Latest Changes

This is a play by play of every change made to my site, big or small.

May 2023

  • Migrated fully over to the new app structure in Next.js.
  • Backported all of the changes I made to the Astro version of the site.
    • Annual review components
    • New spotify component
    • New carrot clicker

January 2023

  • My annual review now uses entirely self fetching components, which should make life easier in future.
  • Moved to prerendering pages wherever possible. Most of the site is static markdown, no reason to rerender it for every request.
  • Launched the new Astro version of this site! I'll probably write it up at some point.
  • Added a new Example component for, would you believe it, examples. Can see it on my tailwind article.

December 2022

  • Started a complete rebuild in Astro. So far I'm really liking the whole "island" concept.
  • Honestly, just lots of porting things, I'm not going to list everything. Read the rest of the changelog, I've ported everything except whatever you can no longer find.
  • In an attempt to reduce page size my mobile menu is now entirely JS free, and my theme switcher is ~25 lines of pure JS.
  • The and Age component on my About page are now pure JS.
  • Rebuilt my Destiny Timer with vanilla JS. It's a bit barebones at the moment, but it works.
  • My spotify embed can now display the current track, and it will update automagically.
  • Completely rewrote the backend logic of my Carrot Clicker game, and switched the frontend from React to Preact.
  • now .

November 2022

  • Spent pretty much the whole month banging my head against the new server components approach in Next.js 13. Honestly the idea sounds brilliant, but I don't think it's something that can easily be retrofitted onto an existing project.

October 2022

  • Rebuilt my grid layout with some new components. Makes it possible to do some fun things.
  • Replaced my mishmash of icons with Lucide.
  • Rebuilt my hearthstone component to be a bit nicer.
  • Updated to Next.js 13. I'm using the new next/link and next/image components, but still lots to play with... Component level data fetching, Layouts, Server components. I'm going to be busy 😊

August 2022

  • Removed sentry. It was useful, but not really necessary, and it felt a bit invasive. I've decided to just write code without errors instead.
  • Fixed my steam profile image. They'd changed the CDN domain.
  • Fixed issues with my diablo and 12in12 integrations.
  • Tidying up my code for loading/typing my articles, projects and pages.
  • Started using the frontmatter VS Code plugin for editing content. It seems pretty cool so far.
  • Removed some dependencies I wasn't using.

July 2022

  • Articles now show the last time they were updated, based on the git history.
  • Can now view a separate list of my draft articles.
  • Added my current spotify track to the footer.

June 2022

  • Some vague performance improvements and error handling.

April 2022

  • Added some indieweb support.
  • Restyled a lot of older components to match the newer blockier style I'm going for.
  • Finally fixed the issue with the palette in my tailwind article.
  • Fixed an issue where Blizzard's Diablo API being down stopped my site building.
  • Started building a dumb clicker game to pass the time.

March 2022

  • Added my Living Pokedex, complete with some basic filtering.
  • Replaced my layout with a new grid based one, which makes it easier to handle full bleed content.

February 2022

  • Finally got round to adding a mobile menu so that I can have more than 3 items in the menu.
  • Added a Links page with my latest pinboard links.
  • Added a page that shows my Diablo 3 characters using the Blizzard API, because why not.
  • Replaced the IGDB library with a simpler custom fetching library.

January 2022

  • Even though plausible is entirely anonymous and stores no personal information, I've added an opt-out for Plausible tracking to the privacy page.
  • Removed references to my old site, as I've taken it offline

December 2021

  • Added view counts to articles straight from my Plausible stats.
  • Completely replaced Styled Components with Tailwind so I can do things like this.
  • This took ages, and the end result is a site that looks mostly the same.
  • Spotify play button shakes now with high tempo tracks... This is a bug but I kind of like it.

November 2021

  • NextJS 12, and all the other dependencies.
  • Tweaks to some styling.
  • Fixed some issues with the Hearhstone card lists.

October 2021

  • Removed the 'brown' theme option.
  • Custom open graph images for all pages and articles.
  • Other SEO related teaks to metatags.

September 2021

  • Moved from next-mdx-remote to mdx-bundler
  • Removed d2api/date, using Bungie API to get Destiny season dates.
  • Spotify tracks now share an audio player, rather than having a player each.
  • Spotify tracks now bounce along with the music. Sometimes it looks odd.
  • Spotify tracks show the album art and details when playing.
  • Browser theme colour now respects theme choice.
  • Now properly handling the iPhone notch.

August 2021

  • Ported 12 in 12 from my old site, integrating it with IGDB.
  • Refactored several components into a new 'Card' component which I'm now overusing.
  • New Homepage
  • Added a new custom icon system. Check out how I generate my icons from a Figma file
  • Moved theme selection out of the styled-components theme layer and into CSS variables so I can avoid the flash of the default theme.
  • Dynamic favicon based on user theme.

July 2021

  • Better markdown content styling
  • Radix components for toggle groups and collapsible elements.
  • Switched to using Radix Colours instead of a customisable hue, because colour a11y is a hard and I'll let someone else handle it.
  • Added RSS and JSON feeds for articles.
  • Custom Hearthstone decklist components.
  • Ported my Destiny Timer from my old site, and added some Destiny API helpers.

June 2021

  • Updated to Next.js 11.
  • Added some fun Steam API experiements.
  • Added some fun Spotify API fiddling.
  • Better code blocks.
  • A complete rebuild in next.js.
  • I'm currently porting things over from the old Gatsby site.
  • A fully customisable colour scheme. Read more on how I did it.

January 2021

  • Refactored my Destiny Timer to use date-fns since I'm already using it for the age on my about page.
  • Started highlighting my TODOs on the actual site. It seems in keeping with the whole "learn in public" deal. Created a new component to display them consistently. Might look at collating them all into a todo list page of some kind.
  • Updated my 12 in 12 page for 2021, and move last years to a separate page
  • Also trying out Umami for self hosted statistics. It doesn't store anything specific about visitors, and doesn't rely on storing anything client side like cookies, which is nice.
  • Trying out Plausible for stats, because they're privacy focused and store no information, and I love graphs.
  • Made my build pipeline even more complicated.
  • Fixed the logic that works out my age on my about page.
  • Moved that logic into a new <Age> component that makes it more fun.
  • Fixed some a11y issues with my <Flipper> and <Age> components and keyboard navigation.
  • New Year: New faster site.
  • Switched from react to preact, reduced the JS bundle by 25%.

December 2020

  • Finally caved and moved over to Github.
  • Updated a few links on the site from Gitlab to Github.
  • Spent far too long migrating my Gitlab CI over to Github actions.
  • Fixed an iOS rendering issue on Destiny timers.
  • Destiny Xur timer now counts down his leaving time as well as arrival.
  • Updated my 12 in 12 page.
  • Added bit more personality to the 12 in 12 statuses.
  • Rebuild my Destiny timers page.
  • More list style tweaking
  • Added a new <YesScript> component, so that things that require JS can be hidden when JS is disabled.

November 2020

  • Tweaked the header sizing. I like it.
  • Started working on the footer. Still a work in progress, but it's getting there.
  • Added a placeholder page to link to site feeds.
  • Playing with list items again, cannot get them how I want them.

October 2020

  • Added descriptions to RSS feeds.
  • Fixed a few issues so I now have a valid RSS feed and a valid JSON feed.
  • My "builder" docker image only gets rebuilt when it's needed. This makes no difference to you, but it cuts 5 minutes off my deploy times!
  • Simplify the partially active nav logic.
  • Added a bunch of punctuation to this page...
  • Fixed the flipper jumping the page to the top.
  • Fixed print display in dark mode.
  • Added link text when printing.
  • Other printy fixes, like preventing code blocks from spanning pages.
  • Fixed dates on articles.
  • Fixed some transitions that were occuring with reduce motion on.
  • Added active navigation links on child links.
  • Sticky sidebar on 12 in 12.

August 2020

  • More consistent vertical rythm.
  • A new styleguide page.
  • Undid the new header, didn't like it.
  • Tidier, more consistent styling.
  • A much prettier header.
  • Dark toggle moved to header.
  • Mobile menu toggle.
  • Sitemap/robots.txt.
  • Some a11y fixes.
  • Refactored my so it can be used elsewhere.
  • Rejigged my 'draft' functionality.
  • Some nicer styling on article list.
  • An About page!
  • The first attempt at my gallery component.

June 2020

May 2020

  • Hopefully fixed cloudflare caching.
  • MDX support.
  • Tidied up dark mode logic to prevent flashes on toggle button.
  • Respect prefers-reduced-motion for animations.
  • Now with actual under-construction.gif (well, .svg).
  • Slightly tweak code snippet styling.
  • Moved hosting over to a custom docker container, and tweaked all the caching and things.
  • Moved styling over to styled components. Not sure if I'll keep them or not.
  • Linked headers, smart punctuation, smarter internal links. Thanks plugins!
  • Simple dark mode toggle.
  • Banged my face against configuring dokku.
  • Moved back to gitlab pages.
  • Moved from gitlab pages to dokku (this is here so I can see if it worked).
  • Playing with hover/focus effects.
  • Project repo link styling.
  • Images in CMCUCUP.
  • Better footer.
  • Menu generated from code.

April 2020

  • Added PWA goodness with offline support.
  • Some a11y fixes.
  • Some colour and layout.
  • Dark mode.
  • 12 in 12.
  • Added articles listing page.
  • Added projects listing page.
  • Added main navigation.
  • Added post dates to articles.
  • Hide articles from lists if no date.
  • Hide articles from lists if draft.
  • Added new projects page type.
  • Added CMCUCP page.
  • Fixed automatically generated slugs.
  • New version of this site uploaded.
  • Automatic builds and hosting on gitlab pages.
  • Added this /changelog page.