#web-development

Not really noticeable for users, I don't think, but I changed this website to a Remix app yesterday. Will need to do a bunch of updates to get it back to its former usability for me as the administrator, but in the meantime it should mean big SEO improvements... 💪😎

Well I certainly seem to have achieved my goal of getting myself to use my website more... Spent much of the day fiddling with it. Added a fancy little background pattern I like and integrated an API to replace the GPS coordinates with a place name (hover your mouse over the blue pin at the top right and it says "Cochecton, New York", for instance). Also, my main use of the site is that it has a little control panel that only I see when logged in that has a custom email client I built. Emails I receive get routed through the Postmark API, which sends a post query to my server which I then write to my site's database. I've never gotten around to dealing with attachments, which come as a massive string of random characters. Today, finally set it up so that said random characters get converted into files and sent to my Amazon Web Services hosting account so I can access them. Satisfying little achievement for a lazy day. My next goal is to integrate Socket.IO to notify me of new emails, but no idea if/when I'll get to that. Also managed to finally start revising the novel. Honestly I'd been reluctant; so often I set out to fix up a flawed draft in editing, then get so turned off in revisiting it that I shove it in a drawer. Encouragingly though, I gave myself such a strict checklist of what I was actually looking for in this read-through that I was able to go through it in a more detached way than usual.

It's funny with this site--being both the developer and the user, as I find myself as a developer trying to think up ways to entice the user to actually use it.

Haven't actually done any work to the site in months, but randomly, yesterday, I thought of changing my cover and profile pictures regularly as sort of a fun daily update / snapshot of the day. So farewell to my Rick & Morty cover and hello to code and DayQuil (I've had a cold or allergies or something miserable for the better part of two weeks now). And adieu to my dashing photobooth profile I've used for years, and hello to age, malnourishment, and a nasty Movember mustache. (those are what the pictures are at the moment anyway--if you're reading this later than Tuesday, they might be different...)