biddiscombe.dev Part 1 - Catching Up

Welcome to the devlog for this site! Yeah, this site, the one thats hosting the devlog. Anyway, it’s new, and it’s not much more than a shell, we’ve not missed much, but we’ll recap and catch up.

The plan is to jot down thoughts, ideas and inspirations throughout the development of the site. Maybe, and not all at once, but over time.

I’ll probably cover various aspects of the development process, including the technologies used, inspiring resources, content creation, deployments, and lessons learned.

To my future self, and any one else that stumbles accross this, I hope you enjoy it!

Why?

I’m an experienced (old 👴) dev who’s worked in a few languages, on a variety of platforms over the course of about 40 years 😢.

What I’ve enjoyed the most is my time on web technologies (IE4 on Windows CE anyone?), it just clicked with me…

Web development is like a digital playground where I can unleash my creativity, build interactive experiences, and make pixels dance to the beat of my code. It’s like finding the perfect rhythm in a symphony of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that just resonates with my soul. - ChatGPT, July 2023

…or something like that, just without the pixel perfect-ness. So that’ll be the focus for this site. It’s time to scoop it all up and share it in one place.

There might be some things in

• Vanilla JavaScript, HTML and CSS
• Frameworks - RiotJS, React, Svelte, SvelteKit
• Game Engines - Phaser, Construct 2 & 3, KontraJS, LittleJS
• Creative Coding platforms - p5js, Processing
• 3D stuff - Three.js, Babylon.js, Threlte

… eventually, first I’ve got to find it all! There’s stuff scattered accross my storage accounts, some deployed, some not.

Here we go!

What?

A blog? A portfolio Site? A personal website? What’s the difference? I’m not sure yet. I’ll figure it out as I go.

For now I’m thinking of it as a personal website, so thats what I’ll refer to it as.

Things I want to include

• A blog, kind of, but not just blog posts, but i like the idea of authoring content in text format
• A portfolio of my work, or at least snippets of my personal, for fun stuff
• A resume or manual of me, or both? maybe a subdomain “lee.biddiscombe.dev”?
• Interactive stuff, embeds for things like p5js generative art - maybe even for on site effects
• Uses. All tech sites need a uses page.
• Contacts / Follow page - probably ought to if I end up hosting a resume!
• Favorites page - my favourites… maybe just a blog post though

The Tech?

Sveltekit, 100% I know that, I love it! Svelte elevates the fun of web dev and SvelteKit adds even more powers. What else?

• Markdown - my go-to syntax for writing
• MDSvex - heard good things about it, seems to add some super powers to Markdown
• TailwindCSS with forms and typography - there will be blogs, prose to the rescue
• DaisyUI - I used Skeleton.dev for my last personal project (My Notes) and it was great… DaisyUI seems a bit lighter, and this is a site not an app, so let’s see.
• Lucide icons - nice icons, easy to use

… and for this most timely inspiration - Joy of Code - Sveltekit Markdown Blog - Thanks Matija from 🇭🇷 Croatia 🫡