Archive

Way Back When

A look back at early web development: phpBB signatures, Flash and Dreamweaver in college, IE6 hacks and spacer GIFs, CSS3 Pie, and a first job with WordPress.

I've Been Here Before

I asked AI to migrate my site to a hand-rolled CMS with custom writing tools.

Swatcher 2.0

Swatcher has been rebuilt with lessons learned.

A Collection of Music Tools

AI coded music tools I use to write music and learn about the mixing process.

Making More Music

I want to explore different styles, and play whatever it is I feel like playing. This time: soundtrack style music.

Hey, I wrote a song

I've been recording a few bits over the last while, and I've finally put together a song.

What's next for Swatcher

The journey so far, and what's coming next. Is it successful?

Swatcher Updates

What has been going on with Swatcher since launch, what's working, what's changing?

Single Page Application SEO with Edge Functions

Use Netlify Edge Functions and cheerio to inject title, description and theme-color meta tags into a single page app before it loads, improving SEO.

How To: Build and Deploy an API

How to build and deploy an API using Express, TypeScript and Fly.io

Served

Collect recipes from Instagram, TikTok and the web. Build meal plans and shopping lists and compare prices in some Irish stores.

Swatcher Homepage Redesign

Playing around with the Swatcher homepage to simplify things and entice people to explore.

Swatcher

Capture colours from the real world with your camera, explore thousands of paint colours, create palettes and collections.

Swatch This: June 22nd Updates

You can now use text prompts, check colour contrast and view previous results.

Swatcher: Exports

Exporting colour palettes to different formats like JSON, Tailwind, CSS...

Injecting Personality

A couple of minor tweaks to add some personality to this website.

Working with Claude and Images

Sending images to Claude for analysis.

Swatch This

An image analysis tool to generate a colour scheme for you.

Video: Home-cooked Feed Reader

Little walkthrough of my local feed reader and some thoughts.

DNS Propagation

The weight of waiting.

Got Married

Great days. Great rest required.

Tidy Up with Regex

Using regex to quickly tidy up all the areas in my site where I'm using a shortcode instead of markdown links.

Tailwind Is...

I don't get all this hate for Tailwind. It's not going anywhere, so it's probably time to move on.

Using the Least Amount of JavaScript

Applying minimal JavaScript by resorting to less than standard ways of doing things.

The Web Should Be Simple

We sure know how to overcomplicate things. Or maybe we don't understand the building blocks of what makes a website accessible.

Rediscovering the Joy in Coding

Going back to basics by putting aside the typical frameworks and making my own rules.

The Year Ahead

What's the plan for the year? Thinking about what I want to achieve.

Popover API

For many years, we had to do this manually or rely on third-party solutions. Now, though, it's a different world. In this post we'll take a quick look at how it works with a demo.

New Year, New Design

It's a brand new year full of the same old stuff, but hey look, a new design for the site!

Visiting Family & Friends

Visiting the family and their pets back home in Limerick.

Scrollable Container Controls with React Hooks

Revisiting some old code to convert it to using hooks.

Multi-Select Checkboxes with React Hooks

An old code demo revised to use React Hooks.

Lenore and the new routine

Lenore's routine and how it fits around the other two cats.

New Kitten

A new kitten joins the crew

Distant Sound

Small experiment with sound based on scroll distance.

Fixing MS Edge Battery Drain on M1 Mac

Edge was destroying the battery life on my Macbook Air M1

Vue Timeline

An infinite scroll timeline component written for Vue 3.

New Job 🎉

Interesting times when it comes to career progression. Back to React.

My 2020

A recap of the year.

Vue Data Table

Exploring how to tackle a data table in Vue without relying on third-party solutions.

Coping with Bad Dates

Deriving multiple date ranges from a single one when presented with unavailable dates.

IE11 Placeholder Transition Issue

A combination of autoprefixer and transitions styles broke an input in IE11.

DraftJS: Mentions Plugin with Scrolling and Keyboard Navigation

Solving the problem of a scrolling results list with the DraftJS mentions plugin.

Text Selection Particle Effects

Creating particle effects based on text selection using the Web Animations API.

Building an Appreciation System

Using Google Sheets as a back-end, we can record likes on anything we want on a static site.

Self-Host Google Fonts

Self-hosting Google Fonts gives you more control over performance and loading of your fonts.

Image Parallax and Blur with Tornis

Using the Tornis library to create a parallax and blur effect on a cover image while scrolling.

Task Management

How I handle task management - a combination of software with pen and paper depending on the context.

Multi-Select Checkboxes with React

Listen for hotkeys to select multiple checkboxes in a few clicks.

Web Cloaks

A few observations on techniques that are used to disguise a problem with a website.

Clever Logos

A collection of clever logos. Great for getting the brain going when you're looking for inspiration.

Derived Stores With Svelte

Getting up to speed with derived stores in Svelte and how they compare to something like computed properties in Vue.

Scrollable Container Controls with React

Managing a scrollable container with React by adding button controls, and seeing when they should be enabled or disabled.

Vapid CMS

Vapid is a content management system that has a very smart way of letting you focus on the code, while constructing a dashboard based on your templates.

Website Inspiration

A few things that got me excited to try my hand at redesigning my website. That's not to say I'm a designer, cause I'm not.

HTML Imports & Component-Driven Development

Playing around with HTML Imports before deprecation, pining for a native, relatively hassle-free way of building a component library.

Improving Client-Side Performance

A few ways in which we can improve client-side performance focusing on images, third-party scripts and more.

Building a Table of Contents with the Intersection Observer API

How to build a live-updating table of contents using Intersection Observer.

Fathom Analytics

Installing Fathom analytics, an open-source alternative to traditional web analytics, on Heroku.

Avatars.io

Avatars.io lets you quickly grab a URL to an avatar of yours from a few different services

A Signal in the Static

Moving from Craft CMS to Hugo and Netlify

What Do I Know?

The web moves fast, but it doesn't invalidate what you already know.

Create an RSS Feed Reader

Upgrading to webpack 4

Moving from Laravel Mix to webpack 4, and the performance benefits.

Do Not Track

How to use window.doNotTrack to decide when to use tracking.

My Local Environment Timeline

The Weary WordPress Dev

Theming with CSS Custom Properties

Page Visibility API

Use AppleScript to Automate with iTerm

DIY RSS Feed Reader

Building your own Feed Reader with Vue.js and Node

Craft Plugins Browser

A small project to browse Craft CMS plugins by popularity.

Variable Fonts

Client-Side Search with Algolia

Adding client-side search with Algolia.

Building My Site Part III: Fine Tuning

Final tweaks and performance improvements for my website.

Building My Site Part II: Setup

Setting up my new website with Craft CMS.

Building My Site Part I: Decisions

Building my website with Craft CMS.

Building a 'Now Playing' Feature

Show the world what you're listening to because it's important.

Tip for React PropTypes with Storybook

First Seven Jobs

Resourceful Learning

Vue.js and Spotify Experiment

Up and Atom

The (Clip) Path of Least Resistance

Timber and Twig Reignited My Love for WordPress

Expanding menu with GSAP

Lightweight Utility Object

Responsibilities of a Web Person

Getting Started with WordPress and Unit Testing

Pace Yourself

Building a full-screen overlay

A JavaScript approach to a full-screen overlay

Quickly build a simple grid with Sass

Wait, what am I meant to be doing again?

Web Project Boilerplate - Browserify with ES6

Foundation 5.5

Front-end Strategy with a sprinkling of ExpressionEngine