nicholas.cloud

Disappearing Blog Posts

2020-09-25 // 4 min read // #hugo

Update:

I’ve brought this disappearing post back from the abyss, enjoy!

That’s right, there’s self-destructing blog posts now

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing expiring blog posts for a while now, ever since discovering the expiryDate variable in Hugo.

Being able to have temporary posts that get cleaned up after a period of time seems like an interesting challenge and a nice convenience. For example, if I want to blog a short-term update that gets taken down once it’s no longer relevant.

While this is easy in a dynamic site (currentDate > expiryDate), it’s something that static sites struggle with. If a site’s content changes over time, a static site must be updated with each change. I know I’m certainly not going to remember to redeploy my site weeks after publishing a temporary post!

With scheduled builds and a little extra configuration though, I’ve managed to automate my troubles away!

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A Blazing Fast Solver for Golf Peaks!

Trying a few final approaches to get one last speed boost

2020-09-12 // 11 min read // #rust

“Well here we are again, it’s always such a pleasure”

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been building a solver for the puzzle game Golf Peaks and improving its performance over the course of a few blog posts. Given I’ve still got a few final ideas I’d like to try, how about one last writeup?

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Speeding Up a Solver for Golf Peaks

Now that it's working, make it work fast!

2020-09-05 // 23 min read // #python #rust

Previously, I wrote about a solver I’d built for the puzzle game Golf Peaks. In closing, I had a few ideas on how it could be sped up and improved. Over the last few days, I’ve been trying some of these ideas out, and measuring the results!

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Curious Fixes to Web Development Woes

Investigations into solutions and workarounds I've seen in the wild

2020-07-27 // 9 min read // #css #react #webdev

A while back, I wrote about the inner workings of a neat CSS trick I spotted in use on a website. The world of software development is rife with these kinds of tricks, so why not look at more of them in another blog post?

I’ve gathered a few interesting fixes here to problems I’ve either encountered myself in web development, or seen others grapple with. So without further ado, let’s jump into it!

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Enjoying Music Albums From Start to Finish

Appreciating albums in the age of the playlist

2020-07-04 // 6 min read // #music

There’s a lot of ways to listen to music in this day and age. You might see it live, streamed over the internet or played from a vinyl record. Today though, I want to advocate for a particular approach to listening to recordings.

Take an album and let it run from its first track until conclusion. Don’t put it on shuffle. Don’t only play the most popular tracks. Listen to everything the album has to offer, in the order in the order that it’s listed.

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This Website Will Disappear One Day

Decay might be inescapable, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't enjoy the present

2020-06-21 // 3 min read

The web. The internet. Call it what you want, it’s a funny thing. A feat of engineering that’s managed to create and connect the modern world as we know it.

It’s funny to think though about its fragility as well. Even in just loading this page, there’s so much that could go wrong. It’s almost certain that something will eventually break, and there won’t be someone around to make the necessary fix.

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Hiding Secret Links With CSS

There's beauty all around, even in the inlined styles of a webpage

2020-06-08 // 4 min read // #css #webdev

Every now and then I like to browse the hiring pages of companies I like and admire.

Last week, I noticed an opening that didn’t feature the usual prominent call-to-action prompt to apply.

Instead of a button or a link, there was only a message with instructions for applicants.

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If Keybase Can Do It

Recreating the file sharing functionality of Keybase

2020-05-16 // 7 min read // #applescript #nginx #rsync

Keybase has a really nice feature where you can sync files between your devices, and (optionally) make them publicly accessible.

They were also acquired by Zoom last week. While I think it’s too early to say whether this means good or bad things for Keybase, it seemed like a timely opportunity to try recreating this feature I love.

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