea and stick with it.

Now that I have a bunch of free time finally, I’m going to try working on the narrated article system for real this time. I want to make it work with and without Javascript: my site is currently fully functional without Javascript and I want to keep it that way for the two people who like that. I also want the UX to blend in nicely with the text-first minimal aesthetic I’ve got going on.

I also probably need to do some updates to the header, especially on mobile, as well as add some enhancements to the site for mobile in general. The header is slightly jank on my iPhone 12 mini and I think the best solution is to make a version of the header that feels “designed” for mobile like it does for desktop. I also have noticed that blog post images are a little wonky on mobile especially if I’ve resized them (what works on desktop does not work on mobile lmao), so I think what I’ll do is just disable that sizing if you’re on mobile… I need to figure out how to do that through JSX though.

So yeah, this next week or so is looking really bright both for my personal life and my projects. Hopefully you actually get to see some stuff from me other than journal entries within a few days.

and in case you didn’t catch my last “now” entry LISTEN TO THIS RIGHT FUCKING NOW opens in a new tab

I think I finally fixed my sleep schedule. For now. I’m actually really proud of myself for finally getting into a morning groove. I feel way better when I’m actually up in the mornings: waking up in the afternoon seems to lay some weird sort of lethargy on my day and it’s hard to motivate myself to get anything productive done.

I’m also about to finish my summer class catch up apocalypse. Got to read a bunch of cool stories written by fellow classmates, and imo no matter what grade I get, that alone makes this class worth it for me.

Currently sitting in my local Starbucks getting comfortable before starting back up on my work. I have some plans with an IRL friend later today, so hopefully that will be a good self-reward for making it through my summer class. I’ve been reeeeaaaally stir-crazy this summer and I can’t wait for it to end lmao. Once the fall semester starts up, there will be a lot more excuses to be out and about and I’ll feel like myself again.

I think during the free couple of weeks after this, I’ll start working on a couple of things that are holding me back from pursuing the next phase of my website:

• The narrated article implementation is long overdue. I’ll probably use it to double as my next blog post (I’ll talk about all the updates I’ve done to this website and go into detail on how I implemented the narrated articles & the podcast Feed… with the article itself coming out with narration on day one :3)
• Still, I want to get one more blog post under my belt on top of that. I think the idea I had for a blog post on Geminispace is the best lead to follow. I really really want to make an article exploring Geminispace, and following up on this hyperfixation might be my best chance to actually buck YGS Every Friday Syndrome, at least for a bit.
• This will also be a good opportunity to implement a couple of miscelaneous pages under an “extras” hub on the navbar (which, yes, is getting progressively longer and longer to the point where I might need to rework the header layout for mobile finally lol). I want to bring back the Battlefield 4 Chat Simulator (cause it would be funny), but I also want to add a page for cool Geminispace resources, a “starwall” where I shout out cool indie web sites that I find on my travels, and a “/slash” page where I compile multiple “slash pages” opens in a new tab into one big page (so I don’t have 50 billion little tiny pages that serve only one very niche purpose lmao). Next.js’s routing & middleware features, gob dless.

Finally, whoops, I ever even published my last journal & sharefeed update. To make up for that, I’m gonna add a ton of sharefeed posts this time around. One day, I should make a system that lets me set sharefeed posts in the future, and if I do so, they only show up on the feed once that date has arrived (basically a barebones scheduling system for sharefeed entries). That will make it a lot easier to deliver… “cOnTEnT” (ugh hate that word) on a consistent basis without having to have a superhuman noggin.

Here’s an album I’ve been listening too for a hot minute. opens in a new tab . Funny story about this one: I first discovered this band from a CD left in the CD player of my current car when I first got it. I’m glad I did lmao

I finally got the opportunity to have breakfast. And of course, I decided to make it Taco Bell breakfast because I’m a gremlin like that.

This morning feels way better than most of the mornings that I usually have… probably because I actually made it to the morning. I absolutely crashed yesterday, sleeping over 14 hours and waking up at midnight. So even though I have currenlty been awake for eight hours, I still get to exist in the morning hours that I would usually sleep though because of my body’s lethargy and desire to sleep in.

So now I get to sit in a Taco Bell and watch videos about how Modern Warfare 2019 somehow looks better than a game that came out in 2023 opens in a new tab . It’s funny how multiple animations in MWIII were clearly re-used from MW19… it’s almost like Sledgehammer were on a massive crunch or something.

(08/09: I never finished this entry, so here’s a jungle mix as an apology lol opens in a new tab )

I’m currently editing this MDX document on a 7th generation iPad. I’m serious.

In an attempt to reduce distractions, I finally charged up my iPad and brought it and only it (…okay, and a notebook and pencils but that’s it) to Starbucks. I wish I had decent headphones with me to listen to music on but for some reason all of my food headphones keep blowing up breaking down way quicker than they have any right to. Pain.

I forgot how surprisingly usable this Logitech Combo Touch keyboard & trackpad are. The trackpad is definitely not the best (hell, it still has an actual hinge that is really awkward to press down on), and the keyboard is slightly cramped, but all absolutely works. In fact, in terms of the key travel and feel in general… it’s honestly comparable in quality to my M1 MacBook Air. Wild.

For some additional context, I first bought this iPad in Christmas of 2019. That means that this iPad is 4 years old getting very fucking close to 5. And it’s still kickin’. My older Intel MacBook Air is either from 2017 or 2019 (can’t remember which right now but leaning 2017) and that felt absolutely ancient. This iPad? It’s fine. It’s definitely long in the tooth — but considering the closest upgrade with ideal accessories would make me pay just as much as I did for my M1 Air… I absolutely don’t feel like I need to upgrade any time soon. And if I do? I might just go for the mini… when it gets the M-series update (pretty please Timmothy Microwave??? 🥺👉👈).

I’m gonna try to push a sharefeed update too, but I’m not sure how that is going to go. I’m currently using a text editor built into the git client Working Copy. It works… but it definitely is not feature rich nor very language sensitive. Hopefully it will do just as fine editing JSON as it is editing markdown though.

By the way, if you’re reading this, please check out my RSS feeds and shoot me an email about what you think of them. I haven’t had anyone comment to me about them yet, and I wanna make sure they’re working good for people other than me. Also, I want to start working on making journal updates crosspost on both my RSS feed and my social medias (cohost, fedi, & bsky). Just a little bit of that Al Gore Rhythm goodness never hurt anyone! 0:3

It might also be a good idea to turn some of my longer threads on my Telegram channel (yes, I have one, you can’t have it lol) into journal updates on here when I don’t have a lot to say. I wanna keep up this weird streak of actually writing shit going, and repurposing some of my older content here would help a lot with that.

Anyways thanks for reading, next blog post coming never I only write journal posts now sorry not sorry ex dee

oh and here’s some lesbian stoner rock just for you opens in a new tab