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Hello world, again
I’ve been using computers for a long time. For nearly as long, I’ve been attempting to write about my life and my interests. There are always excuses that keep the practice from sticking: school, career, family… career. The usual.
Technology has always been at the root of the problem for me. I’ve written blog posts in static HTML. I’ve had more failed WordPress implementations and false starts than you can count. I’ve attempted to build custom themes and customize standard ones. But nothing ever really stuck.
I blame it on being a designer—writing code has always been something I did when I had to. To pass a college course. To animate something. To get a job. But it’s not something I’ve ever loved, and certainly not an area where I excel. I stopped writing front-end code when jQuery was still cool. I was pretty great at ActionScript because I got to make my designs move. Eventually, I settled into a career building apps and products, honing my craft and growing into leadership. And coding fell by the wayside.
The explosion of AI in recent years is changing everything. Are there concerning challenges to overcome as a society? Yes. But the pattern isn’t new. Each time a new technological advancement lands, there’s a period of fear and uncertainty, followed by a period of adaptation and growth.
Anthropic and OpenAI’s recent tooling—Claude Code and Codex, respectively—have kicked off an exciting shift for me personally. Code generation has gone from “it’s cool when it works” to being a brand new tool that I have as a designer. I’m starting ideas in code for the first time ever. And I’m doing it all by writing prose, giving clear instructions and feedback much like I would to anyone on my team.
About this site
This site is a first for me across the board. A new tech stack. A new way to deploy. A new way to write code. And I’m having a blast!
The site is built with Astro. Posts are vanilla markdown managed with Astro’s content collection schema. That schema defines the frontmatter fields each post should provide so the build can validate content consistently.
I’ve got basic UI building blocks and a simple theme with Tailwind. The site is hosted on Github Pages, deployed with Github Actions.
Most of all, I’m having fun. I’m writing code by writing paragraphs. I’ve got a new tool to express ideas and try things. And, I’m learning new things and exploring technology again. It’s liberating and exciting.
What comes next
This is just going to be my personal scratch pad. I have some toy apps that I want to build just for me. I have some creative ideas that I’m excited to explore. I might actually do some writing. And I should probably port over years of previous sporadic posting on other platforms.
But mostly, I’m going to keep playing and learning.