I recently updated this site with a new design and up to date information.
Design Philosophy
The old design followed a typical Bootstrap layout common ten years ago. I wanted to move away from the traditional full-screen hero image and explore a cleaner, more modern, minimalist aesthetic. The new design focuses on:
- Bold Typography: Using large, impactful headings.
- Generous Whitespace: Giving content room to breathe.
- Dark Mode Support: Automatically adapting to system preferences.
- Card Layouts: Organizing hobbies and projects into a clean grid.
Tech Stack Changes
- Gatsby & React: Still the core of the site.
- Framer Motion: Added for smooth scroll animations and entrance effects.
- CSS Modules: Refactored for better modularity and type safety.
- React Simple Maps Replaced the static map with an interactive one, coloring visited countries and states dynamically from JSON data.
AI Usage
With the website redesign, I wanted to explore and understand the capabilities of CLI-based AI tools for coding. While I have access to Copilot and Sourcegraph Cody (similar to Cursor) at work, these tools are limited in that they require explicit @-context, which essentially functions like copy-pasting entire code files into the context window.
In contrast, CLI-based tools can interact with files by using shell commands to search, edit, and manage files, or curl to interact with the web. This is a much more powerful way of writing code, improving productivity. I think becoming familiarized with these workflows will be crucial to avoiding obsolescence in the coming years.
I plan to further explore these AI capabilities as I continue updating this site and working on other projects.