Hello world. I'm back! It's been a long hiatus since I've written anything so here we go. Welcome to my new website! I wanted to share how I made it. I've actually gone through a few iterations of this. So I thought I thought it might be fun to explain how I got here.

The Tech Stack

• TypeScript: I LOVE writing code in TypeScript! It's a tool that I feel makes me a better engineer because I am able to actually get all the thoughts in my head into code.
• NextJS: Initially, in my career working with React, I turned towards tools like Create React App. I loved the flexibility that they provided me, and I was thankful it abstracted the "hard" parts of web development away from me so I could focus on what I was actually building as opposed to how it was configured. However, over time I found that I actually preffered the structure that NextJS gave me, maybe because it abstracts even more things away from me.
• Rebass: I wanted a very lightweight way of doing css-in-js. In the past, I have used jsxstyle to accomplish this, but it did not have the themeing support that I was looking for. Rebass provides a good compromise of primatives I can think in along with an easy way to write styles inline. I love writing styles inline since I feel that they are closer to the actual component.
• MDX: The first time I wrote this, I actually did a stab at it using netlify-cms with just plain markdown in a git based workflow. It was a fun exercise that taught me a lot about NextJS, but I found that I didn't want to write in a CMS and I preffered the comforts of a text editor. As a result, I chose to go with MDX for it's flexibility and ease of use.
• AWS: In the past, I have used AWS a lot for work. It was only natural that I also use it to host my website! After I commit to a repository, CI takes care of the rest! It's pretty magical. The CloudFormation template is pretty generic. The website goes into an s3 bucket that gets distributed over the AWS Cloudfront CDN. I thought about using Netlify and Now for this too, but AWS has just so many fun goodies to choose from.

Look at the color

Everywhere I look, I see blogs with light and dark mode. I wanted to mix things up a little bit and allow for folks have something new and interesting. Once you hit the paint bucket, the default theme will go away and you will see the colors change up. Some AI comes up with it, sometimes AI isn't great, just hit it again if the contrast is bad, or refresh the page. I'm using a service called colormind.io to come up with the colors. Color is a science, and that means formulas can come up with it. As I need more UI elements. I'll use more colors.

What do we do? What do we do?

I used to write fairly often. I've still got a folder of all the blogs I used to have. Many of them are from the days of when I was a Political Science minor. That's not really what I am intested in writing about any more though. There's a lot of software concepts I have learned over the last few years that I would like to use this space to explain and reflect on. Primarily in the React, React-Native, Architecture, and just Engineering in general.

Cheers.