The invisible man somehow also possesses superhuman strength and anger issues? Hilarious.
Reading notesHello, I’m Mykal.
Software engineer at Railway. This is where I share what I’m building, thinking about, and reading. More about me
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Wild how much this concept is resonating with me as a former Software Engineer now Professional Prompter. Very prescient.
Reading notesThe man do be invisible
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Fun short read for Halloween 🎃
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My contribution to the red rising discourse is as follows: - red rising is a 7.5 - golden son is a 9.5 - morning star is a 9 They will be extremely hard to adapt into movies or tv without watering them down so I'm optimistic but keeping expectations low.
It's wild to me that real-estate agents are allowed to run for positions in the city they operate in and actively make real estate deals while in office.
Models usually write way more code than needed for an elegant solution still. This makes perfect sense considering more output tokens = more revenue for the labs.
A really honest and fun read. Would recommend it to anyone who is early to mid career and wondering if any of it really matters.
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I've been putting this off forever. Seems like a slow start so I will probably keep putting it off unfortunately.
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Fantastic concept! It's not often I get so "addicted" to a book. Read it in around a day. The worst part by far was the ending which seems to be a trend with Blake Crouch's books in my experience. Recursion being the only exception I guess.
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A new favourite! A dreamy, psychological, and deeply human read.
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New job at Railway!
I've joined the team as a Support Engineer
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Another fun read in the DCC series. A slow burn as far as this series goes, and I'm starting to find the pace / themes a bit dragging at this point. The twist at the end is very fun, so I'm hopeful the next book in the series takes advantage of the opportunity
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outside of interview prep, this book does provide a lot of good distributed computing fundamentals and provides lots of opportunities to go dig deep on a specific topic. I've enjoyed skimming through it! I can't say I've learned a huge amount but that probably has more to do with my experience than the book! If you havent done much system design / distributed / async work in practice ymmv and this is probably a great resource for you to kick off from.
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Guiding principles
some questions that I hope will lead me to a full life
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[Spoilers] DNF on chapter 6. Couldn't take it seriously for a long list of reasons but it obviously works for a lot of people- just not for me I suppose!
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A solid book but probably the worst entry in the series. A more adult hunger games with some nuggets of very fun world building. The following books are so good it's worth a read
Reading notesExcerpt of David Foster Wallace interview from 1996
Helluva quote
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I read this to my son expecting yet another simple parable and was pleasantly surprised by the complexity. I remembered very little about reading this book as a kid; basically nothing besides the fact that it was on my bookshelf. the fact that I've been thinking about this childrens book for the last few days is enough for it to get 5 stars in my book. While the text is simple the emotions and actions of the character are very real and complicated. give it a read if you haven't since you were a kid. you might be surprised by how you feel by the end.
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Copying to the Windows Clipboard from WSL
How to easily copy content from your WSL shell to your Windows clipboard
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Setting up the 1Password CLI on WSL
1Password's CLI is great but their WSL docs aren't.
Read postAI is a lot like candy
Read postDotfiles on windows
automating setup of a windows machine via a dotfiles repo
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I really loved this story. It's shocking how prescient the author was considering this book was released in 1909.
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Great start and really strong world building but no satisfying ending is bringing this from 4 down to 3 stars. I'm left wanting more which is both good and a bit frustrating!
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Just a little too heady for me I think. I like my horror a little more fast and lose than this was.
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some stories are fantastic and new favorites. some stories are alright; a little dated or fall just short. none are bad! definitely worth a read.
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Loved this quick read in "The Captive's War" universe. As per the novella's from the Expanse, this does a fantastic job at building out the series universe all while telling an enticing story that explores the ever-encroaching impacts of technology on the human experience. The "Live Suit" tech in this book makes soldier's effectively super human, but it's not clear how much of their humanity the tech takes away.
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Cool Tools: CLI Edition
Some CLI stuff I've been using lately.
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While I loved the concepts in Alien Clay, it took almost half the book for me to feel pulled in. I'm not sure why it took so long for me to feel drawn in; This book has everything I love about scifi but I had to force myself to pick it up.
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Fantastic collection of short story horrors. I first heard of Christian from the Creep Cast podcast; they read a few of his stories and they were fantastic so I went looking for more. If you're looking for fresh ideas in the format of short horror, this is it! Can't wait to see what else Christian comes up with.
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This is my first time reading Stephen King! I figured that short stories would be a great place to start and it turns out they were. I enjoyed them, and will probably pick up another Stephen King book soon.
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My first latte leaf
It only took 2 years of casual practice!
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I enjoyed The fall of Hyperion a lot more than the first book in the series but it's still not living up to the hype for me unfortunately. I love when Sci-fi authors go into depth on how future systems work both technically and in society. The societal and interpersonal implications of the "Hyperion" universe on it's inhabitants is well covered so far in this series. Unfortunately, the books seem to leave a lot of the crunchy technical explanations out. I still enjoyed the book, but I think one of the reasons it's not hitting quite as hard as I'd like it to is the lack of "hard" science fiction goodies. The other piece that's been irking me about this series is the seemingly ever-present misogyny. Nine out of ten times, if the author is writing about a women, they're somehow minimized, sexualized, compared to a man, or put into the context of their male partner. Early on, I thought this was an intentional flaw in some the character's and gave it a pass. It's presence in this book seemed more trite. Obviously you can't hold a book from the 80s to today's standards. That said, I've read a lot of Ursula K. Le Guin and Isaac Asimov from the same time period or older; I didn't notice this in any of their books. It was present enough here that it left a bad taste in my mouth.
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[Spoilers] I'm conflicted about this book. I loved some of the chapters and disliked others. Chapter 4 was one of the most heart wrenching things I've ever read, but some of the others were either mediocre or have aged poorly. My review may change, but 3 stars feels good for now.
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[Spoilers] TLDR: This is how I felt about Robert Neville throughout the whole read. While I found some of the concepts in this book interesting, I found the protagonist so unrelatable and unlikable from the start that it ruined the book for me. I do realize that Robert sort of being a monster in the new world is the whole point, but I think this was supposed to be a twist at the end, not something I felt throughout the whole read. I do realize that realistically, any person in this situation would not be mentally sound. That said, from the neck-breaking, 180 degree shift that is "this vampire reminds me of my dead daughter" to "I want to sexually assault this vampire" that happens more than once in the book, to the pseudo scientific experiments on the infected (that also look like his daughter!). The guy comes across as a self-righteous, creepy, overconfident weirdo from the first chapter on. I didn't ever really feel conflicted in my dislike of Robert. The exception being when he tries to connect with the stray dog near the middle of the story. Around that point I started to think that there may be some room for Robert to have some moral redemption. After the dog passes, he seems to realize that the vampires are still alive, just infected, and likely mentally struggling. After that revelation, he decides he needs to hunt and kill his infected neighbor (what?). From there, he didn't really recover in my eyes. He knew that he was killing conscious beings, and just kept at it! Beyond my issues with Robert Neville as a sympathetic anti-hero, some of the horror in this book is dated to the point that I burst out laughing while reading it. The concept of vampires waiting outside the protagonist's house and flashing him to try and lure him outside but not being smart enough to open a door is probably the earliest example of this. All of that said, I realize that this was an early entry in the modern psychological horror scene, and it much of it seems dated because it inspired today's tropes. I think I would have liked this book a lot more if Neville didn't seem so far-off from where I would mentally be in his shoes.
Reading notesDebugging Crashing Containers
Use this little trick to figure out why your containers won't start
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Dither It!
Make dithered images with this sweet lil web tool.
Read postBots on Bluesky
Making bots on Bluesky is super easy!
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Another banger.
Reading notesHow to test NGINX configs locally
How I quickly validate NGINX configs locally via the /etc/hosts file.
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Can't wait for the next one - If you love the expanse series you'll probably love this book - its a slow burn, and ends on a bit of a cliffhanger but is 100% worth the wait and confusion.
Reading notesThe Twelve-Factor App
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Finished reading
Network Programming with Go: Code Secure and Reliable Network Services from Scratch
100% read 8/10 rating
If you want a condensed intro to ansible, docker, kubernetes, and Linux this is probably a great place to start. It provides a solid intro to the concepts you'd need to work as a developer, or jr. SRE/sysadmin. It provides examples with a companion GitHub repo, and expects you to work while reading the book. If you have some significant experience with these tools it might even be worth the read for a few tidbits, new tools, and some tips; which is mostly what I came away with. My biggest issues is that the pacing feels a bit off at times. For example, the book provides a relatively quick summary of docker containers and then throws you right into the deep-end of Kubernetes. That said, it does a great job at covering the general surface area and providing further reading or resources if you're interested; just don't expect this book to be at all comprehensive. I'll definitely be recommending to others looking to get started in working with and managing applications hosted on Linux or in Linux containers as it provides some solid fundamentals.
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As a team lead with a passive interest in management, this book was a great intro to what engineering management could (and should) look like. I took a whole ton of notes and will definitely be using this as a reference moving forward. If I'm being honest, I'm surprised by how many takeaways I'm walking away with. If you're in any sort of leadership position in tech I'd definitely suggest giving this a read.
Reading notes
This is a quick, fun read. If you like Adam Ellis elsewhere, you'll like "Bad Dreams in the Night". If you're going into this expecting "pulp" horror anthologies with great art that's exactly what this book has to offer. While some of the stories offer unique concepts there's definitely heavy use of trope and cliche; if you're looking for something that's going to blow your mind, build tension, or really catch you off guard this probably isn't it.
Reading notesPICO-Snake
A snake clone I put together in PICO-8
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Using VS Code as an SSH Client
Need to edit files on your server? Just use VS Code.
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Building /follows
A page the highlights who's blogs I'm following
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I got this book as a gift from my wife and I was a little skeptical. I love me some hank green TikToks and some blog brothers, but I never knew him to be a writer. I am so glad that I took a chance and read this! It's one of the most fun books I've read in the last year. It is a little millennial cringe (ala Hank Green) but it's endearing! The intersection between scifi, internet culture, and the effects of fame kept me constantly interested in something. My only gripe is that some of the characters were a little flat but given the narrator's (April) tendencies this actually arguably makes sense. To keep it spoiler free I'll leave that there.
Reading notes
[Spoilers] My wife bought this for me for Christmas. It's definitely aimed for kids (think 8-12) but I thought it was cute; definitely something I could see myself reading to my kid at night. Its also a really quick read (took me around 3.5 hours) so I could see it being great for kids that way too.
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[Spoilers] 3.5 stars or 7/10 Solid plot, characters, and humour but it just didn't grab me in the way I hoped it would for some reason. General exploration of what it means to be human is always a hit for me and the author introduced some perspectives that I had not ever heard of or considered. I would definitely read other books by this author!
Reading notesMDChat
Building a Markdown reading, AI powered, chatbot
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This book seems actively hostile to the reader. Ive since learned this is just how William Gibson writes so I think this is just not for me
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I really wanted to love this book and while the content is engaging it feels very unorganized and a little too informal given the subject matter. The book constantly references content that is literal reading hours away from the current point (both in sections further into the book and sections right at the beginning). While I don't mind this occasionally it felt like every 5 minutes there was a "more on this in chapter 4!". I feel like a good restructure could have kept the content the same and prevented the back and forth. My other biggest pet peeve was the author always mentioning/name dropping experts who they'd consulted with for the book but not getting in deeper with those experts on their areas of study. I just wish there were more sections penned by other academic sources with their findings on cults! I love some stats! Even more tangential stories from research would be awesome. Overall if you're interested in modern cults and the overall "cultish" nature of society I'd still say this book is worth a read! There are just a few glaring details that really kept me from loving this book outright.
Reading notesIntro to Large Language Models
A great intro to LLMs by OpenAI's Andrej Karpathy
Read postPhotos as notes; some thoughts on UX
I often use photos as notes even though I have a perfectly fine notes app on my phone. Why?
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[Spoilers] I read through and loved the foundation series; I wanted to read through the empire series as an origin story for the foundation's "empire" sounded interesting. I was expecting foundation-esque stories across generations providing peaks into the flawed rise of a ubiquitous empire. Unfortunately, the book is mostly a 1950s dry romance between a plastic space princess and an entitled college kid. The story lacks the scale and philosophical-scifi magic of the foundation series and all that's left is wordy dialogue, wooden characters, and some Sci-fi babble about the logistics of spacecraft and how planets are distributed in solar systems (this comes up a lot for some reason). I was left really disappointed. I usually love asimov's writing, but this is the first book I've read by him where I see its flaws. I might still read the second book in the series out of morbid curiosity, but if you're looking for more foundation, I would skip this one.
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Finished reading
Kill It with Fire: Manage Aging Computer Systems (and Future Proof Modern Ones)
100% read 8/10 rating
Bun vs. Deno
Bun and Deno seemed mostly the same to me, so I wrote this post to sort out my thoughts.
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npkill
easily delete all your old node_modules folders
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[Spoilers] This is a great read if you're in the mood for some head-spinning concepts. Lots of really great ideas that are still swimming around in my head a week or so after finishing the book. That said, a lot of the stories don't really mesh well together, concepts are not always explained without contradiction, and overall a lot of the ideas feel unfinished. I think the author thought so too, given their later work. I've been reading through qntm's catalog from newest to oldest. Lots of concepts within this book are explored in-depth in their more recent books (Ra, There is no Antimemetics Division, Valuable Humans in Transit) are touched on in "Fine Structure". If you liked those books, you'll likely enjoy this one even if it's just interesting to see how qntm's ideas evolved over time.
Reading notesMarkdown Images are an anti-pattern
Thank you, Dave Rupert.
Read postSystems Analyst II at UFV
Moving on up as a Systems Analsyt 🎉
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No one owns their own video games anymore
Why I still buy physical media in 2023
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Great read!
Reading notes
Google Colab
Read postBlog to Mastodon automation
I used pipedream to automatically cross-post my content out to Mastodon.
Read postKurzgesagt - In a Nutshell
One of my favourite YouTube channels.
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Putting AI back in the bag
Humans suck at putting things down when they feel like there's potential for good or profit. AI is a great example.
Read postThe End of Front-End Development
A great blog post that sums up how I feel about GPT models.
Read postContainers and The Enterprise-Vendor Feedback Loop
Enterprise and Enterprise Vendor's both improve at a glacial pace; why?
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A quick and fun sci-fi read that fails to have a cohesive narrative. The first half of the book consists of several bite-sized stories about "Ed" and his college roommate. These stories are quirky little vignettes that usually toy with 1 or 2 gear-grinding sci-fi concepts. If the whole book would have kept up with that formula this would be a 4+ star rating for me. Unfortunately the concept starts to fall apart when an overarching narrative is shimmed between chapters. While the chapters are still relatively encapsulated, there are a number of macguffins and messy story points that sort of kill the magic present in the first half in my opinion. There is also a weirdly sexist description of a "geek girl" that the main characters are friends with. That entire chapter could be taken out or rewritten and the book would be better for it; it soured the experience for me. I've read most of QNTMs other work and this is my least favorite so far. It's still a quick and fun read but it won't stick with me like Ra or VHIT have.
Reading notes
Cabin on an Island
Read postHot Dog Renaissance
Read postStarting a Garden 🍅
I redid my site again; this post goes over why, and what's changed this time around.
Read postSpicy Peanut Bowl 🥜
A recipe for one of my favourite feel-good meals.
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Good Cappuccinos
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Finished reading
The new international Webster's pocket computer dictionary of the English language
100% read 6/10 rating
Picked this book up for a whopping $2.50 at a second hand book store today and skimmed through it for around an hour. The first half of the book is a standard dictionary and the last half acts as a computing how-to guide. I was surprised at how relevant so many of the terms listed in the first half still were today. Some terms have definitely evolved but many remain unchanged despite techs leaps and bounds forward over the last 22 years. The last half of the book is titled "an introduction to personal computers". It explains concepts like "using a pointer" and lists useful idioms like "when the chips are up, the computer hums". This section was definitely a lot more fun to skip through for all the outdated references and devices listed. Overall the book was likely a pretty solid guide for getting into computers in 2000 (when it was originally released). Now it's a bit of a comedic time capsule of computers in the early aughts that's worth a quick skim.
Reading notes2022 → 2023
a retrospective on 2022 and some goals for 2023
Read postNew Years 2023
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Flipnote Hatena
A friend of mine shared a Flipnote Hatena archive site that sent me down a rabbit hole.
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Recovering from failed Nextcloud updates
I've found that my nextcloud updates fail ~1/3 of the time. These steps usually save me.
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AOC 2022: Solution for Day 6
My solution for advent-of-code day 6
Read postAOC 2022: Solution for Day 3
My solution for advent-of-code day 3
Read postAOC 2022: Solution for Day 4
My solution for advent-of-code day 4
Read postAOC 2022: Solution for Day 5
My solution for advent-of-code day 5
Read postAOC 2022: Solution for Day 2
My solution for advent-of-code day 2
Read postAOC 2022: Solution for Day 1
My solution for Advent of Code 2022 Day 1
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One of the best sci-fi and speculative fiction anthologies I've ever read. I started it yesterday and read all but the last chapter in my first sitting. I'll try to keep this review spoiler free, but I will be discussing format and general concepts so be warned! Some stories breathe fresh life into otherwise well explored topics and others prospect concepts I've yet to come across. To avoid spoilers, I won't go into detail but if you're interested in the intersection between humanity, sentience, the internet and technology in general you'll like most of the stories in this anthology. qntm uses varied mediums to tell their stories ranging from a series of "tweets", a blog post, wiki articles and your standard third-person limited fiction perspective. The shifting format kept me on my toes from story to story and really made the book feel fresh all the way through. Many of the stories feel like they were pieces of media or documentation snatched right out of an alternate reality, or some near future largely in part to the format's they're written in. I was also impressed with the level of world-building done in such short stories (especially so in the wiki articles). So much is left unsaid about these worlds, and I was left after most story's theory crafting about the surrounding situations mentioned in passing and the term's left undefined. If you love short and sweet sci-fi that's not afraid to get a little technical, I can't recommend this book more!
Reading notesMIT, Sans-elon
The MIT license, but Elon Musk and all of his companies are explicitly denied usage.
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CSR generation script
sometimes the only option is to do SSL manually. This article is for those times.
Read postWhy every company is a tech company
Tech is at the core of virtually every business and people would be better off to understand that.
Read postThe incoming internet switch-up
Things are changing fast and all at once on the internet.
Read postAlways take screenshots
You can't depend on your work to live forever, take screenshots.
Read postCauliflower fried rice wraps
a 20-minute cauliflower rice recipe
Read postPioneers, Settlers, and City Planners
some notes on archetypes and exceling at work.
Read postOn the Steam Deck
My initial thoughts on the steam deck after a few weeks with it
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Scheduling Python jobs
how to run scheduled python jobs on linux and windows
Read postOn hydroponic gardens
I'm going to try growing some herbs and veggies inside with hydroponics.
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The adventures of Ash
My cat, Ash, suddenly passed away this weekend. This post is in his memory.
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Remembering Ash
Read postTelegraf and InfluxDB for server monitoring
A quick guide on system monitoring with Telegraf, and Influx DB.
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Get any Shopify product as JSON
If you ever need to pull Shopify product info, this tip will be a huge help.
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My AeroPress Latte
An AeroPress Latte recipe for the AeroPress GO!
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Why I Love Self-Hosting
A writeup on why I love self-hosting complete with drawbacks.
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Improving Anchor Links
This post outlines a few little tricks you can use with your anchor links
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What's Your Go-To Web Stack
An exercise in exploring the stack I'm currently comfy with.
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My Coffee Setup
I've gotten into Coffee lately (cliché, I know) and wanted to summarize my coffee setup.
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Docker Rocks 🐳
Once Docker and Docker-compose clicks, it makes dev ➡️ launch so much easier
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Autosave on the Web
Using native browser APIs to autosave HTML forms
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mykal.social
Read postDigital Gardens
my thoughts on building digital gardens
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