Alice in Clouds - webdev

My Tech Stack in 2020

Thu, 10 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Postgres JSON Magic

Sat, 20 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Postgres is the best relational database system. This is law. One of the reasons for this is due to how easily it works with the JSON format. If I'm working with SQL, I'm probably also working with Javascript and Javascript is married to JSON. I am going to go over the built in functions in PSQL that allow queries to return data in json format instead of clunky rows and columns. I used these functions extensively in 2021 and I recommend back end developers check this out.

Docker, Docker, Docker

Thu, 30 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Full stack web development can be daunting to get into until you reach the point where your development environment starts to feel like home. Docker has been the single most important tool for me to get to that point. Whenever I want to create a project that involves a web server and a database, I start with a Dockerfile that lets me spin up a test environment on the fly on my own desktop.

A Solo Development Experience

Mon, 29 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I recently took some time to create a small web application that I ended up calling Svadilfari. This was a project I worked on alone on some weekends around my full-time job. This project is a good example of how I have developed my process of developing personal projects alone. The way I tackled this project was informed by my experiences and failures over the years. I want to go over how I came up with the idea for this project, planned it out and built it. The most important part of this is how and why I made the decisions I did.

Farewell Windows

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Windows would not let me fully remove Copilot, Office/365, or OneDrive. These services should be optional, and their behavior offended me. My focus kept being lost as I could never stop random window focus changes as Copilot tries to advertise itself to me, and 365 download browser tabs never stop opening.

This Blog's Design

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Originally this blog was built from a Pelican boilerplate. Why? No clue. I must have been looking for something free and fast that would plug right into the rest of my work. It does let me generate a blog site from markdown formatted post files which is an excellent feature I enjoy and want to keep. Coming back to this blog, I wanted to start making modifications to it, but everything about how it was built was buried in imported libraries. When I felt blocked on modifying the site, I decided to rewrite it because I'm an adult who can do what I want.